confussed, concerned and not sure what to do

bingbong_3

Thats great but still means I have no savings and an old house and it makes me nervous if something goes wrong like my unreliable combi boiler.

What do we do if this happens?

bingbong_3

Also how can I reduce my costs by £700 per month. Can you give me an example of how this can be done?

bingbong_3

Also I have not got £600 expendable income its just £270 per month.

tomstickland

Ah right, well, they don't have to be savings, but money that you can call on if you need it. Do you have an agreed overdraft on your personal account? You could open a Cahoot etc flexible loan and then immediately pay the loan back to them, but retain the £3K or whatever limit on the account, thus giving you money if you need it.

bingbong_3

A flexible loan sounds like a good idea. is cahoot the best for this do we know?

bonnie_2

if you reduce you shopping to £100. and cut out your luxurys of £512 your almost there. you have to see that when your in debt you cant keep overspending or youll just keep borrowing more and more till you cant get out of it.
you havent got any savings at the moment so it dosent make an difference to your situation. there is no point having savings and debt.
once you have paid of your debts then put the same ammount in savings as your not used to having it anyway.

tomstickland

Sorry, I've been blinded by too many numbers. My numbers were based on a simple thought process: 2 incomes of £1500 per month = £3000 per month. Mortgage is £800. Wind your expenses down to £700-800 and you should have around £1500 per month to pay debts. You do the math anyway, you seem to have a good handle on what you're spending. Some brutal cost cutting is the way to go. I think that you will actually feel better if you ditch a load of the costs.

I've had another thought about the need for emergency money. Open a flexble loan, and if you ever need to use it then open a 0% credit card and balance transfer an amount to pay the loan off with. Open an Egg Money card in preparation for this. Egg Money is a credit card that allows balance transfers into a normal current account. This is very useful because it provides a route for moving 0% credit card money into a normal account.
Then you should be able to move the money round 0% credit cards in 6-9 month stints.

tomstickland

bingbong wrote:

A flexible loan sounds like a good idea. is cahoot the best for this do we know?

I don't know. I had a Cahoot flexible loan and it allowed me to pay off as much as I wanted at any time, and when paid off it could still sit there with a £0 balance and a £3K loan limit that could be drawn at any time.
So if you opened one and then paid the full amount back, I beleive that it could sit there with a £3K (for example) loan limit at £0 balance costing you nothing.

Read the loans section on the money saving main website.

Dora_the_Explorer_5

Bonnie, I'm sorry I can't agree that spending £12.50 a head on food is such a good idea. Age Concern recommend that a single pensioner should spend far more than this each week to stay healthy and fit. I'm retired and I certainly wouldn't like to live on £12.50's worth of food a week, my meat, veg and fruit comes to more than that.

Bing Bong, you might be able to cut down on your overall food bill a bit but don't make yourself miserable by eating more cheaply than you need to on your household income, qaulity of life counts for a lot. I agree you should keep your health insurance if you can, I also work with people who make heavy use of the NHS and their experiences are often horrendous. Might be a good idea to cut out your comics, movies and DVD films for a while - try it and see if it feels do-able.
The only other luxury I can see, apart from the Love Film which I also don't understand, is the cost of your mobiles. Are you on the cheapest contract? Have a look at Martin's advice on mobiles. Better than that - why do you need them? If you use them for quick calls about what time you'll be home, switch to payg and txt.
You sound quite positive about the cleaner - what does you OH think? It will save you quite a bit of cash each month and you'll be so busy cleaning you won't have time to watch DVD films perhaps. Good luck, it looks like you have things well in hand and are in a positive frame of mind about it.

jcr16

it may seem harsh giving up your luxuries. but if you only do that for 6 months say and it helps u out surely that is better than continuing as u are and ending up in 6 months time much worse off.

trust me , we have been at the point where we had no luxuries , at the time yes it was hard, but after a couple months we were used to it . and now we are much better off and if we hadn't of gone with out . we would prob been facing bankrupcy.

hth