Smile !

It happened ! I received the refund on Thursday. First thing I did ? Paid £1500 off my debt and put £100 in the EF. Now I have control, I'm not letting it slip away. Yes I have a credit balance too, just a small one, but that's my buffer until I get the momentum going.

I am going to invest in my plan for creating extra income. I will have to invest in some components for my jewellery making, but that will be minimal because I am determind to make it work this time.

Thanks for all your comments, I've had five days off from work as it's half term, so am feeling refreshed and positive for the weeks ahead.

Patience

I didn't have a great day at work yesterday, sort of puts you off kilter. I loathe office politics, why can't people be open, wasting energy moaning and bitching brings everyone down, I seem to be the sounding off board. Anyway, enough negativity.

Still waiting for The Bank That Owes Me to come through with the PPI refund. A few phonecalls last Friday and they had lost my paperwork, thankfully I'd sent it recorded and royalmail clearly states my acceptance was delivered. They've promised a bank transfer, so we shall see tomorrow morning. Meanwhile Cahoot aren't forthcoming with any paperwork, so they are due another phonecall.

I've not made any debt progress this last month, although I'm not going mad spending, I'm coming to the end of my mealplan and the cupboards are decidedly bare, this is the tricky stage where I'll find myself shopping daily. I seem to be on hold whilst waiting for these extra funds to come through.

Looping

My bank that holds my current account, NatWest kindly (!) took on my Cahoot flexible loan, with that loan I included my small but always in use overdraft. Two things to note here. I've been with this bank since 1985, and only broken my overdraft limit once some three years ago, rest of the time I have lived well within it or precariously on the edge within pennies ! So decided to get rid of the facility because if it's there I'll use it.

Now bearing in mind I have had a loan with them before and at that time they suggested I keep an overdraft of £100 in play as there's no charge. Within 6 months of that loan decision they upped my overdraft to £600, without me asking, of course I had my financial beer goggles on and used it unwisely.

So returning to this overdraft and loan I checked my online banking this week and my overdraft facility of £1000 is still there. I know what they are doing, they've got me on an ever repeating loop. Give her a loan to pay off the Cahoot debacle and overdraft, forget to remove the overdraft, and in a couple of years time play the game again ! I'm their guaranteed income !

Not this time. I'm going to live on the right side of the account.

Head In A Book

Several bloggers pf and otherwise have sung the praises of library facilities. I love the escapism of a good book or film. In fact many a purchase of a bestseller has added to the cost of my financial situation. Somewhere I have a mint copy of The Devil Wears Prada, unread, saw the film, just didn't bother with the book. Now I'd be lucky to sell that for pennies on Amazon. The same with the Da Vinci Code, every car boot I go to there are loads of Dan Brown bibles for 10p. Why I didn't just go to the library I don't know.

There is something highly enjoyable about browsing for books, more enjoyable at the library because it's free, I've shaken off the Waterstones habit of buy two get one free, even if I did sell them afterwards I rarely got my money back.

But recently I've started to enjoy motivational and positive thinking literature, and unfortunately my library isn't overloaded with this sort of material, so I did visit Waterstones to buy Change Your Life in Seven Days by Paul McKenna. This wasn't a good choice for me. It really is a visualisation technique and I'm just not good at that, always something going on around here to distract.

I think my non fiction will be The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, that's if I can get my head out of a James Patterson.

Snowflakes Melting

For the last 24 Hours the results of the Whatsthecost calculator has been burning in the forefront of my mind. £65,658.08 interest if I live another 110 years of course. How ridiculous is that ? Further playing around with it, if I only paid an extra £1 off a month it would reduce it to 82 years. Again ridiculous but brings to mind the well documented practice of snowflaking.

One of my aptly favourite quotes is a Chinese proverb - 'The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.' So reading No More Spending's progress snowflaking and digging deeper to the Paid Twice blog - Five Golden Rules for Snowflaking I realise I've broken an important rule. Whenever I get an extra income payment - be it cashback or an ebay sale - it seems to get swallowed up by day to day stuff, whereas I should be snowflaking it straight on to the Marbles balance.

