A quarter down! Hooray!

Sunday 2nd November, 2008 - £7,499.83 in debt…

Am I really a quarter of the way through my debt-paying-off challenge? How did that happen?

According to my plan, I should now have paid off a quarter of the original amount, leaving my debt standing at just over £7,100. I’m £375.24 behind schedule, but I think that’s pretty good considering the amount of interest I’m still covering, and the fact that it will get easier as it goes along. Maybe I’m too optimistic for my own good…

This month’s good points

     1.   I’m reluctant to describe splitting up with my boyfriend as a good thing, but there’s no denying it’s been good for my finances. Despite having to spend £30 on hiring a van, and £24.90 on redirecting my mail, the fact that I haven’t had to shell out for any rent or bills this month has meant I can plough £400 into my Barclaycard, book a place at Wembley Stadium for Take That, and plan a trip to London for December. With any luck, this means I’ll still be sane by Christmas (relatively speaking).

     2.   My incredible Matiz passed its MOT after a mere £202 of repairs, thanks to my local council MOT centre.

     3.   I discovered that I can get free music downloads from Last FM - hooray for free music! Unfortunately, the downloads themselves don’t seem to work on my computer. Am I being a massive technology dunce? Is there something wrong with the Last FM site? Who can say? Not me.

This month’s bad points

     1.   Barclaycard offered me 0% APR on balance transfers, which got me all excited until I discovered that I couldn’t take advantage of the offer, for reasons that are too complicated and boring to go into here. Suffice to say, I still have three credit cards to pay off.

     2.   I tried on four pairs of Glasses Direct glasses for only £3.75 (in total, not per pair). Unfortunately, none of them looked quite right. For this reason, and because Glasses Direct didn’t respond to my very simple email enquiry, I’m going to shop around.

     3.   I gave up my temping job, but that shouldn’t be a problem once I get back into the swing of AQA work. I’ve had a few weeks of being either unable to concentrate or too busy moving house, but the plan is to get back into my old routine as of tomorrow (Monday). It’s a whole new leaf, I tell you.

Generally speaking, these last six months have gone remarkably well. I know I’m lagging a bit, but considering I was getting further and further into the red every day until six months ago, I’m embarrassingly proud of myself right now. In eighteen months’ time, I’ll be debt free.