get out of debt

Six weeks after receiving confirmation of my loan being fully paid off, I’ve received a letter and an email from the same company telling me how quickly they could give me up to £24,000 (~$50,000). They certainly didn’t waste any time in trying to dig me a whole new hole, did they? Whilst having such a sum of money on hand would definitely give me some comfort, I think I’ll pass.

As Des pointed out, I’m quite possibly the only person in history who has gone to Walt Disney World and actually gotten out of debt! :-D

I have a sneaking suspicion that the loan company will mess it up, as they did before, but hey! I’m very nearly debt free! Yay me!

If I leave things as they stand, I have two more payments to make on my loan and I’m debt free. However, I have enough in my savings account now that I could wipe the debt out at the start of March, which would then free up all my money to be directed straight to my savings account from then on. I might lose a tiny bit of interest on the savings, but that’s outweighed by the amount I’d be charged on the loan balance. The final thing that has me leaning in the direction of just wiping out the loan sooner rather than later is that my savings balance wouldn’t actually drop, because I’d ramp up the transfer amount so that at the start of April, I’d be back to where I am now.

The savings account I have doesn’t have penalties for making withdrawals, and overall it doesn’t make much odds what I do. I’d save a few pounds in interest from closing the loan off, but more importantly, I’d get the psychological boost.

I think I’ll make the transfers tomorrow, but I’m going to sleep on it. I’d appreciate any comments 43Ters might have on this, though.

More “urgent” messages from my loan company: two to my phone, and one email. “Please go to the website to read an important and urgent message”, it said. Now, that’s the same thing they said before when they messed up an overpayment, so I could only imagine what had happened this time.

Apparently, to help with Christmas, I can either:

1. Take a repayment holiday of up to three months (I noticed that it wasn’t an interest holiday, though); or
2. I can have more money (up to £15,000 since I’ve been so good at paying it off).

I’m so glad I rushed to check that out.

Getting there.

My regular payment has now been applied to my account, so now my figures tally up with what the “official” system says. At least they sorted it out pretty quickly, even if they did send me another “in arrears” message (this time by text message) as they were fixing it.

I just checked my loan account to make sure that my over payment from last month went through OK. Lo and behold, the site informs me that I’m in arrears to the tune of a very strange number. Can you guess what that number might be? Why yes, it’s the exact difference between my regular payment amount and the over payment amount. All this despite the fact that the regular payment came out of my current account at the usual time in the usual way.

Current Mood: Decidedly Non-chuffed.

Back in April, I wrote that I wanted to half my debt burden by the end of 2006. Secretly, I wanted that to have only 25% – I can reveal today that I’m at 19.95%. Yay me!

I’ve rejigged my budget this last month, and I think I can clear this by the end of January. That would be pretty neat.

Perhaps I should take this guy up on his offer…