It's another step to losing my marbles.

Interest

A phone call to the bank that owes me money yesterday as postie only delivered a La Redoute catalogue (no idea why - never requested). I'm told that the refund I'm due is usually processed within 4 working days, and it will be in the form of a cheque. 4 working days ? From when ? The day they recieve my acknowledgment I'm told. Well that doesn't add up, should have been here last week.

Mr Marbles tells me that cashiers only do the mundane tasks like this every two weeks on Thursdays or Fridays and to face facts they are hardly going to break their necks refunding me.
He's probably correct, but that doesn't make it right.

Anyway, having paid Cahoot off I called them to request the relevant paperwork regarding the loan set up and insurance, very helpful call centre assistant said no problem, however was I aware that there was still £41.77 left to pay on the loan. Obviously it's interest accrued between the last statement and the day I paid it off. That sucks, better sort it though, want to be free of them.

Still haven't bought any ink yet....


Wandered over to Whatsthecost credit card calculator this morning. I owe Marbles £9550.03 interest rate 26.9 APR, 2.5% minimum payment a month. results :

• It'll take you 1329 months (that's over 110 years) to pay back £9,550 if you only pay the required minimum of 2.50%.
• Over that period of time, you'll pay an additional £65,658.08 in interest.
• If you could afford to pay an extra £10 a month towards your credit card debt, it would mean you'd repay it in 433 months (just over 36 years) and you'd save yourself £30,151.78 in interest. In fact, if you could afford an extra £25 a month, you'd repay it in 247 months (just over 20 years), and save £43,168.91.
  
• Totals (paying minimum of 2.50% per month):
  Original debt £9,550.03
  Time to clear debt 1,329 months
  Interest charged £65,658.08
  Total paid £75,208.11

Talk about motivation !

Can't Keep It To Myself Anymore

Right, perhaps if I blog about it it just may happen, way back in October I blogged about reclaiming my PPI from a well known UK Bank - see this post . First letter they said no, I challenged their decision as I know I wasn't given the option to take this without the PPI product included. In January they sent a letter not admitting they were at fault but had decided to to refund my premiums and interest.

This is pure estimation but that works out at approx £2,200. I have to estimate it as they didn't quote any figures or advice how or when they were going to pay. Included in the the letter was a form to sign that no further action would be taken regarding this claim and return within 10 days, I duly returned it by recorded delivery. However I didn't include a covering letter (to be honest I've run out of ink !) Now a little research on a few consumer forums and I should have added a letter advising I would appreciate the funds being repaid to such and such account within a stipulated time frame.

If they don't reply by todays post I think I will phone and follow up with letter (have to be hand written ugh!) I'm taking control of this situation now, because it's my money.

Secondly now I've paid Cahoot off I shall start the same process with them. (And buy some ink in the process!) If you don't ask you don't get.

There I've told you now..if you build it they will come :)

Not In Cahoots with them anymore !

I've done something ! Something positive. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I have a 'flexible' loan of just over £3,500 with a division of Abbey called Cahoot. This particular financial institution offered a very flexible loan deal way back at the turn of the century. Now bearing in mind I had my financial beer goggles on at that time I took them up on the offer of a £4000 @ 6.9% or thereabouts. This 6.9% has considerably shifted over the last 7 years and is now at the extortionate rate of 19.9 % ! The balance has stuck fast, not helped by me dipping into it to bail me out here and there.

Recently there have been rumours that Abbey are downsizing (or whatever the financial term is) this division, not taking anymore applications for cahoot and want the existing account holders to apply to Abbey (all rumours though). So I need to shift this loan, the very nature of it's flexibility makes it increasingly hard to pay off. I'm not in a position to apply for 0% cards, or loans at reasonable rates. However my own bank called me in for a financial review this week, and the long and short of it is they have taken the loan on at 8% ! Awesome !

By the way this is not the 'Just Maybe' good news I reported earlier this week, you'll have to come back for that......