Kirstle99's Debt Free Diary

kirstle99

Well, am going through a bit of a bad month this month. Its all gone a bit wrong....usually I am so on top of stuf I know where every penny is going, as mentioned above we have both beed off sick so our income has dropped below our outcome but I think i've managed to recify this by selling stuff on ebay, got some cash coming from a ashback site, and ofc the extra pay OH got at the end of last month.
I'm just a bit concerned for myself.....since we stepped into a DMP I have been so on top of things, checking the bank account online every day etc. But it's been getting where I have not been checking as often, I seem to be losing my motivation and its scaring me.
Also, weekly nursery fees (for 3 full days!) have gone up from £84 to £90 a week, i know I should contact tax credits about this but I keep forgetting, and its had an effect on my (very tight) buget plannet for the month too.... and extra £30 to find.
Plus with us being ill i've had to fork out £15 in prescriptions that I dodn't expect....might be work putting aside £10 a month just in case it happens again, and if the kitty gets big could use it as a treat maybe.

Finding things hard at the oment, i guess its with wonter coming too and I (along with 99.9% of the UK population i'm sure) am worried about heating the house over winter.

kirstle99

Well here is my SOA, as you can see I have to run a very tight ship.

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 368
Partners monthly income after tax....... 850
Benefits................................ 542
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 1760

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 0
Secured loan repayments................. 0
Rent.................................... 450
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 110
Electricity............................. 60
Gas..................................... 30
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 34
Telephone (land line)................... 20
Mobile phone............................ 55
TV Licence.............................. 12
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 15
Internet Services....................... 15
Groceries etc. ......................... 200
Clothing................................ 0
Petrol/diesel........................... 35
Road tax................................ 5
Car Insurance........................... 38
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 10
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 365.6
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 0
Contents insurance...................... 15
Life assurance ......................... 0
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 0
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 0
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Car Finance ............................ 187.74
Total monthly expenses.................. 1657.34

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

No Secured Debt

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly
Barclaycard....................376.87....5.0
Barclaycard....................2110.82...9.06
Barclays Overdraft.............1502......8.24
EGG............................1953.95...11.19
Allied Credit (AMEX)...........4838.92...26.54
Aqua...........................2649.38...14.53
Aqua...........................242.5.....1.33
Alliance & Leicester...........759.05....4.16
Alliance & Leicester...........317.74....1.74
Black Horse....................2223.65...12.2
Capital One....................1421.24...7.8

** Mobile bills are so high because its for 2 mobile phones on contract that cannot be changed.
** No APR's on credit cards as we are with Payplan; payments listed are what is paid to each creditor each month.

kirstle99

Well, today marks a big change. I have secured a full time place for our son @ nursery. This means I can go back to working full time, 35 hours per week. I don't know why but I am truly happy about this decision. I feel like I will be making more of a contribution to the finances and taking pressure off my partner.
Once all the tax credits calculations have gone through and I get the new nursery bill I am hoping there will be a slight increase to our disposable income, meaning we can pay off our debts a bit faster. Fingers crossed, ill post as soon as I find out.

kirstle99

Oh i'm all over the place this week! Because I start work full time next week, I have to wait and see how this will affect the tax credits award me & my partner get. So I don't know where i'm up to! My monthly chart of ins and outs has gone right out the window!
After over 12 months of really watching the pennies this is killing me!

kirstle99

Wow, finally I am organised with tax credits. After I have worked out all the finances and covered bills properly again, I think we should be able to manage an extra £100 / month on the DMP payments, which really is great news!
I will be about 3 weeks before we can do this though as we have a few 'extras' to take care of first (new tyres on car, new clothes for baby).

woohoooo!!

tealady

You mobile bill seems huge, I would ring whoever you have a contract with and try to negotiate a better deal.
Have you checked to see if you are with the cheapest supplier for gas and electricity?
When your car insurance is due go via a few comparison websites then a cash back site to make sure you are getting the best deal.

kirstle99

Hey Tealady thanks for the replies. Mobile bill looks big because its for 2 contracts, both me & my partner's. We will be looking at going to PAYG once they run out but it's not an option until October 2009. But I will give them a call & see if we can get a few pounds off the bill as we do have 2 contracts with them, thanks for the idea.
The gas & electricity bill is a nightmare if i'm honest. We had a letter through the door the week after all the suppliers announed price hikes, saying our DD was going to rise from £65 per month to £110 per month, well I managed to get it down to £90 per month (this is for both gas & electric btw). What happened is, apparantly, their computer system reviews everyone's accounts each year and because our account had been allowed to go into the red as we weren't paying enough, now we have to pay more to cover the defecit, the price hikes and also our bill, so not much I can do there either.
But, I will look and see if I can get a better deal as I am not too happy with the customer service anyway.
Car insurance is not too bad either, its £38 / month but its fully comp and I get loads of extras on my breakdown cover and on my policy that I wouldn't get with another company for the same price.

