I meant to post about this last year, but, well life got in the way.
Before Christmas last year, hubby really wanted to get a PS4. He knew the only way that we could have got it was either from our catalogue, or planning it out and saving it up in advance. Saving up for it was the best option as far as I was concerned and clearly we hadn't done that. Well, one day while I was at work and hubby was at MIL's to get SG he joked with her about her paying for half for his Christmas present. She agreed, they spoke about it. He told me about it later and I wasn't happy he was agreeing to more debt. I think he said it would be fine. At some point later, mil told hubby that his brother wanted to contribute something towards it as his Christmas present. In the end he put £40 towards it and I MIL paid the deposit then put money towards it. I think this was eighty pounds cash. The rest she put on her credit card. Hubby wasn't pleased that she was putting so little towards it.
Now, no-one should have agreed to this since clearly none of them had the money. Well, she put it on her card and I ended up in hospital having emergency surgery. Hubby was off sick taking care of me, I was off for months. So, they agreed he could pay it later. Hubby asked for her credit card details to pay it. She said she wasn't willing to give them. She transferred it to a 0% card.
Hubby still hadn't paid anything to it.
Well, they fell out last month. Yesterday she text asking about when he could pay it since her 0% deal runs out in March. She said she could transfer it to one of our cards (which aren't at 0% interest) Hubby phoned me on the way home from work askinf if I could look at 0% credit card balance transfers. I told him I would apply in my name since my credit is a lot better than his, but not fantastic.
I had a good look and found one for either 33 or 34 months at 0%. I thought there's no way I'm going to get that since my credit rating isn't that good. Well they accepted me. During the application process it said that you can only transfer balances in your name. So I transferred Capital One (cc1), less some pennies although this month's interest hasn't been added yet.
So, now I have transferred my balance on Capital One. I checked my statement and it was in the eight hundreds. They charged me £25 for the privilege of the transfer. So my balance will be 900 and I have 33 months to pay it off.
My questions are:
- what's the best way for me to pay off debt now I have a 0% card (in five-ten working days)
- how would you deal with MIL? The debt must be about £300 I'd guess. We don't know actual figures.
Thoughts please
September 27th, 2014 at 08:28 am
September 27th, 2014 at 03:02 pm 1411830175
I know it may not sound nice and pretty but this has already been on a 0% cc for nearly a year and everybody is looking at another 3 months? This PS4 is going to be outdated before it's paid for.
I realize your husband isn't going to like that idea and you might not either. But it's my honest reaction.
September 27th, 2014 at 03:05 pm 1411830328
If you don't have it, could the PS4 be sold to come up with the cash to pay most of it off? And actual figures would be important to me in order to pay MIL back.
September 27th, 2014 at 06:14 pm 1411841678
I agree, I would look into selling the playstation or, if that is not an option, at least insist he sell some of his games to help accelerate the payoff. It sounds like you and his mother have been taking on the stress of funding this toy, which will not help him learn to make better decisions about wants vs needs now that he is responsible to provide for his own children. I think the best strategy for paying this off would be for him to commit to finding the funds to pay it off by taking on additional work himself so that it does not draw from the family budget- working overtime, making extra cash mowing lawns, etc, until it is paid off. Is overtime available at his job? Does he have any skills he could use for side gigs, like painting houses or fixing computers, etc?
September 27th, 2014 at 06:23 pm 1411842224
I'd settle on an amount and then pay her each month on the same day (like a regular bill) until it is all paid back - even if that is past March. If she didn't have the money to afford the PS4 she should have told your hubby "No", so I don't think it is *your* emergency to pay it off by March.
September 27th, 2014 at 08:56 pm 1411851360
September 27th, 2014 at 09:28 pm 1411853325
I spoke to hubby, he said he's not going through all of the hassle of paying her back just to sell it. I didn't think he would agree to it. I also asked him a few times throughout the day what he was planning on doing e.g. agreeing to 50 per month. He said he didn't want to agree to a specific figure in case he can't afford it. He also told me to stop stressing about it, said I'd already asked him and why were we talking about it again? Also, he's text mil to ask for specific numbers and she ignored it. If they're not fussed then neither am I. I'm not going to stress over a toy.
In other news I just checked my Capital One online statement and I have 2049.29 available to spend! They only gave me a 2050 credit limit. Of course it would be more exciting if I hadn't just shifted the debt. Plus interest still has to be added.
September 28th, 2014 at 03:34 am 1411875249
September 28th, 2014 at 02:22 pm 1411914144