Some advice please..

bambenson

Hey everyone, i was wondering if someone could advise me with my current situation.

As it stands i'm overdrawn in my main bank account by £1500 and i have a debt to Computeach to the sum of £1734.13 which i am paying through Regal credit at £102 per month.

My current monthly spend is like this:

Income: £916

• Rent: £180
• Food: £100
• Mobile: £30 (just downgraded)
• Bills: £150 - 250 (it varies!)
• Computeach: £102
• Catalogue: £35
• Website Fees: £25

That doesn't include money to have the occasional meal or the train to Bristol, etc.

My questions are as follows:

• Would it be possible to pay off ALL of my debts by 1st January 2009 (My partner and I are looking to move in together)
• How would i go about doing this?

Please also bare in mind that my credit score is pretty awful, i had more debts than this but i've managed to get them down this far!

Thanks in advance!

dancingfairy

HI and welcome :hello: . Is it possible to do a more thorough SOA. Detail billsmore for example eg gas /electric/ tv licence etc. Also keep a spending diary to see if there is anything you feel you could do without on there eg the daily cup of coffee out/magazines/crisps/coke/bottled water/the odd magazine etc, etc - whatever your vice is - it all adds up.

It appears to be that you have approx £300 a month spare - is this correct? if so and you can throw that at the bills great. How much do you owe to the catalogue and what is the apr. It depends on whether these are your only debts. With some determination and some help from on here I don't see why you can't pay your debts off by then - go for it. What have you got to lose?

bambenson

Thanks!

I'll see if I can get the exact figures now.

My catalogue is interest free and i now owe £400 on it.

silverbullit

Your total debt is £3234.13. To clear that by 1.1.09 (ie approximately 7 months) you would need to pay at least £462 per month towards your debts (and that does not take account of any interest/fees that you are or will have to pay on the debts).

Given that, after your monthly expenditure, you are left with only approximately £296, it would seem unrealistic on these figures that you would be able to clear the debts by January.

Perhaps it would help to get a weekend job or to sell off unnecessary things you may have lying around the house on ebay/car boot sale?

dancingfairy

I would think you could have a pretty good go at it. There's a board on here for upping your income - by minimising your expenses - you could perhaps shave a little off the food bill for example,(See the MoneysavingOldStyle board) and doing mystery shops/overtime at work/a weekend/part time job/ selling stuff on ebay/car booting etc - you'll soon have it sussed.

In answer to you questions the best way is to pay the mimums then chuck any spare at the debt with the highest apr. Another way would be to try and get the cataloue paid off in order to spur you on to pay off computeach and using the money you were paying to the catalogue to pay off computeach.

bambenson

Would it be worth getting my wages paid into another account so that i'm not CONSTANTLY overdrawn?

Thanks for the advice guys.

newsgroup_monkey

It's never too late to join the £10 a day for June club.

You'll be amazed what will sell on eBay / Amazon

bambenson

I currently own about 10 or so websites that are all generating income. I'm still trying to hit £10 a day but not in the same way as everyone else!

dancingfairy

With regards to the overdraft you could
a) set your self a target to reduce it by a set amount a month and ask the bank to lower your limit.
or
b) open up a bank account somewhere else and treat the overdraft like another bill and set up a standing order to pay it off each month bit by bit. I think it depends how you think would work best.
Keeping everything simple and 1 bank account but with a negative balance( alebit hopefully less negative each month) or having 2 current accounts- would need to change all the direct debits/standing orders over though.

angeldiva

bambenson wrote: »

Would it be worth getting my wages paid into another account so that i'm not CONSTANTLY overdrawn?

Thanks for the advice guys.

I think it could help as long as you had a standing order to pay off that overdraft with the old account and you had no overdraft on your new account