£15,000 to 0

Right, a quick update.

Balances

• Amex: £198.68 outstanding on it. I am due refunds on this (still in my continual epic hunt for office-appropriate clothing) and once the refunds come through, it'll have a positive balance of £10.
• Overdraft: currently standing at -£1898, give or take a couple of pennies. I took the money from this to sit in my nationwide account ready to pay for my year-long train ticket.
• Bank of ma and pa: currently owe them £12,000. Will be £11,750 once I get my !!!! in gear and pay them this month's instalment.
• Nationwide: £2,303.36 sitting in there accruing interest and waiting for me to buy my train ticket. £250 of this should be paid out in the next couple of days to bank of ma and pa.
• Cash: £140. Discovered whilst clearing out. God knows how long it's been lurking around but I used to be extremely bad with money and was known to hide money from myself so I wouldn't spend it all. :j:D:rotfl:

At the moment I feel like I'm holding my breath waiting for the next stage. I'm going to be moving this weekend and there will be costs associated. Luckily my lovely OH has agreed to ferry me to and from, and I will pay him petrol money which will be less expensive than hiring a van and less stressful than roping my parents in.

Once I've moved and paid out the associated costs, I will be able to take a proper look at how things stand but at the moment it's difficult for me to take stock.

I'm sticking my head in the sand a little bit by just committing to being an absolute miser and spending as little as physically possible in all categories until I can properly look at everything.

Financial to-do list this week:

• Call train company to reclaim the £3.20 they've agreed to refund me for a delay.
• Make a list of all the delays I experienced in September and painstakingly claim for every one. Grrr. My train company has recently switched from automatically awarding void days to a system where you have to claim back manually, and you get less too. Not a happy bunny.
• Ring AA and switch payment details. My mum has agreed to pay this out of her account since I do not have a car and it's my dad who gets the benefit. He also asked me to upgrade it to better coverage.
• Look into phone contracts. My phone contract expires in Decemeber and I am intending to keep my phone and go sim-only. However, I have quite a good phone which may be better off sold and a cheap phone with contract taken out.
• Send books to WeBuyBooks
• Sell and declutter as much as humanely possible. I don't want to move a load of clutter and if I can make money off getting rid of it, that's even better.
• Print voucher for OH's brother's Xmas present
• Purchase vouchers for OH's sister and parents Xmas presents

I have had no luck whatsoever with Prolific lately. A bit annoying because I was quite enjoying that income source :mad:

EssexHebridean wrote: »

A quick thought on the train ticket - I take it when you worked out the saving you based it on 47 (or 46 depending how much holiday time you get) weeks travel for work rather than a full year? By the time we took out MrEH's holiday time we came to the conclusion that the annual ticket didn't actually save enough to make it worthwhile, that's the only reason I ask.

For my current train ticket, I have a 16-25 railcard and I worked out whether it would be cheaper to buy it daily. I don't remember exactly how much difference it was but the difference was in the pennies per week. It would have technically been cheaper to buy it daily but I decided that for the sake of my own sanity and to avoid the miles-long queues, I would just buy the tickets monthly. Not the most MSE but I decided it was worth it

The new train ticket that I am buying yearly will actually be a multiple zones oyster card travelcard. My daily commute would cost £7.80. Assuming that I travel 5x per week it would be £39 a week. Multiplied by 47, it works out £1,833. This is assuming I only travel twice per weekday at peak times.

If I travel more than twice per day, the daily cap is £9.50. This makes it £2,232.50 per year. Not a good option.

The annual travel card fare is £1,892. This will cover me visiting most of my friends at weekends, also if I want to go to my parents' or to OH's I have to go from outer London into central London and then travel out from there. Getting the annual travel card also means that I can travel on weekends and it will be included, and I think I will travel enough outside of my two daily commutes that it will be worth the extra £60ish per year.

Sorry for the long and rambling post :rotfl:

Thanks EH! I always appreciate your support on here

My sister thinks I’m insane, she told me I should just buy my train ticket monthly... even after I pointed out it would save me £300 in the year. She thinks the convenience of paying for a ticket monthly out of wages rather than paying a £2k lump sum is worth the extra £300. I was gobsmacked. How the other half live...

EssexHebridean wrote: »

Oddly enough a link in the weekly MSE email has just taken me to precisely the bit of information I was thinking about yesterday... Gold Card - railcard &
rail travel discount - so you might even be able to get a discount on your renewal on your YP card when that comes up?

Are you planning to get as much cash set aside through the year to cover the cost of next year's annual card? Or will you rely on being able to access a 0% interest rate at that stage? When you've got debt to think about it's a less straightforward question isn't it!

Your sister clearly needs an MSE crash course...

Thanks!

I don't have an annual gold card at the moment because I bought my tickets monthly (on the basis that I was supposed to move out 6 months ago....) but I'll see if I'm eligible now. I suspect I'm not because it's an oyster ticket.

I'm not planning to get any more debt until I eventually get my mortgage, 0% or no. I'll be putting the money aside and will even be brave enough to ask for a cheeky pay rise in March (1 yr into my training - it's usual for 2nd year trainees to receive a pay rise)