Newbie - Debt free in 24 months!

Tall_Paul81

Hello, Newbie to the forums here :hello:

I've been reading the forums for a few days, and have decided to really work on getting rid of my debts, my debt free date that I'm working to is June 2010 (or earlier!) and I've already started a spending diary to see where my loose change is going!

My SOA is here...

Incomings:
Wages £1263

Outgoings:
Rent: £312.50
Gas & Electric: £25
Water: £26.25
Council Tax: £57.50
Internet: £5
Mobile Phone: £30
Car Insurance: £85
Bank (inc. overdraft interest): £28
Day to day spending (Food, Petrol, Gym etc.): £250

Debts:
Loan: £271.30
Credit Card min payments: £70

Total: £1160.75


My Debts are as follows...

Tesco Loan - £6511.20
Egg Credit Card - £3327.36
Overdraft - £1931.93
Lloyds TSB Credit Card - £206.80
Total - £11977.29


The loan ends June 2010, so my aim is to have credit cards and my overdraft paid off by then at the very latest, preferably earlier!!

The £250 a month I transfer into a separate bank account, this is my spending money for the month, which has to cover food, petrol, gym, occasional lunches at work, going out, hobbies etc. As I said I've started an online spending diary to keep track on where I'm spending this, but as a rough guide I should be spending about £100 on food, £65 on petrol, £6.50 on going to the gym (3x per week) so I'm not sure where the rest of it is going!! :eek:

I'm still awaiting my deposit from when I moved a few weeks ago, which should be about £300, and I believe I'm due a tax rebate of £477 (calculated by me and confirmed by an online calculator - I work in financial services so know how to calculate tax!), although I'm not counting these until i get them in my hand! I'll use these to pay off part of my overdraft, as it was increased for 6 months only (2 months ago). Also my car insurance is due for renewal in August, and I've had a few quotes at £40-45 per month, so I'll have a bit more there soon (and will go through Quidco for it!)

So... thats about it! I'm going to start the 'Make £10 a day' challenge for July, I should be doing some hefty overtime at work in the next 2 months, and I've got a fair few items that I can sell on ebay, I'm using quidco, and trying to cut back on all non-essentials, so wish me luck!

Cheers

Paul

GeorgeUK

Good luck with this Paul.

Have you though of trying to get a 0% card so that you don't need to pay interest on the cards? Also check out the snowball calculator to see what the best method of payment is and how long it may take.

http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

clearmydebts

Hi Paul,

Best of luck with this. You sound determined anyway! I will look forward to reading your diary ans seeing how you are progressing! My calculator gave me a DF date of Sept 2012 but am hoping to get rid of it sooner. Have no date in mind yet but am trying to be extra careful with my cash.

doodledo_2

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Your outgoings all seem good only area maybe for improvement is your car insurance as quite high might be worth having a good hunt round when its due for renewal.

Good luck with your journey.

tyllwyd

If you've got a car, remember that you are paying out road tax and servicing as well - it can be a surprisingly high amount per month when you actually look at it. Also your tv licence - that's eating up about £10 per month.

Tall_Paul81

Cheers, forgot about the TV licence! Its only £6 a month extra though (I live in a shared house so all bills are split 50:50), I'll add in £15 for car tax too, servicing I do myself, so that will come out of my day to day spending when it needs to (probably only once every 2 years anyway as I only do 4000 miles a year).

My car insurance is due for renewal in august, and I've had a couple of quotes for about £45 a month.

I've had a look on the snowball calculator, and it says I need to put £550 total a month towards my debts to pay them off in 24 months, so taking into account at I'm already paying £340 a month (£271 to my loan and roughly £70 to my c/cards), that's an extra £210 a month, and that's not including the tax rebate or my deposit that I'm due back either

I'll have a look at 0% interest cards as well, hopefully might be able to transfer my Egg car and/or my overdraft onto one.

So far this week I've spent £16.37 on Sunday on grocery shopping, hoping to spend nothing else apart from £1.14 on a loaf of bread for the rest of the week :cool:

delboypass

£1000 a month on car insurance???

What on earth are you driving???

Selling a car that costs a grand to insure might clear your debts instantly??

Tall_Paul81

delboypass wrote: »

£1000 a month on car insurance???

What on earth are you driving???

Selling a car that costs a grand to insure might clear your debts instantly??

Do you mean £1000 a year?

My car insurance is currently £85 a month for a few reasons, I made a claim in September last year (plus I had a claim back in 2006 ), which bumped it up by £20 a month (also reduced my no-claims to 1 year), and I moved to Bristol in November last year, this cause it to go up by £20 a month too. As from end of August I'll have 2 years no-claims.

As I've said I've done lots of quotes, the best ones coming in at £40-45 a month, so this will be halved from August.

My car is a 1.6 Ford escort, nothing special, just a cheapish run around worth £1200, I did have 5 ncb before my 2 claims, so that has really done me in! :mad:

Hopefully that explains it a little! :rolleyes: