I am £94,761 in debt

nrsql

iwanttosavemoney2008 wrote: »

I am stuck with aol for almost 2 years as we signed up on a 2 year contract to get the free laptop (which is our only computer) so I will move as soon as I can.

I know it's too late now but these deals tend to be a con. You get a very poor laptop and with the money you are overpaying for the service you could buy a pretty good one.
You could probably get a very cheap deal with sky if you stayed a customer and maybe bought a laptp with 10 months of savings.

In fact just looked at the Sky site and it looks like it's free foir a 2MB link.

TurnaroundSue

10past6 wrote: »

Hi

Be careful with GE Money, they have a habit of handing the debts over to "Viking"

If it has been haned over to Viking, you can get them on this number: 0870 513 4601, although personally, I'd rather write to them, here's their address if your need it:

Viking
P.O.Box 800
Leeds
LS99 2AE

Hello and welcome - you certainly will get lots of brilliant advice on this board.

Remember to go onto www.saynoto0870.com to try and see if you can get the geographical phone number for each company. If you are on free calls under your current BT package, this will save you a fortune as you won't be charged, whereas with 0870 and 0845 numbers you will still be charged.

Good luck!

mk_wotsit

Just a quick message of support from me. :grouphug:

I've been comping for only three months and have won loads of stuff that can be stashed away for xmas and birthday pressies.

If you have a garden, maybe next year you could grow some food. I got seeds from Netto for 20p per pk this year and once other gardeners know about you, you'll get offered loads of their leftover stuff for planting out.

I know these things won't reduce your debt but they can help stop it growing

The Freecycle suggestion was a great idea.

I'm obsessed by thriftniness, much to the amusement of my family!

newsgroup_monkey

Hello!

I'm not much help, but have you joined in the "Giving Up Smoking" thread?

I thought I was going to be a smoker for life, I really did.

No reason why you can't quit and the hubby catches up later. To be honest, once I got it into my head that I was quitting, there was no stopping me either!

timbim_2

You seem to be paying far too much for your broadband. We get 2meg for sub £10 per month. Call customer services and ask for a better deal. They always reduce the prices, as the market is so competitive.

AdrianHi

It is quite popular here on MSE and I've only just signed up to it myself, buy have you got a quidco.co.uk account?
Costs nothing to join, you get typically 5% to 10% cash back on the ex VAT and ex delivery charge price of goods bought online when you click through a quidco link to get to it. Quidco take the first £5 of any cash back you receive per year as an admin. fee after that the rest is your to keep. It can take several months for the cash back to come through.
Mothercare, Bloooming Marvelous, Marks and Spencers, PC World and a few hundred more are on the scheme.
I've just bought a car seat from Mothercare using this for 69.99, I should see £3 cash back which will go towards the admin. fee, but I'm sure I'll buy more through this and make something out fo it before the year is out.
Not a hugely exiting return but it's better than nothing and takes very little effort.

woozywendy

smashedbooboo wrote: »

Ok, i have read the whole thread, If you need anything new like washers dryers, fridges and the like. Well anything really. Sign up to freecycle. I got a fantastic washing machine from someone in my town, for nothing. It is like new. I have had a rug and curtains, all sorts, No need to spend money on things like that anymore. Do you still have your old dryer. Are you sure it cant be repaired. Ditch the sky and get freeview. Or cancel the subscrition and just watch all the free channels. I did that. x x x

Totally agree about freecycle. I furnished my extension from freecycle. Welsh dresser, table and chairs, 2 seater sofa, portable tv, video player even the carpet. The only thing we have payed for is the paint and paper and I waited for that to be on offer.:j

Also got the double radiator to heat it with as well.;)

mitchaa

How much is your actual debt?

Even though you are only on an IO mortgage i wouldn't classify a mortgage as debt the way you have done?

£96k seems horrendous, and i shuddered at what i was about to read when i opened up this thread but when i learned that your mortgage was in there also, it seems hardly anything.

So, how much is your actual debt, not including your mortgage amount?

TurnaroundSue

AdrianHi wrote: »

It is quite popular here on MSE and I've only just signed up to it myself, buy have you got a quidco.co.uk account?
Costs nothing to join, you get typically 5% to 10% cash back on the ex VAT and ex delivery charge price of goods bought online when you click through a quidco link to get to it. Quidco take the first £5 of any cash back you receive per year as an admin. fee after that the rest is your to keep. It can take several months for the cash back to come through.
Mothercare, Bloooming Marvelous, Marks and Spencers, PC World and a few hundred more are on the scheme.
I've just bought a car seat from Mothercare using this for 69.99, I should see £3 cash back which will go towards the admin. fee, but I'm sure I'll buy more through this and make something out fo it before the year is out.
Not a hugely exiting return but it's better than nothing and takes very little effort.

Totally agree with Quidco, although Adrian didn't earn a great deal from his car seat it was something at least and over the year with buying bits here and there that will soon mount up, but if you buy your car/house insurance through it you can save a packet. We got the cheapest quote with Churchill and they also gave us £100 cashback (less £5 admin fee for the year), so £85 winging its way into my bank this month:T . Our insurance was quoted at £296 with our previous company, but with Churchill and quidco co (inc cashback) we have paid £108 fully comp for the year - yippee:j :j

AdrianHi

Just reviewed your original post on income and outgoings again.
Multiplying weekly figures by 4.33 I calculate your total income per month as:
1688.20
your total outgoings including smoking (which hopefully you have stopped now) is:
1891.37
leaving you with a loss per month of 203.16
If you have quit smoking (clearly critical) your back in the black by 13.33 a month.
As said before, stop Sky and get a Freeview box and you save £19 a month.
Tesco.com have freeview boxes from 14.97 and this part of Tesco is also on the quidco scheme http://direct.tesco.com/q/N.1999558/Nr.99.aspx?Ns=P_SORT_Price&btnResultSort.x=506&btnResultSort.y=314

Next thing I thought of was the mortgage, this is effectively allowing you to live some where for 476 a month rent (interest charge on loan), so even if it takes selling the house one day in the future (when kids have grown up) to pay back it is not such a bad thing.
An 80059.49 mortgage and 476 payments per month equate to about a 7.14% flat rate mortgage. Not a bad deal in the current market but I do wonder if you could do better.
Does "NR" mean you are with Northern Rock?
Check out this news story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7437100.stm
Since they are waving set up fees for NR customers it might be worth enquiring with Lloyds to see if you can move onto another deal. Not checked all the deals out but one which might help is:
Loan to value of house 90% (I'd guess you pass that)
6.29% fixed rate unitil August 2013
Monthly interest charge 419.64 assuming you don't have to put any charges onto the mortgage. You save about £56 a month.
I don't know if your credit rating will cause problems or not (Egg cancelling the credit card which they went through a process of doing for all higher risk customers recently suggests there might be an issue here). In any case, sending a letter with the details of your income and outgoings, your plans for reducing debt and the fact that the sale of the house would pay off the capital one day if you could not repay it sooner might convince them to accept you despite a possible poor credit rating.
I managed to "talk" a lender into giving me some bridging finance once with a letter outlining how I could cope with it and an assessment of my future income prospects etc.
Also shop around for other better mortgage deals, First Direct are also very good and have some very competitive fixed and variable rate deals on.
It should cost you nothing to find out if a lender will offer you a better deal or not, so you have nothing to loose by asking and sending a letter except the time it takes up.