Rescynic's DFW diary

rescynic

Hi all,

new to this site so be gentle woke up this morning after the weekend before and opened the mail usual lot: debt letter, debt letter, debt letter oh how nice pre approved credit card (straight into the bin) checked the bank oh !!!!!! moment £50 to last 2 weeks till payday... and the bank of mum and dad's been closed for a few months now.

Anyways sorry back to the point, was chatting to a mate of mine who's in a similar situation to mine and sugegsted a DMP, been on google all afternoon getting a few laughs with the "They want how much ontop" and finally came across the CCCS site, "oh its free" quick google reviews of cccs yadda yadda, seems good so sat down with a coffee and filled in the step 1, and saved it to submit once i have a scan through the records to check amounts and original payments

So here we are Step 1 on the road to getting myself sorted out... :j more to come, for the moment just wanted to stop by and say hi, saw a few other similar threads, and it seems made a good choice with CCCS.

few quick questions:

From other peoples experience do i have to watch out for anything with them?

Any advise in general is always appreciated.

Res

dancingfairy

Nope don't think there is anything to watch out for there. They are generally considered to be the good guys and are recommended as they are free and impartial. Wa hey.

Oops forgot to say hi and welcome. :hello
The only thing I have heard people on a dmp say is budget,budget,budget, you need to have an allowance for everything in your budget as you will not be able to get any extra credit so leave room and then some.

Best bet is to post an SOA and we can have a perusal before you send it off to CCCS online thingy. We may be able to suggest some painfree (and maybe also some painful) cutbacks - always helps to have a fresh pair of eyes. You may find you don't need to do a dmp with a few cutbacks here and there.

Anyway
Look forward to reading more.
df x

rescynic

Ok heres a rough and dirty SOA feels kinda weird to be sharing this, have a scan and see what people think will be modding this through the week once i start to get a clearer picture of exact debt status company names, etc

My salary - £1,472.00

Total - £1,472.00

Monthly Outgoings:

Mortgage/Rent - £435
Council Tax - £103
Electric - £20 (set up a standing order for this)
TV License - Havent set anything up yet (new flat)
Virgin £45
Mobile Phone - £10-30 (PAYG)
Food - never really thought about how much food i eat in a month, so atm cant post a number here (any suggestions from people or is this something to seriously give thought to before my DMP?
Car Insurance - payed annually £320
Road tax: also paid annual £185
Petrol - £200
Cigarettes (we all have our bad habits, but i am getting alot better now am down from 20 a day to somewhere around the 10 mark) £99.75

Total: £887.75

Right the debt bit (i havent got quite exact numbers the top 2 i can chime off the top of my ehad as i pay them monthly at present, the rest are kinda festering in the background just now so i need to do a ring round this next few days and confirm numbers and take ownership of the debts, cant sort it out if i wont face up to it.

Bank of Scotland (now with EOS Solutions) £12,099 (paying £210 a month for this atm)
Alex M Adamson (these are our local friendly council tax arrears people: £2,450 (paying £185 per month atm)
Bank of scotland (not sure who this debt is with now) £1800 (not paying towards at present)
Scottish power (again not sure who has this debt atm £800 (not paying towards at present)
BT (common theme here not sure who has this debt just now) £400 (not paying towards at present.

Total debts: 17,549

Always buried the head in the sand for debts and money in general, but now i see that number in words eeek its a big number nearly a years salary there...

Spent today:

£9.96 pint of milk, cigarettes and a packet of carrot cakes.

rescynic

right so been a few days on this and so far havent done a lot about it got a call from the people who own my Scottish power debt yesterday who confirmed O/S is 808.29 so thats a confirmed number, they made me laugh when they said to contact Scottish power and have the debt merged into my new flats current bill???!!!! surely that would put me back to a huuuge bill -> power cards -> moar debt yadda yadda...

Alex M Adamson havent answered the phone to me (makes a change used to be the other way around)

Spent this week:
Tuesday: MY very first NSD :T
Wednesday: £21.99 (tenenrs worth of fuel, cigarettes and lunch & coffee at work (must look into getting a wee jar of cofee and keeping it at my desk)
Thursday: £6.75 so far on coffee and lunch

beanielou

Well done on your first NSD.

hampsterpoo

Hi recynic , just came across this thread as I was searching (for eos solutions) and have read your rough SOA.

Whats the £45 Virgin actually for , tv phone and broadband ?

your car insurance seems high , try looking at the comparison section on the mainpage that martins done I'm sure you can get it down.

You need to post a fuller SOA on here for more knowlegdeable DFWs to look at including things like haircuts, birthdays, emergency fund , dentist.

Oh and by my reckoning your spending nearly £34 a week on lunch and coffee at work 5x£6.75=£33.75 , thats close to £1,800 a year. Keeping a spend diary might be an idea, to see where its all going.

Keep it up with the NSD's

Verbatim

Hi and welcome rescynic,

Well done on facing up to it all before it gets out of control.

I think the biggie for many of us is realizing we've been spending more than we have coming in and that it's necessary to decide what we want to prioritize and what we can bear to let go of.

From your few posts so far it seems that you're spending a LOT on food as and when you need it. The first tip would be to take your lunch (yes and coffee!) to work. Decide how much you need for a week's food and work out what your 7 breakfasts, 7 packed lunches and 7 dinners will be and buy the food in advance. make a shopping list and stick to it. Most of us have found our greatest savings by getting better organized in shopping.

Here endeth today's lesson.

Good luck!

V