Bournemouth - The Promised Land

Tuesday 22nd July, 2008 - £8,810.98 in debt…

I recently asked around on some forums about services that make it easier to get out of debt, and was bombarded with links to Whatsthecost.com, which apparently is what all the cool people are using. I just went there for the first time, and I feel like I’ve arrived late to a party. A really nerdy party where the guests soberly calculate what order they should pay their credit card bills in, but a party nonetheless.

Just to recap, I have debts on:

1. Barclaycard
2. Capital One card
3. Tesco credit card
4. Barclays overdraft.

I’m paying off the Barclaycard first as it’s got the highest APR, and I’m paying a set amount on each of the others by standing order (£50 on Capital One, £75 on Tesco). I’ve been aiming to pay off £400 a month, but that’s not always possible.

Apparently, I’ve been doing it a bit wrong, but not too wrong. According to the snowball calculator on What’s The Cost, I should be setting up Direct Debits for the minimum on everything but the Barclaycard, and paying off £470 a month in total if I’m going to meet my deadline of the end of April 2010.

The best thing about the snowball calculator doo-dah is that it’s given me some fascinating facts to spur me on. For instance, if I pay everything off in my given time, in the right order, I’ll pay a total of £996 in interest. Horrified gasp. But, if I were just paying everything willy-nilly without (ahem) “snowballing”, I’d lose an additional £650.

The site has even done a good job of justifying my first act as a debt-payer-off: Getting rid of the comparatively cheap NatWest card debt first. “Sometimes, emotionally [rather than financially], it makes sense to pay off the smaller debts first. This can be a great incentive when starting to deal with your debt.”

The calculator is easy to use if you’ve got your debt information in front of you - interest rates, minimum payments, balances and interest-free periods. You’ll also have to tell it how much you can afford to pay back in total per month. By tweaking this, you can find out how much you need to pay to meet your debt-free deadline. 

The results page tells you exactly how much to pay off month by month on each debt. Supposedly, you can then login to save your results and come back to them, but this facility wasn’t working for me. Never mind though - I just saved the webpage instead.

The site is full of similar debt calculators and gadgets, and I can see it being really useful over the next 21-and-a-bit months. Now I’ve just got to encourage my friends to join me for a debt reduction party.

In other news…

Yes, I did sell my soul to the Mail on Sunday for £1.50, but it was worth it. I also got a bit carried away this weekend and fell off the wagon, budget-wise, when I booked two concert tickets. But, at least when I’m starting to chew my own knees off with boredom in November, having spent almost nothing for five months, I’ll be able to cheer myself up by seeing McFly in Bournemouth. Simple pleasures.

 Yeah, cheap stuff….

Wednesday 16th July, 2008 - £8,850.98 in debt…

So, apparently inflation is at an 11-year high, Gordon Brown’s telling everyone not to chuck out their food (maybe he wants it for himself…?), and anyone who’s anyone is trying to save money on groceries. It’s the nearest I’ll get to being fashionable while I’m on a budget, so I thought I’d join in.

Last week I was busy getting geared up for a weekend away with the girls, so I thought I’d use www.mysupermarket.com to check whether my favourite wine was on offer anywhere. 

MySupermarket is a nifty little site that compares prices from four major UK supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Ocado) and tells you where you could save the most money. You can give it a list of your usual shopping and ask it to compare the whole lot, or just have a browse for a particular thing - toothbrush, minted peas, whatever.

The wine I was after always seems to be £5.49 whenever and wherever I buy it, without fail, so I wasn’t hopeful. But, according to the site, it was available for £3.89 at Sainsbury’s - what a result! Hooray! And by the time I got there, it was £5.49.

Is this because it only compares online prices? Was I too slow? Is the universe punishing me for something?

Anyway, four days later I overcame this setback and decided to try again, giving it the details of all my usual monthly shopping and asking it to find the cheapest deals. Obviously it’s impossible to do this properly, as you’ll always end up getting impulse purchases and seeing different deals as you browse through a shop, but it’s good to know which one will be cheapest for the bare essentials.

As it turned out, Asda was the best of the best. As a lifelong Tesco shopper, I was a bit wary, but desperate times call for desperate grocery shopping. Unfortunately, the rest of the world and all its shaven-headed children had clearly had the same idea.

The savings we made included:

* £1 for four pints of milk (some kind of special 1% fat milk though - where will I get my fat from now, eh?)

* Various bready things from 10p because we shopped near the end of the day.

* Lemon drizzle cake for £1.79 (near its use-by date but I’m sure that won’t be a problem, and it solves the issue of where my next chunk of fat is coming from).

* Asda own-brand tinned cat food at £3.68 for nine tins.

An hour and a half later, and we’d spent £78.76 - not bad for a month’s shopping for two people, and a saving of about £10 compared to Tesco. But we spent at least half an hour longer in Asda than we normally do at Tesco, had to navigate a hellish assault course of screaming children and squinting old people, and were served by the winner of Grumpiest Till Person 2008. Was it worth it?

The jury’s out on that one, but if I have to clear up one more pile of Asda own-brand meaty-chunk cat puke, I might have to say no.

 Think cake, think insurance….

Now, I love my food. I’m creative with my recipes and while most of my concoctions taste just as good with own-brand ingredients, I do guiltily splash out on the occasional treat.

Every now and then a girl just needs her “Finest” Parma ham and “Extra Special” goat’s cheese - I swear you really can “Taste the Difference” in those vine ripened tomatoes. However, I should add that I’m also addicted to “Value” chocolate mousse.

“But what’s this got to do with insurance?” I hear you ask.

