Finally, I see some proceeds from Dooyoo (331-34)

Hurrah – at long last (10 months or so) I have finally made enough ‘miles’ on Dooyoo to cash in my work. As I’ve mentioned previously, Dooyoo is a review site where you get paid to review products. It’s quite simple to do so, and the 50p per review payment is the best I’ve found online… BUT – and it’s a big but – the actual writing of your review is not the time-consuming bit. Oh no. To be part of the ‘community’, and to get people to read your reviews (for each reader you get 1p) and not black-list you as a ‘churner’ (someone who spews out lots of reviews without reading anyone else’s), you also need to read a ridiculous amount of reviews in addition to spending time researching and writing your own.

So, I have at least finally made it to the cashing-in point and have claimed my £50 cheque, which will help nicely with our Barclaycard, but I’m pulling out of Dooyoo as of now. In my opinion, the financial incentive is just not enough to make this a worthwhile money-making prospect – the time it takes to get anywhere is astronomical compared to the reward, and I’m better off spending my time on more productive occupations. I’ve written my last review for Dooyoo; I’m on to bigger and better things.

Vouchers galore (329-36)

I’ve just discovered that moneysupermarket have added a rather handy vouchers section to their website (http://www.moneysupermarket.com/vouchers/) where you can search for vouchers across stores or for particular products. I suspect that a lot of the vouchers involve spending money to get a saving, but if you’re doing the Christmas shopping I think it’s well worth checking the site to see if you can get a small saving, or a 2-for-the-price-of-1 bargain on something you were going to be buying anyway.

Interest charge on £0 gets my goat, so I do something about it (328-37)

On returning from work today I found we’d received my Tesco’s credit card statement. As we paid off the balance last month, it was with excited anticipation that I opened the envelope and eagerly scanned the pages for the new card balance of £0 that I was looking forward to seeing - only to be rather surprised to find Tesco claiming I had £1.12 left on my card.

Now, obviously, £1.12 is not a huge amount of money in anyone’s books, but it still makes me extremely cross. After all, if Tesco charge a thousand customers £1 extra on their bill, then Tesco makes an extra £1,000. As they say ‘every little helps’ and I’m not helping them make any more millions then they’re already getting. Rather than thinking ‘it’s only a small amount so I’ll just pay it and get shot of them’, these kind of things have the rather opposite effect of making me stubbornly dig my heels in like a mule and become obstructive and difficult.

So I set about phoning Tesco to enquire why I now owed them £1.12 when I had paid off my balance back on Oct 23rd (and it’s now Nov 24th). OK, so it probably cost me more in phone calls by the time I’d punched in a million number options and done all but sing the National Anthem to prove I am who I say I am, but it’s the point of the matter! I will not be one of the oppressed ripped-off financial masses anymore! So I pressed on through the options, and eventually got through to a human being, which is always a pleasant surprise. Probably not such a pleasant surprise for the poor girl on the other end of the line after I’d got started, but oh well.

I have to confess that I did understand what she was trying to say, which was that my interest is charged daily so I’d incurred some interest on the balance between my statement date and Oct 23rd, but I was undeterred in pretending I didn’t understand and stating my point of view, which is that I was using my online account at the time to pay the entire balance – and the £446.44 I paid is what their online system said was the entire balance I owed. Surely if I owed more interest, it should have stated that, as it’s pretty clear I was trying to pay off the entire balance – not leave myself with a £1.12 credit card bill that, if I wanted to close the card, I would have to pay off… wait a while for the payment to clear… ring back again and finally cancel it… by which point, maybe there’s another interest charge on it… ad infinitum.

Clearly it was late in the day (4.50pm) and she had soon had enough of my aggrieved waffling, so she agreed to refund me the charge, and I agreed to leave the poor girl alone (after taking her name and office address just in case her promise doesn’t materialise!). Which just goes to show you should always ask - and, in fairness, that Tesco have good customer service when pressed.

Free music online (325-40)

For the last few months I’ve been using a really handy online music site called ‘Spotify’ (I think ‘last fm’ does a similar thing). Essentially Spotify puts a media-player-style program on your computer and you can then stream music for free. I think it’s legal because you can only stream it i.e. you can’t then download it to your mp3 player, but it’s great for people like me who like to listen to music all the time and always have their computer on. I can search for all kinds of random songs I like and save them to my library for future easy-use, allowing me to build up a much larger music library than I could ever afford to buy.

