Dunce
Friday 1st August, 2008 - £8,378.83 in debt…
Time goes so fast when you’re scrabbling around in the gutter for pennies and working 14-hour days, doesn’t it? I’m now at the end of my third month (or first quarter, in finance-speak), and here’s how it’s going.
I’m clapping my hands like a trained seal because…
1) I’ve learned that the best way to pay off your debts is to work until your brain bleeds and earn lots of money. This month has been my best so far in terms of workload, and I should be able to shift more than £1000 to my credit cards in total once all the money comes through. I’ve paid £605 towards my debts this month, which reduces what I owe by £472.15 when you take the interest off.
2) I saved £10 on my grocery shopping by visiting MySupermarket and then Asda. The Asda shopping experience was harrowing, to say the least, but I’m trying Morrison’s next month, which isn’t on MySupermarket but looks pretty cheap to me.
3) I also saved £7.45 by getting McFly’s latest body of work, Radio:ACTIVE, free with Beelzebub’s latest body of work, the Mail on Sunday.
4) I used the snowball calculator on Whatsthecost.com to help manage my debts better. It told me that, if I pay off £470 a month (including interest) in a particular order, I’ll clear my debt before my 30th birthday and save £650 in interest.
5) I received a letter confirming that I’d opted out of the Barclays personal reserve. I already knew that I’d done this, but it’s nice to be acknowledged.
6) I earned £118.50 mystery shopping for GfK, which is by far the nicest mystery shopping company I’ve worked for. It doesn’t bombard me with irrelevant emails, the jobs I’ve done are quick and easy, and it’s even paid for a lovely bowl of soup and a Cornish cream tea. Yum.
I’m slapping my forehead like a cartoon dunce because…
1) I spent £52.80 on one weekend in Nottingham, buying things I wouldn’t normally buy because my companions didn’t know about my debts. This has made me think about confessing to everyone, but there’s a very good reason why I haven’t done this yet: I’m ashamed. That’s normal, right?
2) What with temping up to five days a week, mystery shopping and disliking the idea of cabin fever, I’ve been filling up my car’s petrol tank every nine days on average. Because it’s a beautiful and tiny Daewoo Matiz, this only costs £35 a time, but it’s still about £46 per month over budget.
3) Speaking of budget, I might have also bought a couple of McFly tickets. And a ticket to a theatre adaptation of my favourite Edward Gorey book. But that’s all – I swear. Oh, and a ticket for Blood Brothers starring one of the Nolans. I just can’t help myself.
4) My eBay so-called “buyers” have been nothing but trouble, with four of them refusing to pay up. Hopefully I’ll be able to re-sell the stuff or settle on a good eBay alternative but, until then, I’ll wear a constant look of vague disgruntlement.
I’m jittering with anticipation because…
1) I can’t yet be sure whether I did the right thing switching to an E.ON capped energy tariff - this will only be worthwhile if all the other energy bills in the country rise by more than about 10%, which looks likely but you never know.
2) I’m not yet sure what kind of impact my bridesmaid duties are going to have on my finances. The next step is dress shopping with the other bridesmaid, who lives 40 miles away, and casually tossing around some hen-night ideas without sounding like I have a budget of £3.50.
Generally speaking, I can’t complain about how this month has gone. After last month’s disastrous performance, July’s sudden onslaught of evening work has given me a ‘get out of jail free’ card and got me back on track. And, although I can’t expect this level of work every month, at least I know that I can be trusted to put the extra money towards my debt when it does happen. Well, most of it anyway…
—
First quarter results:
Amount paid towards my debt so far: £1376.63 (average £458.88 per month)
Amount I’ve reduced my debt by, after interest: £1120.62
Takin’ it to the streets…
Thursday 24th July, 2008 - £8,778.07 in debt…
Ebay is the bane of my flipping life at the moment.
If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that I started off by sticking some old stuff on Ebay and paying off my smallest debt in a week. That was great - everyone paid up and life was good. But then I carried on, blindly and recklessly Ebaying thing after thing, and now I’ve got four (FOUR!) unpaid item disputes on my hands.
FOUR! That’s enough to make me slightly cheesed off.
I’ve got a feeling this might be something to do with Ebay’s new feedback rules, so I’ve been on the hunt for some Ebay alternatives to try out. So far, I’ve found the following:
PlayTrade: You can sell CD albums, books, DVDs, games, consoles and audiobooks on Play.com, and the site’s offering ten free listings per member until the end of July. It’s not an auction site - you pick a selling price and wait for someone to buy.
Amazon Marketplace: You can sell practically anything here, on the same basis as PlayTrade - the item just appears on Amazon with your price against it, and you get access to Amazon’s millions of customers.
Ebid: An international auction site, this is one of Ebay’s main competitors. Luckily for sellers, it doesn’t charge listing fees or final value fees, but not so luckily it doesn’t have anywhere near the traffic of Ebay. But, if you upgrade to a Seller+ Lifetime account (half price at £49.99 at the moment), you’ll get a… wait for it… FREE t-shirt!
Ibootsale: This one is run like a car boot sale, where you buy a “pitch” and lay out your items to sell. Ninety-day, 25-item pitches are free right now. It’s not an auction site - the pitch system means that your item will be viewable for 90 days or until someone buys it. In theory, you only pay for your pitch and there are no other fees, but the site doesn’t currently say what the normal pitch price is.
121bid.com: Another auction site, apparently 100% free to use. That’s no listing, reserve, buy-it-now or final value fees at all. God knows how they stay afloat, but the site does carry advertising and use PayPal.
Gumtree: A great big online Classifieds section, where you can sell or swap.
And then there are the traditional ways of selling your old junk: Classifieds in the local papers or FreeAds, and car boot sales.
Any other ideas? Should I steer clear of any of the sites above, or should I just go for it? Are the buyers on these sites any more likely to pay up than my Ebay shysters?
