need some help

needtosortit

hi
this is my first post in here - although read forums a lot and great help and advice! I am not sure if this is the right place to post tho?
I seem to be going round and round in circles with my money and i have no one to talk about with it. My OH is not really that interested. We both work and earn a reasonable amount. We live in a nice house, run two cars, and have one young son. But all the time I keep getting further and further o/d each month - it never seems to get any better however hard i try to budget or analyse things. There always seems to be things that need paying - and it gets tighter and tighter each month. This month I went over the o/d twice - and got masses of charges - I phoned the bank and they reveresed all bar one of them. I try to economise on food and suchlike - but then we have family staying etc and the bills go up. I dunno where to even start anymore - i don't seem to be getting anywhere. I know its all my own fault - I am no good at waiting for things (hence i have a credit card bill now for £2K) - i know this is small compared to some people on here - so i feel bad for moaning - but when i cannot afford to get by each month - how can i pay it off. We have some savings - but i can't get rid of them to pay off credit card. currently card is 0% til feb09. Fixed rate ends on mortgage in Nov. prices going up - argh its all getting too much! I cleared my o/d last nov from savings - and now i am back to £1K o/d. so obv we are overspending! any advice gratefully recieved - it all seems a bit overwhelming right now.

CCCS_Sarah

Hello and welcome to the boards :hello: .

First of all you need to put together a budget so you can see all you incomings and outgoing and make a separate list for your debts. This will make it a little easier to see where your money is going and what areas you could cut back. You shouldn’t be cutting back lots on your food though as this is classed as one of your priorities (as long as it’s not too excessive).

You will need to open a bank account at a bank where you have no debts. The reason for this it will help you break the cycle in charges and going into your overdraft.

If from your budget it shows you are unable to meet all your monthly payments, you will need to cancel your non priority direct debits and offer a reduced goodwill gesture payment.

If you need any help completing a budget and need help finding a long term solution, CCCS have a free online debt advice facility called Debt Remedy. This link will take you directly to Debt Remedy - it only takes a couple of minutes to complete.

Sarah

WorkingHardDFW

Hi needtosortit and welcome

The hardest step is facing up to your issues which you've done!:T

My advice is along the lines of CCCS_Sarah is to work out a budget for what you spend each month and include everything.

The second thing which has been invaluable to me is a spending diary. Its helped us ID where we were overspending and either stop the spending (not always possible) or budget for it. Even now eights months on my spending diary is still proving invaluable

In my experience its was spending more than our income over a period of years which got us to the point at which our debt was highest :eek: . Its been spending within our budget which has got us to where we are today and will get us to being DF next year :cool:

Good luck

GeorgeUK

This may help to start you off
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

I also suggest you keep a spending diary so that you can see where any extra money gets spent and see if you can reduce this if possible.

tesuhoha

Its ok to have savings until the 0% runs out, bearing in mind that you have probably already paid a balance transfer fee but once the deal runs out then if the amount of interest you are paying exceeds the interest you are getting on your savings then you are losing money. Even if you get another 0% deal on the amount you owe if the BT fee exceeds the interest on your savings then you would be better paying off the debt with your savings and starting again.