The only downsides I’ve found so far are (1) that it’s not that easy just to browse the site and find music you like by chance, you really need to know exactly what song/artist you want to find, and (2) you get a 30-second or so spotify advert break every 5-10mins of music you play. I don’t mind this too much, but it could annoy some people.

Personally I find Spotify much better than listening to the radio (too much DJ chat and rubbish songs) and my mp3 player (I get a bit bored of always hearing the same songs) – I get to listen to all sorts of songs I’ve liked over the last 30 years for free, and you can’t complain about that.

Debt snowball indicates warmer weather ahead (322-43)

Although you can get free debt-snowballs online (for example http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx?country=uk) I’ve drawn up my own in MS Excel so that it shows exactly what I want it to show and I can easily update it and change figures to see what pays our debt off quickest. For those who don’t know, a debt snowball is a system that you put all your debt figures into and out comes your debt end-date; it also enables you to see how altering the amount/way you pay per month alters your final debt repayment day (e.g. overpaying above the minimum payment, or paying off the highest interest debts first compared to lowest debts first).

When we started paying serious attention to our finances back in January, our debt-free date (which I calculated incorrectly in April, forgetting our overdrafts I think) was May 2012 for all our ‘bad’ debts (loans, credit cards, overdrafts). That’s a massive 3yrs 5months (41 months) - yikes.

I’m pleased to say that our efforts over this year have brought this down to December 2011 – 3 years exactly (36 months) till our day of financial freedom (well, main freedom; we’ll still owe my parents and my student loan but for various reasons I’m not as worried about these debts), i.e. 2yrs 1mo left.

Our final debt payment dates break down like this (‘was’ meaning in January 2009):

Egg loan – was Nov 2010, paid off Aug 09
Tesco – was Mar 2011, paid off Oct 09
Barclaycard – was Feb 2011, now Apr 2010
CapitalOne – was Sep 2011, now May 2011
Mum’s c/c – was Aug 2011, now Nov 2010
Halifax o/d – was Nov 2011, now Jun 2011
1st L o/d – was Feb 2012, now Oct 2011
2nd L o/d - was May 2012,  now Dec 2011

So our work has knocked 5 months, or 12% off our time to freedom from debt, which is great – but there’s still a long way to go!

Cheaper calls across the world (320-45)

Having family (in our case the whole of CJ’s family) living abroad has substantial extra costs, and nowhere more so than when trying to keep in touch. Unfortunately, CJ’s family in South Africa don’t have an internet connection, or even a landline, so we have to call their mobiles to keep in contact with them, which quickly adds up. From a BT UK landline to SA costs 51p per minute – and even if you pay the extra £12 per year to have them registered in your friends and family package it’s still a whopping 26.4p per minute.

Fortunately, we heard about the various companies that specialise in international calls. Using Planet Talk Instant we can now dial an 0871 number, which takes us to an automated company message and instructs us to dial the number we need – for 6p per minute! And that’s to an SA mobile. What a saving.

The best company varies depending on what country you’re calling, so it’s worth shopping around for the best deal for you.

A hair’s saving (317-48)

I’m pretty excited. I finally got my hair cut (last cut 28th January!!! I’ve been tying it back recently as the layers had completely grown out – it didn’t look bad but I prefer to wear it down) and it looks fab. And I did it in proper budget fashion

After trying to get another ‘modelling’ cut at my January haunt, which proved unsuccessful, I was a bit stumped until CJ found out about a mobile hairdresser from his work colleagues. Lo and behold, she was happy to come to our house and cut both my hair and CJ’s hair for £25!!! This is the most ridiculous saving on the amount I used to spend on haircuts; in fact it was such a saving that we gave her £30 instead, which felt great – one of the things I most hate about being skint is not being able to be generous to family, friends and nice people.

