Ashamed of myself (Ourselves)...Very First SOA

Witsend_2

Welcome to you both and well done for sharing the hard bit is over now. I cannot give any real advice although I know that there are many on here that can. Stick with it and you will soon feel better remember you are not the first and will not be the last Just hang in there and stick together like glue:kisses3: a kiss when you feel blue can really help you through. Sleep better tonight as you will soon be in control again:money:

angelflower_2

poorpeople wrote: »

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1823
Partners monthly income after tax....... 623
Benefits................................ 370
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2816

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 633
Secured loan repayments................. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 185 even for scotland, this is high. Are you paying arrears? Can you pay over 12 months instead of 10 to bring this down.
Electricity............................. 53 now is a difficult time for utilities but keep eye out on these boards, sign up to the weekly email and be informed when to check and possibly switch.
Gas..................................... 53
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 0
Telephone (land line)................... 28
Mobile phone............................ 11
TV Licence.............................. 11.6
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 18 -can you go down to freeview
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 320 set yourself a challenge to shop on a bit less than this and keep a close record on what you are spending. Aim to reduce this by £100 - it can be done, check the old style boards
Clothing................................ 50 - quite high if you are serious about reducing debts.
Petrol/diesel........................... 40
Road tax................................ 15.41
Car Insurance........................... 32.48 when is it up for renewal...use a cashback site and comparrison sites to get the best deal (info on this site)
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 8.33
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 10
Buildings insurance..................... 0
Contents insurance...................... 30.85
Life assurance ......................... 28
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 41.66 this totals quite a bit over the year...however, if like me it might be underestimated in terms of what you do actually spend. Look for inventive ways to reduce present giving.
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 0
Holiday................................. 41.66 no holidays until you are out of debt.
Emergency fund.......................... 31.79 an emergency fund would be great but better to clear the debts
Total monthly expenses.................. 1642.78

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 185000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 2000
Other assets............................ 1200
Total Assets............................ 188200

Secured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 139632...(633)......0
Total secured debts........... 139632....-.........-

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
MBNA...........................2800......48........0
Abbey Credit Card..............2560......10........0
Car Loan.......................1788......149.......0
Overdrafts are missing and should be considered debts. In interest alone, they must be costing you around £50-60 a month. You need to see them as debts and stop using the accounts and start paying these off just like your other debts. Why are you only paying £10 a month to Abbey...is this no interest? When does this come to an end?

Total unsecured debts..........7148......207.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,816
Expenses (including secured debts)....... 1,642.78
Available for debt repayments........... 1,173.22
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 207
Surplus(deficit if negative)............ 966.22 I dont belive this figure can be accurate based on your posts and based on things you havent put into the soa. However, even if half of it is accounted for in things you havent put down, even without changing anything, you will have approx £500 to throw at your debts. You need to do this by getting rid of the highest interest ones first. Keep looking around the site for tips to get you started. Finding a challenge that suits your family is a fantastic way of focusing.

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 188,200
Total Secured debt...................... -139,632
Total Unsecured debt.................... -7,148
Net Assets.............................. 41,420

Quotes above in red...hope they make sense and give you some pointers.

scrooge2008

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/budgetcalculator.phtml

Hi,

Filling in an SOA is essential, but I found that the budget calculator above helped me to determine where my money was actually going, because like you there seemed to be a huge surplus at the end of each month which wasn't materialising.

To fill in the budget, I went back through credit card statements and was appalled at how much I was spending on food and wine in a month and miscellaneous bits and bobs which were not really contributing to my quality of life. I thought I was spending about £500.00, but it turned out to be about double that.

Have been religiously keeping a spending diary for the last couple of months, meal planning, ebaying, coupon hunting etc and have brought this down to £250 and I can honestly say we are eating better than ever.

You can turn your situation around, if you keep a really tight control on your expenditure and follow Martin's mantras.

All the best.

gmac9i

poorpeople, whaty have you to worry about with 1200 disposable income every month, try to worry about the proper poor people on here and move on.

scrooge2008

I think it is great that you are tackling this together. It's very difficult to change habits, so don't get discouraged, just keep plugging away and you'll get there. You have obviously already made a lot of progress, swapped the foreign holidays for a "Sun" holiday. I did the same this year, just come back from camping in Wales, it was great. Going from not thinking about money, to watching every penny is painful at first, but can become strangely pleasurable and addictive as a feeling of being in control returns.

A_fiend_for_life

Hi there poorpeople and welcome

Some things that are missing

Are you including the costs of two cars?
Child bills?
Internet access is this included with another package.

The Abbey card is below minimum payment for the balance. You've either entered the wrong amount or your racking up charges minimum payment on that balance should be about £45 at least. Do you mean £10 or £100 for minimum payment?

Scour your statements for direct debits and standing orders that you might have forgotten about. Look out for patterns of the same values per month.

Have you reclaimed credit card charges? If not the sooner you do that the better in England and Wales you can claim back 6 years in Scotland it is only five.

Are you paying PPI on any of the cards too? It might be possible to reclaim this too.

A_fiend_for_life

In paragraph 4 of your first post you mention two bank accounts - these need to be included in the unsecured debts section.

A_fiend_for_life

poorpeople wrote: »

Hi there, we really try not to spend, things like, my work always go out for lunch on a friday bout £5 and its frowned upon if you dont go, we dont go out, it was our anniversary yesterday and we only bought a card each - I did have a dentists bill over the last two months for £200 - and I have been told i need 2 teeth crowned at a cost of £600 over the next 6 months - help! we try to be careful - i took a top back because I was fed up wearing the same two tops to work every week - and I did add to a new one by£8 we do try but any other advice would be appreciated....

Is it worth seeking a second opinion on the crowns? Just a phone call perhaps - don't want to lose what might be a good dentist either hard to come by these days and certainly good to look after health first.

I am sure there is a health board too that might be worth checking out.

gilligansyle

Definitely a spending diary will help, and by that write down everything you spend, even 10p on sweets for the kids.

It does look as if you have a decent amount left each month to throw at debts. If this is really the case you can snowball them, throw money at the highest interest one, and then when that's paid, start on another one. You can do this, and at least you are recognising that somewhere you are overspending.

Don't fret about the remortgage thing. Everyone here has done it. All the advice says 'don't put unsecured debt on your secured' but we all fall for it, promise to cut up the cards and not increase the debt.

If you can put a stop to this now, you will be able to be debt free by the beginning of next year, and the money you have been using to pay debts, can then be used to overpay on the mortgage.

scrooge2008

Hi,

Might be worth seeing if you can switch to a dentist that takes NHS patients. They are still about in Scotland, you may just have to travel a bit. We have just switched to NHS dentist in a neighbouring town, after we spent £440.00 in one month for a crown for my husband and a checkup and clean for two people.