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…
Ha ha ha….oh god i’m so in debt
Tuesday May 13th - £9,485.54 in debt…
In a previous life, I worked for a well-known comparison website. On a daily basis, I encouraged hapless consumers that one of the most effective ways to save money on their household bills was to change their suppliers. Or, in a nutshell, “yoooooou gotta SWITCH!”
Regularly changing my own suppliers over the past few years has saved me literally millions of pounds, as you would expect. Well, I haven’t done the sums recently, but I’m led to believe it’s something like that.
However, I’ve been in the same house for the last two years and haven’t bothered changing suppliers in that time. Even after a particularly hideous experience with Toucan’s customer so-called “service”. Now is the time for action.
Energy
I’m currently with Southern Electric, which was the cheapest supplier for me when I moved in. According to Consumer Choices, if I switched to British Gas, I could save £193.90 over the next two years.
Broadband
I pay Toucan £15 a month for this, even though I detest them to the very fibre of my being. As I’ve got a Sky TV package, I could get free (but limited, download-wise) broadband from Sky, saving me £360 over two years. Why haven’t I done this yet? Because I’m a berk.
Home phone
If I switch this to Sky as well, I’ll save £1.75 per month (£42 over two years) on my line rental and get free evening calls as well as the free weekend calls I currently get from my BT Unlimited Weekend Plan.
So, what do you think? Before I start switching away like a lunatic, are there any better deals? Is this a good time to switch suppliers? Any tips…?
