That feeling again

mrcow

andys15 wrote: »

gran will be paid every penny back by Mar as agreed. It is a rob peter to pay paul scenario, and without her help we could have not got the house. I will have to get a loan to pay her. which I would then pay back in 2 years.

I wasn't trying to imply that you aren't 100% going to pay your Gran back. It's just that you can't simply keep borrowing more and more money. If you want £1600 curtains, then save up and buy them. Companies only offer interest free credit to try and help hide the fact that what they are selling is completely overpriced in the first place.

Your Dad bailed you out last time. You must have learned some lessons (or you wouldn't be posting here today) yet you've already spent the best part of £4000 on soft furnishings that you can't afford The fact that you are having to rely on "buy now pay later" should be like a 150 decibel wake up call to you both considering what you've already been through.

It has to stop and if your wife doesn't get that, then I don't know what you can do.

andys15

mrcow wrote: »

I wasn't trying to imply that you aren't 100% going to pay your Gran back. It's just that you can't simply keep borrowing more and more money. If you want £1600 curtains, then save up and buy them. Companies only offer interest free credit to try and help hide the fact that what they are selling is completely overpriced in the first place.

Your Dad bailed you out last time. You must have learned some lessons (or you wouldn't be posting here today) yet you've already spent the best part of £4000 on soft furnishings that you can't afford The fact that you are having to rely on "buy now pay later" should be like a 150 decibel wake up call to you both considering what you've already been through.

It has to stop and if your wife doesn't get that, then I don't know what you can do.

I completly agree mrcow. Part of my posting was to show this my misses when she gets back.
My one and only comment which goes in her favour. Believe it or not we are doing without on a lot of things. We used to have it all, nice house, no debt, we only go a credit card when i quit my first job, to join my current job. My wife left everything to come with me(she had a good job too at the time). For the last 4 years we have had nothing, we had to sell the house(my back up plan if things went wrong with my new job), as the tennant stop paying for 6months, so during that 6 months trying to sell it, we were paying mortgage and rent. Also we are throwing a lot of money at the debt. My dad said give him back £200 a month, but it was me who wanted to do a £1000. The blinds are expensive, but it was me who decided to buy now pay later. I ould have paid it at once, but instead decided to go on holiday as we have not been for 7 years. but by getting the blinds i have sacraficed elsewhere.

Dithering_Dad

andys15 wrote: »

cheers.

how do you see it ending?

With reposession and bankruptcy to be honest. Hopefully you will at least have paid back what you owe your family before it happens.

andys15

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

With reposession and bankruptcy to be honest. Hopefully you will at least have paid back what you owe your family before it happens.

well i think its a while off before I start panicking about that. I didn't just buy the house at the full asking price. I am not just paying of the interest. I have always paid of my debts. Believe it or not I am careful with money and have found myself in this postion through trying to get a job I enjoy doing, as opposed to dreading getting up every morning, but having a safe home life.

lucielle

You both need to have you LBM together and sit down and go through everything and make a realistic budget and stick to it. As you can see from my sig we are in a pickle but slowly climbing out of it. My grocery budget as quoted before is for everything and I do find it difficult. Hope things work out.
L

andys15

Yes youre right. It is very hard when you have worked for years and years and feel you have never anything to show for it. Soft furnishing aside, we have really worked hard at our debt. The only credit card we use is paid off everymonth, except for this month(have 300 outstanding which will be paid tomorrow on pay day, it will cost us £8 in interest). Our virgin credit card is interest free till nov 09 and is what is left of about £19000 we had on credit cards this is debt we have paid off since I was promoted. As I have said the huge amount I owe my Dad/Gran was for a 10% deposit for a house as well. Dithering DAD may say that is already been swallowed up my the house price drops we are witnessing.
My only gripe is that being £300 shy this month and £40 overdrawn, means I am already £340 down for OCT(i see this as the start of a vicious circle). Reading the advice, I will make that back now, by saving on groceries. We are both working really hard on recognizing how you get in debt in the first place. I know its not good blowing money on blinds etc, but I see that differently to being £340 down on the month. The soft furnishing we bought were budgeted for, they are what I see as managable debt. I can see nothing wrong with that. I just need to see how I can budget better, so I dont have months where i end up in the red, through blowing money ie 600 on groceries.

carrottopsuk

The Old Style board is good for ideas on how to reduce your grocery costs. eg by making a menu plan & sticking to your shopping lists. They have some good recipes if you can cook from scratch.

They also have threads about alternative cleaning products.

We cook from scratch more & I must say the food does taste nicer and you know what has gone in it. A few home made Vegetarian meals a week may also help cut down the cost significantly. Meat is very expensive at the moment.

All the best & good luck.

Billy_two_speakers

Just read this thread and your answers to questions asked, and my gut feeling is.... (sorry)

your not trying the only thing I think you have done right is buy a house regardless of house prices and rents you need a roof over your heads and if it goes down in the next 2 years 30% I am sure (just) that it will go up over 10 but regardless of that a house is a home

you need to give yourself a good slapping and be hard on your selves

but without beating yourselves up do cut backs across the board and things should be ok, you have less to do than many on half what you earn... and another reason for doing it now is YOU have the income times change and this income could go down then what would you do ?


sorry if i sound harsh but i think you could do better and if my rant makes you light bulb glow a little brighter all the better

gpkwells

As no one truly knows whats around the corner you cannot say a debt is seen or classed as manageable.

The one and only circumstance where a debt can be classed as manageable is if you have enough liquid assests to clear it instantly.

Tough but true.

mrcow

andys15 wrote: »

I just need to see how I can budget better, so I dont have months where i end up in the red, through blowing money ie 600 on groceries.

I guess it depends on how anal you'd like to be lol

I personally like being quite anal about money as it means that I'm being a little cleverer about where it is all going. Other times I like not to have to bother too much as it can get you down if you are picking over every penny. So I guess we all need balance.

Anyway, with regards to grocery budgeting, I am very anal. My local supermarket is ASDA and I always make sure that I do a detailed shopping list on moneysupermarket.com and stick to it. The benefit of this is that I get to see all the offers before I hit the shops (and many of these offers are not displayed on the shelf but are live at the tills).

Moneysupermarket.com also compares every product for price and calories on a like for like basis and gives you swap ideas. Picking over products for each buy can save a lot of money.

This may sound a little nuts, but it has more than halved my grocery spend. It also means that my cupboards and fridge are no longer bulging with impulse grocery buys that I didn't realise that I didnt need. I have my weekly spend for the five of us down to £60 per weekand that includes household items, nappies for two of the children and SMA for them both too. (I know that some will say that this is still a lot, but it is a lot less than we were spending before).

I use it as a bit of a challenge, to try and get my shopping to equal exactly the £££s that my shopping list had predicted. It's also quite nice to spend £40 on groceries and for the till receipt to say that you saved £18 on offers today

If you've never tried it, give it a go. It takes a little discipline, but if it will save you £3600 per year off your bottom line spend, it's worth looking into perhaps?