Please help where do i start

Sharon_1970_2

Hi All

I am hoping for some help please as I am in a real mess. OH has had he salary cut by one thousand pound a month, no more overtime. I really need to get our spending under control and start paying off our credit cards. He seems to think I should just put all our cash each month on them and then use them for shopping petrol etc but to me this doesn't seem the right way to go about it.

I have never set up a budget nor been any good at saving and I really don't know where to begin with drawing up a plan. I really would like some pointers as in what to do so that I can get it all on paper and show him the figures and where we need to go from here.

All help gratefully appreciated

boopydoo

The best place to start is an SOA

http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Post it up and people can help you out

lucielle

Hi well done for posting. Its pretty scary, but you have taken the first steps. You need to do a SOA (statement of Affairs) with all your incomings and outgoings along with the APRs for any cards you have. Hopefully somebody will be along and post a link as I can't do them.

You can also keep a spending diary and every penny that you spend gets written down and then you can see where you are wasting money. Use cashback sites and quidco for any quotes you need for house ins, car ins etc. Hope this helps, good luck.
L

AverageJoe_4

Sharon_1970 wrote: »

Hi All

I am hoping for some help please as I am in a real mess. OH has had he salary cut by one thousand pound a month, no more overtime. I really need to get our spending under control and start paying off our credit cards. He seems to think I should just put all our cash each month on them and then use them for shopping petrol etc but to me this doesn't seem the right way to go about it.

I have never set up a budget nor been any good at saving and I really don't know where to begin with drawing up a plan. I really would like some pointers as in what to do so that I can get it all on paper and show him the figures and where we need to go from here.

All help gratefully appreciated

I can't help you with budgets other than spend less than you earn. But if you want to find a substitute for the loss of income without earning more, then this means getting rid of what your outgoings total.

There are number of ways to cut down your outgoings, some are good , some are excellent and some are stalling methods.

Tactics Ive used are:

Buy cheaper versions of the same product
Write off credit cards and loans so I aint gotta pay them anymore
Claim back bank charges and PPI to get money back in the bank/pocket
Cancel memberships of gyms etc... if you dont really need or use them

AJ

Nargleblast

At the top of this forum are some "stickies" and one is an SOA calculator - try it and see.

Cutting up credit cards and not using them again may sound a bit drastic but it might be worth doing. You could maybe decide to just leave one credit card account for emergencies and get rid of the rest. Putting all your income into credit card repayments is a bad idea, because sooner or later you find yourself using the card for normal everyday bills, and you end up getting charged more and more interest if you don't pay off all your balance in full every month. You then find your payments into the card accounts goes more on interest rather than the actual debt.

Once you have done your SOA you may see some obvious palces to start cutting back. Check out the Old Style Moneysaving board for further ideas.

Don't get down about it, treat it as a challenge to make your money stretch as far as possible and still have a reasonable standard of living.

churchrat

AverageJoe wrote: »

Write off credit cards and loans so I aint gotta pay them anymore

AJ

what do you mean???