I came to the conclusion last night that I actually have no money. Weigh up my debts against my assets and I am a black hole of equity. I have negative money.
I have a student loan from my time at Uni but I never think about this as it’s not an ‘immediate debt’ to me. I can forget about it as the interest is miniscule(ish) for a debt that size as the interest is about £20 per month on a debt of over £10,500. I know it all adds up but as I earn shit money I don’t have to start paying it back yet. Anyway there’s other debts to pay off before I get onto that one.
I went straight to Uni from doing my A-levels and living at home and can say that I had zero debt, I didn’t owe a penny, and had never heard of an overdraft. I had a great time at uni and believe that you have to make the most of it. I spent money on beer, going out, having fun, etc, and didn’t really think too hard about the money as my loan came thru, I had a part-time job at the uni bar, and…..HSBC gave me an interest free overdraft of £1000..brilliant.
First of all I tried not to go into it, then only a little, and then I depended on the overdraft limit, teetering on the edge until I put money in. This continued after I left uni, and managed my spending so that I had spent all my overdraft by the exact day of pay-day.
After working for a few years in the ‘real world’ I have also accumulated some debt on credit cards, luckily transferring my debt around various credits with 0% interest…I am a ‘balance transfer whore’!
I was coping, payed my bills, treated myself every so often, was always able to go out, and even made inroads into paying off the credit cards.
But this year has been harder, I’ve moved back to Ramsgate, where I’ve got loads of old mates, and along with this it’s brought more spending. A lot of my friends earn more money than me, some double, and I always feel I need to be out socially (well only the weekend really) but the past few months have been really expensive and have ruined any hard work I’d done before on the removal of debt (see previous posts of stagweekends, trips to rugby, parties, etc).
Also…HSBC has removed my interest free overdraft completely so I’ve had to transfer that money to one of my interest free cards to save on paying immediate interest to the bank..cheers.
I’ve really got to work on my budget and try and get rid of the debt as in another 6 month my interest free cards will stop and I’ll be up shit creek.
I suppose I’m kinda happy that I haven’t got the overdraft to fall back on and I’ll have to really work on those cards. I don’t actually use them except for large things I did in the past (I went travelling to Canada in 2003…very expensive although great fun).
I hope no one thinks I’m a hypocrite as I spoken in the past about ‘making poverty history’ and here I am moaning although I still have a roof over my head, can go out, and I do own a lot of crap, so I shouldn’t really moan but it does bother me as I’m still a miniscule part of “the big picture”.
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