Help!! New Statement of Affairs!

poppy217

Forris, are you with Sky? Can you recommend their broadband and phone service? If I keep my line rental with BT, what am I paying sky for - just the cost of calls? Sorry, just checking I understand.

Thanks

Naomim

Forris wrote: »

One more thought - is the Sky insurance actually worth it? I've yet to encounter a Sky problem that couldn't be solved with a quick search on Google.

In my opinion, YES! I also pay £8.99 a month for Sky insurance and have well had my moneys worth :mad: Sky box is always packing up.

Thats very funny, you sound just like me, that is what im saying to him all the time, wondering what he needs to spend that on each day but he is very greedy! I have told him people are agreeing with me about his controversial £6 a day and he's getting scared!!!

Don't just tell him, print this off or show him this thread. Are you sure it's 10 every other day? £6 suggests 20 a day to me.

Naomi x

Forris

poppy217 wrote: »

Forris, are you with Sky? Can you recommend their broadband and phone service? If I keep my line rental with BT, what am I paying sky for - just the cost of calls? Sorry, just checking I understand.

Thanks

Yep! I've had no problems at all with them. I used to have Max BB (16mb) but downgraded a while ago to 8mb and I get around 6.5mb, so I'm pretty happy with that.

The reason to keep the line rental with BT is that, in my opinion, it makes things easier if you have line problems as, from what I have read, BT seem to be better at sorting these out than a third party. You pay Sky for the calls only, either free evening & weekend or free anytime depending on which package you choose.

Naomim

If you keep the line rental with BT it's also easier to swap providers for other things. Being with Talk Talk is fine for me but when I enquired to Sky as I was thinking of getting the whole package I couldn't as I don't have a BT line and don't plan on going back to them.

Naomi x

firesidemaid

re. the accidental death benefit/insurance - would this not be covered by the life insurance?

if he smokes, does his life insurance policy allow for this?

you could tell your OH that every extra pound spent on anything unneccessary is keeping/making you a pound in debt - including the £6 a day!

copperjar

Hi Poppy. I'm relatively new to all this, but have found in the last 2 months I've been able to cut down dramatically my monthly outgoings without even noticing a difference to my life. Have also joined a cashback site, and as I was new, made quite a bit just swapping providers of insurance and the like - which saved me in my monthly DDs and also gave me quite a nice amount of cashback too - which has paid off one credit card already (allbeit the small one!)

You ask yourself is it worth the hassle to save £5 month on this and that, but it all adds up.

First of all your mobile. Sticking with o2, you can get a better online deal pay monthly than you're curently getting PAYG. If you and your hubby both purchase a new deal (you'll get what you're getting now for a max of £20 per month) your husband can also get £35 cashback and you can combine yours with broadband for an extra £7.38 per month - with another £60 cashback for that. I was sceptical about cashback sites when I started, but my money has just come through. So literally taking 5 minutes, you'll have £95 cashback plus will save yourself at least £20 per month on mobile rental costs and £7.50 on your broadband.

That's £27.50 saved for one easy swap which can go towards one of your debts.

Buildings and contects insurance isn't bad - you'll probably get about the same with another provider plus some cashback. I changed to co-op and got £50 cashback. Add that to the £95 from o2 and you've already made £145 without doing anything!

Sky will give you free evening and weekend landline calls if you ask to go with their service - and so long as you don't use your phone during the day, there's another £25 per month saving (still have to pay them line rental). A quick call to Sky tomorrow and it'll be sorted. Monthly savings now up to £52.50.

Life assurance is a rip off if your husband has work benefits, if not go down to basic cover for the life of your mortgage for a couple of years. I've just reduced my life assurance from £29 to £8.50 and actually have better cover than before. I'm with Norwich Union now - they have some good deals.

Sorry to go into so much detail. But just wanted to show you how easy it is to get better deals if you're just starting out. Add some cashback to that, and its amazing how much progress you can make in such a short length of time. Even if you just ring Sky tomorrow and change your o2 deal online (via a cashback site) you'll be able to pay off your Virgin card and half the JD Williams debt. And it will literally take minutes.

Fire_Fox

poppy217 wrote: »

As for the lunch money, this is a big issue is our house and I wish I could do away with it altogether. It is not for my children, it is for my husband who takes sandwiches and 3 cans of coke with him to work each day but says he also needs to take £6 a day for coffee and snacks! I strongly dissaprove of this as I dont have this luxury and neither do our children but he insists. This used to be £10 so I have made some improvement but not enough!

Redo the Statement of Affairs, putting in all of your essentials, including a modest sum for gifts and an allowance for car repairs. They have to be paid for so they MUST be budgeted for. You will then end up with an even bigger shortfall.

This is the point to sit down with your husband and calmly as you can state that the figures do not add up so you think you should both agree priorities. Individually write a list of each item in your own order of importance, then allocate the correct sum to each item starting at the top. Whatever is left unpaid at the bottom of the list you must get rid of completely: no ifs and no buts. Hopefully your husband will see, without you saying a word, that he must give up his £6 a day.

I also found it helpful to calculate the yearly sum and see if I can still justify something - your sky/ broadband/ TV is costing £1300, and his treats are costing £1500 a year. That's £2800 in total, equivalent to a full month of extra salary per year! :eek:

A final question. Have you cut up these all your credit and store cards so that you are not tempted to use them?

Mrs_Ryan

A word of warning re Sky broadband etc - if you are outside of their exchange area then you will not be eligible for the cheap broadband - we pay a whopping 17 quid a month for ours!!! Check with them first. If they say you are only eligible for Connect dont go with them!!!!!!

Our Sky bill this month was £100!!!!!!!!!! (phone, net and TV) but the service is excellent - the billing is very clear, and the net and phone service are good too.

rupe34

Hi - firstly well done on posting!:T

I am NO expert on this stuff, and normally wouldn't stick my two pennuth in, BUT you could def cut your life insurance a bit. We have joint life insurance for £250000 and its at the expensive end of the range at £39 a month. (thats my fault, when we took it out I was massive heh heh :rotfl: ). Like you, we wanted to make sure the house was paid and something left for the children if it came to it. Go onto a comparison website and see what it comes up with (and remember cashback websites). Thats what I'll be doing this week - as I am now not so massive!!

Other thought - your son's dietary requirements - any chance you could get some of his food on prescription? I know it depends what the issue is, but it may be worth speaking to your doctor (if you haven't already).