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.

  Good job guys!

Saturday 18th October, 2008 - £7,899.83 in debt…

YESSS!!! I am now driving around in a roadworthy car!

Roadworthy - my car! Imagine!

And for only £202.92 including VAT. Admittedly, I seem to have fallen on my feet with a decent repair garage as well, but I’m sure that the council MOT centre had a lot to do with it.

Last year, my MOT refusal paperwork listed 11 faults and no advisory notices, and the repairs cost nearly £400. This year, seven faults (two of which were lightbulbs, which I replaced myself) and six advisories. I’m convinced those advisories would have been listed as failures if I’d gone back to my usual garage.

I know I’ll have to get those things repaired eventually - if I’m going to keep the car - but it’s good to have a bit of time. And it frees up a bit of cash so I can congratulate my car with a wash or a new gearnob or something.

I’m now recommending council MOT centres to anyone with a vehicle, and particularly to those who don’t tend to budget for these things and end up unpleasantly surprised. 

Oh, and the repair garage dude looked just like Bill Oddie.

  Olivia demonstrates mechanic skills…

Wednesday 15th October, 2008 - £7,899.83 in debt…

You might have deduced - whether from my creative use of language, my love of boybands, or my name - that I am a woman. Strange but true. Unfortunately, men who run garages also tend to notice this. They hear a shrieking ‘car dunce’ alarm when I step onto the forecourt, and try to charge me for a new engine, gangway doors and some magic beans.

Perhaps because of this, my car’s MOT last year cost nearly £400. If this is going to happen every year I might have to give up my Daewoo Matiz which, despite having a 0.8 litre engine, is an incredible car and has served me well. But it’s looking like I might not have to do that quite yet…

My secret weapon is the council MOT centre. These exist all over the UK to put council vehicles through their MOTs, but they must be open to the public as well. As they only test vehicles and don’t do the repairs, in theory they have no particular interest in telling you there are millions of things wrong with your car.

Unless there are millions of things wrong with your car, of course.

My Matiz is about eight years old and is slowly falling apart, wheezing along like the last staggering corpse in a zombie film. I know I’ll have to put her out of her misery one day, but the things that fall off her tend to be tyres, brake pads and headlights - nothing important.

If I was any good with cars, or equipped with a Haynes manual and willing to learn, I could have checked this list for anything I could repair myself before I had the car tested. Unfortunately, I am neither.

Obviously she failed her MOT, but I’ve been given a list of what needs doing and had a quote of £230 + VAT for the repairs, which are booked for Friday. So far, so good…