Thanks very much for your input though its given me some more ways to try & save money

:-)

kirstle99

Well, interesting news for me last week! I delved deep into my gas & electricity prices because last week I had yet another letter from EON telling me they were going to increase my DD again. I had enough so with us just having been issued with the quarterly bill we paid the £50 still outstanding so we could 'start again' with the monthly DD plan.
Then I came accross the utilities section on this forum and decided to investigate into switching.
Well, I have now applied to switch to scottish power and the results are amazing. The elctricity prices with Scottish power are almost half the price of EON! How do these companies get away with this!
Scottish power have quoted us £64 / month DD payment which is a heck of a lot less than EON, i know this won't be a truly accurate figure so wil see how it goes till the first quarterly bill then maybe increase the payments.
Yes we will lose clubcard points switching but its well worth it in my eyes! And we are pending £62 cashback for it too, so it's a major moneysaving thing for us.

On a side-note, we had to find £200 this month to buy new PC monitors as the one my OH had was his friend's and he asked for it back, and then mine just conked out one day, but hey ho, i'd rather it happened now whilst we had the extra sitting there.

We have just spent £75 on a de-humidifier for the house; our bedroom has had damp in it for as long as I can remember, and the amount of water this thing has got out of the air is ridiculous so it must be doing something good. As it's too cold to be damp proofing the outside of the house right now we will use this thing over the winter and then sort out the room as cheaply as possible next summer.
We have been getting ill a lot recently so we think the damp may be a facor in it, and as I want to eventually save up and buy a decent chest of drawers I would like the room to be damp free so we dont get mould growing on it like we do with this furniture.

On a good note I have done all our xmas shopping bar OH's mum & dad who will be getting £20 in a card i think. Have got Tesco savings stamps book to cover the xmas dinner (only me, OH, & DD this year).

So it's been a mixed old time for me these past few weeks!

kirstle99

Well, on a high note, I have just looked at our debt balance and after Feb payment we will be below 18k of debt! Woohooo!
On a low note, my brother is moving out next month so we will need to find an extra £100 in rent, but I think with a bit of overtime it's do-able.
I have found out my mobile contract can be cancelled in July, which it will be, and I will be goin PAYG as I hardly use my phone nowadays.

kirstle99

Hi All

Firstly, I thought about starting a new diary but I decided to keep posting on this one to remind me how far i've come.

Im saying 'I' because things have changed since I last posted. In September 2013 my husband left and I began life as a single mum of my 2 boys. They are now 7 and 3. Youngest is due to start school this September, so i'll be waving goodbye to full time nursery fees (yay).

I now have 2 jobs. So my working week is as follows:

Monday: 8:15-3 (Job 1)
Tuesday: 8:30-5 (Job 2)
Wednesday: 8:30-12:15 (Job 2)
Thursday: 8:15-3 (Job 1)
Friday: 8:30-5 (Job 2)

This totals up to 30 hours a week. I also managed to source a wonderful childminder in November 2014 for DS1. She currently does pick ups for me on Tuesday & Friday, and covers Job 2 days in the holidays. She is also going to take DS2 in September when he starts school. This is a massive weight off my mind because it was getting hard worrying week to week what I was going to do with DS1 after school. Currently my childcare is around £147 per week, in September it will drop to about £55 per week for the pair of them. I'm also grateful the childminder is happy for me to pay a flat weekly rate so I don't have to worry about increased costs in the holidays. She's happy because her income is steady, i'm happy because my outgoings are steady!

Since becoming a single mum i've really sorted out my finances. At the time of splitting up, XDH & I owed £3k to his parents (they helped us out clearing all of our debts so we left the DMP in 2012) and we also owed my mum £3k for a new boiler we had put in. So we agreed he'd sort his parents out and i'd sort my mum out. He got the good end of the deal really as the money I owe my mum is on a stupidly high rate loan (I pay roughly £65 per month to it and £55 is in interest! :eek:)

Anyway, my mum's husband retired last month. He is due a lump sum and has said he will pay off the loan for the boiler and I just have to keep paying what I was to clear off the balance. This is brilliant, as it's no more interest! I have been saving over the last 12 months, putting money away from ebay, surveys, extra money I would have usually squandered on takeaways and have managed to save £1k, so when he pays it off I will immediately give him this and will only owe £2k.

