Newbie to the board

Damita

Verbatim wrote: »

You seem very well organized to me. I'd suggest menu planning at least a week in advance and even a month ahead if you can. If you know what you'll be having it's easier to swap meal 16 for meal 30 if unforseen events (eg extra mouths to feed) occur and if you've got more of one thing than another. The idea is to plan nutritious but cheap meals, using up what you've already got in and any leftovers, then write a shopping list for what else is needed for the meals you've decided on and stick to it. Saves unnecessary and impulse buying and helps prevent wasting food.

Sorry if this is too obvious and basic!

Thanks for the advice

Damita

ajaney wrote: »

Only you can decide whether to use your student loan - can you manage without this money or not? Driving lessons, unless you need to drive for work/studies, can be put back but you will need to pay your train fares.

Perhaps you could use your joint savings to pay the Credit card off & then pay a slightly higher amount per week or month back into the savings account out of your loan. You should not make yourself short as this will just mean problems later.

Yeah, I get £1,000 every 3 months for uni, £600 of that goes on the train fare and I want to use some of it to pay for driving lessons as I won't spend £600 per 3 months on petrol to my uni..

Yeah totally agree on making yourself short..

CAFCGirl

Hi Damita,

My advice would be :

Use part of your student loan to pay off your credit card in full.
Therefore saving you the interest which could be something like 19.9% (my DH has same card).
Cancel the card and concentrate on saving and the loan.

Maximise your earning potential of £500 with your part time wage, pay £150 standard repayment on our loan and then put aside £100 (£50 of which is what you would have paid for credit card) in a seperate account to build up a bulk amount to pay your loan off in full. This should take you 23 payments to clear at that rate.

Even on your joint basic salary of £1500, after your bills this would leave you the best part of £500 to pay off the credit card (if you didnt use your student loan), loan and pay into your savings.

Its easily done, but your priority (Im sorry to say) needs to be paying off what is owed before you focus on getting these savings together. I know that saving has more motivation attached than paying off debts does, but within 2 years you could have everything paid off and savings well on track but you just need to be smart about how you use the money you've got... I know pride means you dont want OH to be paying odd debts YOU accrued, but when you get married/make a committment you take the good and the bad together.
I had 5k of debt before I got married and now we're staring at 23k together.. but the important thing is we do it together, the rough with the smooth, which is what marriage is all about xx

Good Luck with it all and keep posting

CAFCGirl

P.S Get your form back to council as soon as possible for discount on tax, and then pay the difference to your savings.
Also have you got your student rail card to help you save money on your train fare?

Too many posts happened whilst I was typing ARGH!

ajaney

Damita wrote: »

Yeah, I get £1,000 every 3 months for uni, £600 of that goes on the train fare and I want to use some of it to pay for driving lessons as I won't spend £600 per 3 months on petrol to my uni..

Yeah totally agree on making yourself short..

Regarding Driving:

When calculating the costs of running a car against train fares, you need to factor in:

Cost of Car (if applicable)
Insurance (Can be high for new drivers £700 + very dependant on car)
MOT & Repairs (MOT's in my area are £45 plus you may need repairs from time to time)
Tax Disc (depends on car from £65 to £200 per year)

So lets say you have insurance of £800 per year, £140 tax & £250 MOT/Repairs (including maintainance) then this is just shy of £100 per month before factoring in any purchase costs/petrol/parking. Plus the cost of learning to drive & your test.

Just something else to bear in mind.

McKneff

you are paying sky and intenet, why arent you with Sky for the telephone calls which are free evenings and weekends then you would only be paying BT the line rental each month £11.50) that a sizeable saving each month. If you ring SKy they will do the change over for you.

Damita

I'm going to look at the cost of learning to drive, I already had about 25-30 hours lessons so hopefully 10 more would pass me, maybe more.

I can get a car for £200, car insurance would be £50 a month as I have no NCB.

The only problem with my savings is that it is all my partners.. I opened the savings account, but he put in all the money, we have another £800 coming from a course he cancelled and hopefully fingers crossed £600 from selling the car..

I am going to bring this up with him tonight and see how he feels about it, he already pays all the bills...apart from food which I pay..

But thank you all for your advice, I am going to keep trying, sell the car, my partner is going to get a second job - something small, cut the council tax and food..

Damita

anniehanlon wrote: »

you are paying sky and intenet, why arent you with the telephone calls which are free evenings and weekends then you would only be paying BT the line rental each month £11.50) that a sizeable saving each month. If you ring SKy they will do the change over for you.

What change the calls to sky instead of bt? How do I go about doing this? I am already an existing sky customer for internet and sky can I do this?

Verbatim

How do you have a ncb if you haven't passed the test yet? Can you have this from being a provisional driver?

McKneff

Damita wrote: »

What change the calls to sky instead of bt? How do I go about doing this? I am already an existing sky customer for internet and sky can I do this?

if you ring sky up just ask them for the sky/internet/skytalk package.
this is the same price, as the internet and skytalk are free. you can also
pay sky your line rental so cutting off bt altogether, this is about £1 cheaper per month than BT. Sky will organise the transfer for you, it may take 4 to 6 weeks but you dont have to do a thing.

It will cost you a local call price to ring sky but once you are a skytalk customer calls to sky are free.

good luck:j
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