Bearing in mind that I used to get my hair cut and highlighted every 10-12 weeks (so, let’s say 4 times a year as a generously low estimate), and that it used to cost probably £100 on average each time, this means I used to spend over £400 per year on hairdressing, which is just ludicrous. It is important, however, to feel good about yourself and have self-confidence, and for me this means I need my hair to look good. A bad hair day is a low-confidence, low smiling-rate day. So it’s fantastic that I’ve managed to spend just £47 on my hair this year without sacrificing quality! That’s a massive saving of at least £353!!

Boots calling – and it ain’t pretty (315-50)

I had a bit of a bad spending day today. It all started so innocuously. A colleague needed to walk into town at lunchtime to buy a birthday present and asked me if I fancied the walk. I was bored, so I definitely fancied getting out of the office in my break and headed off with her. We passed Boots and I popped in quickly because my undereye concealer ran out this morning so I needed to get some more… and then I spotted an eye-liner pencil and remembered that mine is almost run out. Not wanting to have to come back to Boots again in a couple of weeks when it finally gives up the ghost, I decided to get it now… and then I spotted some bronzing powder. Mine broke and went everywhere about 9 months ago, and I’ve survived fine without it but, as I use it as a blusher (and don’t have any other), I did think at a party this weekend that I could have done with some colour. My will power failed completely and I bought all three items. £28 blown in ten easy minutes. Sinner.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining; because I’d spent over £22 I got a whole bag of mini beauty products for free, which, as I’ve stinted on buying make–up for so long, made it feel like Christmas come early. Although I do have to confess that I have not yet told my husband about my splurge. I give him so much grief when he spends anything that I think I might keep my confession to this blog.

Sensible budgeting allows for preventative measures (310-55)

Sensible budgeting – and sticking to that budget! - makes such a difference to your life. I realise this is probably completely obvious to most people, and indeed it was to me; but in previous years I just couldn’t seem to manage it, no matter how I tried.

Now that we’re back on the road to financial improvement, it’s allowed us to take preventative measures when they’re a good idea - as opposed to always playing at crisis management when we could only afford critical extras. Our improved financial situation allowed us, during a recent visit to our dog’s vet, to take the best health step for our dog and agree to some dentistry for him, even though it was a preventative for the future, rather than extremely essential in the present.

Unfortunately, you can’t make your dog sit sweetly while a noisy, smelly metal device is shoved in his mouth to scour his plaque, so dentistry for animals includes a general anaesthetic - so no easy, or cheap, matter. Our dog’s breath was noticeably bad, and the plaque visible, but it wasn’t at a crucial state yet – it was just much better for him to have them cleaned now, rather than waiting for a crisis and much more work on worse-off teeth in a year or two’s time. It was a fantastic feeling to be able to say ‘yes’, we want the best for our pet, and we can afford it. This is one important aspect of what financial freedom means to me.

I’m not sure our poor dog would have agreed with my sentiments, however, when we picked him up after his surgery; he looked more like a basset hound around the eyes, than a labrador, and was clearly feeling very sorry for himself. Although I think the whimpering the next day was perhaps putting it on a bit for our benefit!! We’re £142.36 lighter (and, as non-essential, it’s not covered by our insurance), but our dog is much mintier of breath and has healthy teeth to carry him through to his older years – which is what is important.

Unsolicited credit cards (308-57)

I get really irritated by unsolicited credit card ‘approvals’ that drop through our door. They don’t come too often, thankfully, but one came through recently – essentially saying ‘apply now and we can offer you a mere 18.9% APR’. NO THANKS.

I’m of the opinion that this kind of unsolicited approach to people going about their normal lives should be completely banned. For one it’s thoroughly irritating, and secondly it’s just hooking people into yet more debt – usually at a ridiculous APR if you read the small print (our record is 50% APR; how would you ever pay that off??). Finally, it also wrecks your credit record because half the time (in my experience) if you do try to apply you get refused anyway, and this gets marked on your credit record. Grrr.

In fact, I got so irate by this unsolicited letter, which even included a mocked-up credit card in an attempt to catch my eye that merely contributes to the UK’s landfill problem, that I added my thoughts to the UK government’s credit and store card consultation (http://www.bis.gov.uk/creditconsultation) - immediately I felt my rant ease my wrath, and I’ve done my bit for democracy!