On June 22 Tesco is launching three new home insurance offers, which are being presented in the style of its food ranges – Value, Standard and Finest.

Jim Bruce, head of Tesco Home Insurance explains the move:

“Customers have told us they understand Value, Standard and Finest, and in the current economic climate, we want to do everything we can to help them get exactly what they want to pay for. We’ve brought this range to the home insurance market to offer even greater choice, clarity and value”

Well, that makes things nice and simple doesn’t it? Those who pride themselves on shopping only from the Finest range will now be able to boast of their Finest policy whilst those who enjoy munching on Value custard creams will be able to save themselves some pennies with the Value insurance. Genius! No?

Well, no. The thing is… insurance isn’t that simple. The best insurance policy for you depends very much on your individual circumstances and the actual “value for money” you get depends on exactly what your policy offers that will benefit you.

While I can live on 19p noodles, this does not mean I can do without potentially vital cover, but similarly, just because I enjoy the occasional glass of Finest orange juice does not mean I want to pay a ridiculously high premium for services I will probably never use!

While the re-branding of their insurance policies is a great marketing ploy, it does not provide immediate “clarity and value”, rather it oversimplifies a choice which really should take more thought.

It really is essential when looking for an insurance policy that you focus on how it suits your individual needs. Otherwise, you could end up with a policy which is about as much use as a Value cheesecake.

Mmm… cheesecake.

What would you rebrand, if you had the chance?

 Survey says: ‘No Can Do’ 

Wednesday 21st May, 2008 - £9,361.55 in debt…

According to the Kubler-Ross model of bereavement, we all go through five stages when we lose a loved one: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. How about when we lose a job?

I wouldn’t call my job a “loved one” by any stretch of the imagination, so the stages are vastly different. For me, the anger stage came first, but that’s probably because of the way I left - in a storm of shrieking and gunfire. Then came depression and worry – the words I’d exchanged with my boss were playing on my mind and I was concerned about the impact on my finances.

Yesterday, I concentrated on the ‘supreme joy’ stage. I would never have to see my boss’s stupid moustache ever again! Never have to await his 9.05 phone call to check that I’d seen all his messages! Never again sit in silence while he bellows down the phone to his disadvantaged Philippino wife! YESSSS!!

Ahem. Anyway, today has seen the stages of acceptance and, finally, organised resilience.

The bare fact is that, after tax, I used to get about £195 per week for doing that job. So, to stop myself from going under, I need to keep making – or saving - that amount of money while I’m out of work.

I reckon I’m saving £10 a week on petrol by not going to the office, and £4 a week on overpriced sandwiches (once you take off the price of the lunches I eat at home). So that’s £181 per week still to find.

Today, I signed up for every online market research, survey and review site I could lay my hands on (all the ones that pay, anyway). It took a long, long time: those sign-up procedures are way more complicated than they need to be.

So far, I have earned precisely nothing. No pounds and no pence. I’ve done four surveys (well, things that were long enough to be surveys but were apparently pre-surveys) and been told that I don’t meet some mysterious criteria.

So, because I’m a 28-year-old female with no wedding ring, no children and no mortgage, apparently I’m un-surveyable – has anyone else had this problem? Have I just been unlucky so far? Are there particular sites that I’d have more success with? Or should I concentrate on playing the long game with the review sites?

In other news:

Money-saving tip of the day: Get a notice board. This has come in really handy for me so far. In fact, I have two: One next to the front door for the money-off vouchers that come in the post (you know – the ones that you’d normally throw in the bin), and one upstairs for my credit card bills and statements. This way, I know where I am with my debt and I can pick up a voucher or two on my way out the door to the shops. And the boards themselves cost about £2 each from Tesco – every little helps, as they say.

 I’m eating my phone with rage…..

Wednesday 7th May, 2008 - £9,485.54 in debt…

If you asked any of my friends to describe me, I don’t think they’d use the phrase “quick to anger” very often. Unless any of them were hiding up a tree outside my window earlier today, when I called my credit card issuers about my interest rates.

The story so far: In my first posting, I detailed how much I owe on each of my cards, and their interest rates. After that humiliation, I was further shamed by the comments my post received: “Why don’t you ask them to lower your APRs? It’s easy – I can’t BELIEVE you’re paying that much interest! You must be some kind of mug!” - Or words to that effect.

I tried it today, and now I’d like to know where I’m going wrong.

First, the Barclays overdraft: “Sorry, that interest rate is set in stone. We have a department that helps those who can’t cope with their debt, but you’re not in sufficient difficulty.” Thanks – that’s great news.

Second, the Tesco card: “Sorry, your interest rate can’t be changed, but that’s because you’re not paying any interest until October 21st.” Although this was a welcome surprise (I thought my interest-free period had just run out), I don’t suppose you could call it a victory.

Third, the Capital One card: “No, you can’t change your interest rate. We don’t do that. Bye.” Short but sweet.

Fourth, the Barclaycard: I phoned them in January to block my card, and they had offered me a small cut in my rate, so I was hopeful they might do it again. Their response: “Ah, it looks like your card wasn’t blocked at all – I’ll just do that now. And, hang on a minute, your interest rate wasn’t lowered either!” WHAT?!?!?!

“You can lower it now though, right? CAN’T YOU?” I asked, calmly.

“No – we cannot lower your rate at this point in time.” And the advisor and her manager repeated that phrase over and over until steam shot out of my ears and I destroyed a small village.

So where am I going wrong? Is there some sort of trick I should use? Are the Barclaycard people duty bound to decrease my rate like they said they would? Is there anything I can do about this?