Mr. Buck turns on the charm 

Saturday 21st June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…

Don’t quote me on this, but I don’t think I’m on track to reduce my debt this month. Not by more than about… er… £100. This is £300 less than my absolute minimum if I’m going to repay the whole lot in two years.

“That’s not good enough! You are scum!” I hear you cry. And you’re right - I’m the lowest of the low. More revolting than an over-cooked brussels sprout floating in a bucket of sick. I can barely look at my own face in the mirror without slapping it.

I suppose you could say (if you were feeling generous) that I’ve done well not to get further into debt, given that I haven’t had a part-time job for the last few weeks. I’ve been plodding along with my freelance work, but it’s hard to put that money towards my debts if I’m not absolutely certain I’ll have enough to pay the rent at the end of the month. If you’re self-employed, you’ll know what I mean.

However (and here’s the bit where I actually feel proud of my otherwise worthless self), because I’ve been pretty much sticking to my weekly budgets, I’ve managed to keep afloat. I won’t be drowning in bank charges by the end of the month and, now that I’m temping three days a week, I’ll be getting a little paycheque every Friday.

My budget for June 20th to 26th will be £23.40 (as I underspent last week). So far i have spent £19.49 (groceries and a bottle of wine - BAD OLIVIA!), and therefore only have £3.91 remaining.

I don’t think that’s too bad, as long as I take a packed lunch to work every day. And only use my car to get to work and back. Or punish myself for this month’s poor performance by jogging to work. In heels.

Any ideas how I can stop myself ending the month on a horribly glum note? Without spending more than £3.91?

 More ‘Personal Reserve’ issues…

Thursday 12th June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…

As a Barclays customer with a fair number of bank charges to reclaim, I’m sensing that something unsavoury might be afoot.

You might recall that, a couple of weeks ago, Barclays announced that it was launching what it calls a “personal reserve” - an additional amount on top of a customer’s overdraft, which will act as a buffer. As I’m always going over my overdraft limit, I was happy to hear about this. Today I received the paperwork through the post.

From August 18th this year, there will be a £150 reserve added to my £3,000 overdraft limit. This means that, for a fee of £22 (for every five consecutive days I use the reserve), Barclays will honour payments up to £150 over my limit. Isn’t that lovely of them? They’re referring to it as “a little extra breathing space”. Bless. If I go over the reserve amount, obviously they will have to charge a “returned transaction fee” of £8, but who can blame them?

Well, I can blame them. Call me paranoid, but isn’t this just a way of renaming their fees so that I can’t claim them back if the high court decides that overdraft charges are unfair? After all, apparently I’ll be paying for a so-called service.

If I go over my new limit, I’ll still pay £30 (the same amount I’m paying now), but at best I’ll only be able to claim back the £8 “over-overdraft-and-reserve” charge.

The thing that bothers me the most is the bank’s patronising attitude to its customers, who are all easily-led simpletons as far as Barclays are concerned. All over their little explanatory leaflets is the message: ”Gone over your overdraft limit, eh? Don’t worry - we’re here to help! Let’s just give you a bit of cash to sort yourself out and then we’ll forget all about it, okay?”

Of course, what they really mean is “It’s pretty much the same as before, only more complicated because we’re covering our own backs and saving ourselves some money. We need it more than you do. Hope you don’t mind - you can opt out if you do mind, but we’ve done that for our own benefit as well, so that we can say you had a choice. And you’re probably too stupid to tick a box without jabbing yourself in the eye anyway.”

Well, I’m opting out. Stick that in your pipes and smoke it, faceless Barclays bigwigs. Ha.

 At the first month junction 

Tuesday 3rd June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…

So, I’m a month into my two-year pledge to pay off all my debts. So how’s it going? Well, I’ve had a few victories, a few disappointments, and the jury is still out on a few things. The jury being me.

Unbridled triumph!

 (1) My biggest success has been filling out my tax return and paying the resulting £421 rebate straight onto my Barclaycard. This has saved me about £63 a year in interest.

(2) Second only to that was paying off my NatWest card by selling a few things on eBay. This has got me back into the habit of Ebaying things I don’t need, and I’ve made a total of £142.78, with more on the way.

(3) I’ve changed my current account to a Barclays First Additions account (which is only available to existing Barclays customers). This means I’m paying a monthly fee of £6.50, but the preferable overdraft interest rate will save me money in the long run: About £18 a month, if my calculations are correct.

(4) My Capital One card is now charging interest after the introductory offer, so I’ve chopped it up. Even though there’s a picture of a pig on it.

(5) And, through doing Martin Lewis’s budget planner, I’ve discovered how much I spend every month. It’s a lot more than I earn. This could be seen as a failure, but at least I know what I’m doing wrong and I can change my ways.

Failure! Doom! Disaster!

(1) Online surveys. After spending about a billion years (give or take) on the sign-up processes for these things, I’ve made no money from them because I don’t meet the criteria for answering any surveys. I might have to start lying.

(2) Trying to change the interest rates on my credit cards didn’t work at all.

(3) I quit my part-time job. Although this has been very good for me, mentally speaking, it means I’m £181 more skint every week. The four recruitment agencies I’ve spoken to so far have produced no jobs.

Not Quite Sure Yet…

(1)  I’ve written to my bank to reclaim the charges I’ve paid over the last six years, but this will take up to two years to sort out, so I’m not putting any of my eggs in that basket.

(2) I really must get around to switching my energy, broadband and home phone suppliers, but I always seem to find more interesting things to do, like creating Facebook profiles for my cats.

(3)  Mystery shopping for www.retaileyes.co.uk has the potential to be a good little pocket-money-spinner, and an excellent way to get someone else to pay for my shopping. It’s gone well so far, but I haven’t received any actual cash for it yet, so I’m still erring on the side of caution.

(4) The same goes for www.consumerpulse.co.uk – a site where you answer a few questions about the things you’ve bought during the week, building up points, which you then exchange for vouchers. So far, so massive-waste-of-time (is what I thought at first), but I’ve got a good tenner’s worth of points in a fortnight. I haven’t yet received my first voucher, and the site doesn’t give me any smallprint, so I’m crossing my fingers as it seems too good to be true. Again, watch this space…

 Numbers, numbers, numbers…..

Thursday 29th May, 2008 - £9,341.19 in debt…

A year or so ago, I heard about an amazing thing I could do to claw some money back from my bank – I could just make a list of all the charges I’ve had to pay over the last six years, and be reimbursed for all of them! Good idea, right? Then my mum told me I should do it, and all of a sudden I lost interest.

But finally, this week, I made myself go through my statements. I’ve got a fair amount of time on my hands, and apparently now is the time to get my claim in so I’ll be near the front of the queue if my bank does end up paying out (although that could be up to two years away). There’s an article here that explains the background to all of this.

So, all I had to do was look at my bank statements for the past six years and add up all the charges (for going over my overdraft limit and bouncing cheques). Then I had to write to my bank with a breakdown of these charges and the total I wish to reclaim, using one of the template letters from Martin Lewis’s website. Simple or what?

Not so simple when all your bank statements are in various piles of miscellaneous paperwork, but I needed to get all of that sorted out anyway. Four hours of bank-related nostalgia later (“ooh, I remember that cashpoint in Turkey!”; “did I really spend that much in Ikea in 2003?”), I had a claim of £1,540.00 on my hands. And now I play the waiting game…

Has anyone else done this recently? Should I expect some acknowledgement from my bank that they’ve received my letter? Anyone have any success stories from making claims before the process was put on hold?