The dreaded D word

snorfing_along · 26 June 2013 at 3:56PM

It's time that i started to tackle the debt that i have run up on a few credit cards and a loan, which now totals about £13,000. I meet at least the mimimum payments and i have never missed a payment or incured any fees or charges and it is broken down as below:

Natwest CC (0%): £450.33
Barclaycard CC (0%): £5190.00
Tesco CC (0%): £1200.00
M&S CC (0%): £1200.00
Santander Car Loan (9.9%): £5048.00

I have decided to sell my car and pay off my car loan and then with any remaining cash buy a cheap run around (Hopefully i can get about £6,500 for my car and spend £1,000 on a new one so i will have another £500 to pay off). Also i am changing job in the next few weeks so i should be paid for my un-used holidays, which should be about £600 after tax and N.I.

After all that i will probable have in the region of about £7,000 left to pay off. I usually pay off £315 a month, (at the moment this includes the loan for my car) and i will be getting a pay increase at my new job so i should have an additional £80 a month to pay off, so by this time next year i should have hopefully paid off £4812 leaving me with just £2100 left to pay off, which i might be able to clear £1000 of that by paying off a little extra and a bonus from work, fingers crossed i can stick to this now, I do have my best friends wedding to attend next year so that will mean a new dress, night in a hotel and a present but i'll try put money asside for that in the new year.

Can anybody offer me any additional advice or see any holes in my plan? It's seems quite easy now i have written it all down but i'm sure in reality it will be a bit more difficult to stick to

timetogrowup89 · 26 June 2013 at 10:43PM

Hello,

You're plan seems a good one...

Do you know when all your 0% expires? You should try to pay them off in a 'good' order to avoid interest..

I find focusing on one debt at a time is a good incentive because you can cross it off fairly quickly and move onto the next one

x

snorfing_along · 28 June 2013 at 9:44AM

Thank you, yes i'm keeping track of it all my Barclaycard was 26months so i have 19months left on that one, but the rest all run out early next year so if i don't pay them off i'll have to move them to new 0% interest cards. I'll make sure i keep an eye on them, don't want to pay any interest

Indebted2U · 28 June 2013 at 10:11AM

Well done for tackling your debt mmc2911 and welcome to the forum. I only had my Light Bulb Moment :idea: in March but have been amazed at how quickly I've managed to reduce my debt and I've found the help and support on the DFW Forum invaluable.

Your plan looks good to me. Automating debt payments so you avoid temptation, cutting back on unnecessary luxuries and sending any spare cash you have, no matter how small, (snowflaking) to your debt seems to be what works for me. I'd also agree with timetogrowup89's advice and try snowballing your debts.

Pay the minimum on all your interest free cards but throw as much as you can at the Natwest CC debt. You'll have a quick win, which should encourage you to keep going and if you cancel the Natwest card as soon as it's paid off you'll have a better chance of getting another 0% deal when you need it. Then add whatever you were paying to your Natwest card to the minimum payment on your next chosen card (snowballing) and continue. You'll be surprised how quickly the debt vanishes

If you G00gle snowballing calculator you'll find various sites that will show you how quickly you can achieve your Debt Free Day :T

Wildchild_2 · 28 June 2013 at 10:15AM

Good luck NMC - if you post a SOA with all your spends and incomes then people on here will pick it to pieces and tell you where you can save money!

snorfing_along · 19 July 2013 at 10:03AM

Hi, thanks for all the good advice and support, i will do an SOA but i'll wait untill i start my new job in August as i will be paying train fair but will need a lot less petrol so that should give me a clearer idea of how much i spend. I do keep a wallet register to make sure i always have some cash in my account so i don't go overdrawn but it's amazing how much all the little trips to the supermarket actually cost over the month. My M&S 0% ended sooner than i thought so i have shifted that to my Natwest Card to avoid high interest payments but i had to pay for my car insurance so that had to go on my cedit card as well, also i can't sell my car untill september due to a clause in my car loan contract so it's going to be a slower start than i hoped but i'll start chipping away at it and do what i can untill then. At least it's pay day next week so i can make my usual payments, i always feel good after that

beanielou · 19 July 2013 at 9:49PM

Welcome to MSE

Keep posting.

snorfing_along · 22 July 2013 at 6:00PM

Contacted Santander to get an exact figure of how much i need to pay to clear my loan and it's only £4500, which is great it will mean a bit more spare cash to pay off my other credit cards so i should easily be able to half my debt within the next couple of months and i also aim to clear my Natwest CC by christmas as well

snorfing_along · 4 September 2017 at 3:49PM

Ok so it's been over 4 years since my last post and the debt has completely spiralled, with emergency repairs to the house, my DH being made redundant from his well paid job and other un-expected things but we're now ready to really to tackle our debt (currently about £50,000). £30,000 of this is due to work that we had to do to the house including a new roof, rendering, repairs inside, central heating system and also a new kitchen so we hope to be able to consolidate this into our mortgage (which we know would be more expensive in the long run however we plan to overpay on the mortgage to pay off this additional amount once the rest of the credit cards are gone).
We have both been finding it increasing difficult to get 0% deals on credit cards and some of what we owe are now on interest rates of 20% or more but this could rise as the 0% 's come to an end and we can't balance transfer to other offers
I have an appointment booked with a mortgage advisor on Thursday so hopefully we can tackle a large portion of our debt straight away

snorfing_along · 20 November 2017 at 3:38PM

So after a very long 3 months we finally managed to get additional borrowing on the mortgage of £30k to pay off our credit cards so the outstanding total is now £19k, which is a lot more manageable and according to the snowball calculator we should be able to pay that off in 12months which would be great.
I know a lot of people don't think turning an unsecured debt into a secured on is the best option however for us it's definitely is, also we plan to start paying additional funds to the mortgage in the new year to help pay off the additional funds we have borrowed. For us it means that we can keep the monthly out goings low for now to tackle the remaining debt and once that's gone pay more off the mortgage.

I've been doing well not to spend anything on the credit cards for the last 6 months and we have managed to pay off about £3000 in that time (at the highest the debt was just over £53k) and another goal is to get some money into savings for when unexpected things crop up, I was thinking that about £1000 would be a good amount to start with?

snorfing_along · 13 March 2018 at 12:20PM

So my current debt totals stand at:

Barclaycard: £6880
Tesco: £3015
Yorkshire Bank: £1935
MBNA: £1050

Total debt: £12880

I have quite a lot of work to do over the next few months as I would like to (at least) half this by the end of the year. I've just spent some time shifting the debt around so that it's all on 0% as some deals were about to run out. I plan to get the MBNA card paid off first in the next 2 month and then concentrate on the Yorkshire Bank credit card to pay that off before it's 0% runs out in September

The dreaded D word

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