Small Steps Out Of Massive Debt!

EssexHebridean wrote: »

Absolutely agree with this - been buying the 0% version of this for ages and love it! Their 4-packs of individual pots of greek style yogurt are also delicious - 89p a pack and some lovely flavours - mango, coconut & vanilla and lemon are the ones I've tried and all are lovely!

Also on the railcard renewal - we've done ours using Tesco vouchers right since it's been an option on that one - far better than paying cash for it! :T We also use our vouchers for the Good Food Show tickets for December, and also for the odd bit of train travel too usually via megabus tickets.

Ooh, I've not tried the 4-pack individual ones, I'm not sure if I've seen them in our local Aldi but I'll have a proper look next time I'm in. 89p is a bargain!

I've already put the Railcard to good use, booked advance tickets for our trip at the end of May for £27 (the standard price is £85! :eek: ) How do you get train travel via Megabus? I feel like I'm missing a trick

Great, thank you! I will keep that in mind next time I need to book train tickets

groovychick69 wrote: »

Could someone help me out with what columns the spreadsheet should have, or pm me a blank copy? does it need to have formulas in? I’m keen to start 1 -

I'm sure other people have fancier versions, mine is quite basic but I find it effective.

I have a column for each month (I've plotted out all my personal loan repayments so my columns go up to Jan 2020 at the moment). The very last column is a Percentage Repaid for that debt.

I have a row for every debt. If a debt has multiple interest rates (e.g. B/Card with promo rate and standard rate) I have a row for every interest rate.

The last row has my debt total for the month.

Hope it helps! Having a spreadsheet definitely helped me with keeping track of everything and prioritising the debts.

I tidied up my spreadsheet this morning. I was focusing too much on the MBNA figures (which were at the top of the spreadsheet) when what I really need to do is keep the focus on Barclaycard. I feel much better now the spreadsheet has been reordered to reflect my current priorities so I thought I'd do the same with my May Debt Totals

]May 2018 Debt Totals ... (I've added a % paid column to my spreadsheet, which appears below in green. I'm counting from the highest debt figure on each of the accounts, not from my April update)

Total debt is £30508.57

HSBC Personal Loan : £7953.57
Interest rate 8.9%, 21 payments left
41.66% Paid

Credit Account Balances

Barclaycard £8690
£6405.81 @ 6.9% (until paid off)
£2284.19@ 18.6
13.45% paid

Very 1 £175.00
Interest rate 0%, until 28 Sept 2018
59.21% paid

Very 2 £800.00
Interest rate 0%, until 30 April 2019
1.11% paid

Paypal £1450.00
Interest rate 17.9%
22.76% paid

Lloyds £3250
Interest rate 0%, promo rate ends September 2019
9.87% paid

Tesco 2 £1100.00
Interest rate 0%, promo rate ends 8 Feb 2019
43.64% paid

MBNA £7090.00
£2898.59 @ 6.9% (rate ends 9th July 2019)
£4191.41 @ 6.9% (rate ends 2nd Dec 2019)
13.49% paid

Priorities and Goals

2018

#1. Barclaycard 18.6% Balance

#2 Very - Pay Off 0% Offers Before Expiry (Very 1 Exp 28 Sept 2018 / Very 2 Exp 31 May 2019)

#3 is Paypal - 17.9% Balance

#4 Continue to add to emergency fund

#5 Stop stressing over other balances. Eyes on the teaspoon, not the lake!

2019 Goals

#1 Pay upfront for insurance policies in early 2019.

#2 Move house! We're budgeting for a £200 pcm rent increase and additional travel costs of around £200 per year.

#3 Pay off Student Loan. I'm continuing with PAYE deductions until April 2019, then I'll revisit and look at switching to Direct Debit. I think that I'll have repaid my Student Loan by the end of 2019.