I also managed to successfully claim housing benefit even though I rent from my mum. Everything has always been in place since I started renting from her, so the whole process was quite good. So I now get £115 per 2 weeks I wasn't getting before which is brilliant.

So, I enter 2015 with the £3k boiler debt which I am going to try and get to £1k by the end of the year.

I also booked a holiday for me and the boys in April. The flights have already been paid for and all we need is spending money (going for 4 nights to visit friends in Europe and staying with them) .

I start my last OU module tomorrow :eek: i'm excited but nervous too. I failed the last module by a tiny amount so I have to re-take that exam in April. I got full funding for it all because i'm on transitional arrangements so it's definitely worth finishing

I have an excel sheet with all my incoming and outgoings on. It can get confusing because of all the different things I get paid in and when, but I have never been short since going it alone, and I always manage to save my regular stuff each month. This is:

£20 Misc
£15 Clothes
£30 Xmas
£10 Birthday
£10 Car Tax
£10 MOT

I'm considering upping the MOT fund to £20 or £30 a month because the car is coming up to 9 years old and will probably need more work as the years go on. I need to up the car tax as it's roughly £140 for the year so maybe put that up to £15 a month.

Incoming is the following:

Job 1: £150 per fortnight (x 2 for monthly budget)
Job 2: £550 per month
Tax Credit: £277 per week (x 4 for monthly budget)
Child Benefit: £136 per 4 weeks
Housing Benefit: £115 per fortnight (x 2 for monthly budget)
Child Maintenance: £200 per 4 weeks

This gives me £2524 for an average month incoming. My outgoings are per month:

Petrol £70
Windows £10 (it's £6.50 ever 3 weeks so I save the change for the next time)
Rent £520
TV £12.12
Council Tax £109 (paying off arrears so this should go down to about £90 in April. It's over 10 months)
Water £40
Mobile £17
Contents Insurance £16
Car Insurance £50 (this includes breakdown cover and is fully comp)
Swimming £16.80 (DS1)
Virgin £36 (this is for phone and broadband and line rental)
Regular savings £95 (breakdown mentioned above)
DS1 savings £10
DS2 savings £10
Gas/Electricity £96 (dual fuel, I supply meter readings every month to keep on track)
Groceries £200
Nursery £502.96 (for 4 weeks)
Childminder £75.60 (for 4 weeks)
Loan (mum) £65

Incoming: £2524
Outgoing: £1951.48

This leaves me with roughly £572.52 after bills. I have been using most of this recently to get stuff for Christmas and treat myself a bit. I also spent £400 in the boxing day sales, but my word I got so much and won't need to buy DS1 any clothes for 4 years! All i'll need to buy is school uniform and shoes out of my clothing budget. I keep all of his clothes for DS2 so that saves me a small fortune too.

I am already quite savvy with money, but I think a spending diary might be a good idea for me, because it will show me that these little spends here and there can add up a fortune! I've been off for Christmas and New Year, and have been to the takeaway far too many times!

I've picked up a cheap 2015 diary to record my spends in. I never spend more than I have, but I really want to focus on saving more this year to get rid of this pesky £3k debt.

My last default drops off my credit file at the end of January this has been a long time coming, I basically had all the debt in my name due to XDH having bad credit rating, so now, his is probably wonderful and mine is trashed! I've also written to one of my old creditors asking them to amend some AP markers as these would stay on my file for another 4 years.

So, new year, new start! I'm going to:

1) Quit smoking (this is where most of my 'spare' cash is going. It's a shameful £35 a week (that's £140 a month :eek:) on a nasty habit. I'm on my last packet now and won't be buying any more.

2) Save more and use a spending diary to help me

3) Do my best with my OU studies

4) Keep exercising (i've been doing a 30 minute exercise DVD since the start of December. I can definitely notice a difference. I'm going to keep up with it 3 times per week, and do it in my study breaks in the evening to let off some steam

5) Use my weekends with the kids to do something each day. Even just taking them out to practice on their bikes!

There could be a lot more but I won't carry on for now. I posted some stuff on Ebay today and after all my postage and fees have come off i've made £27. I'm going to leave it in my Paypal account for now because i've got more stuff listed but once I have a final total i'll move it to my ISA. I will also do the same with any survey money I get.

Anyway, enough for now, here's to a productive 2015!!!!

:T:j:T:j