Another day, another SOA...

RiffRaff

Hello all,

Following a very kind welcome for me last week, it was suggested I post an SOA - think I've got this right, so here goes. I've taken the headings from the Money Diet book. For the sake of honesty I've included everything for last month - I've already made some cut-backs and changes since reading the book and explain these below. Thanks in advance for any help.

Monthly Incomings (after tax): £1457


Monthly Outgoings:


Home:
£600 Joint Account (see below)
£90 Council Tax
£10 Mobile Phone (PAYG)
£9 Home insurance

Transport:
£173 Petrol
£35 Car Insurance (paid annually, just taken out, fairly sure it's the best deal)
£20 Car Maintenance (paid as and when!)
£10 Car Tax (paid 6-monthly)
£10 Train travel
£3.50 RAC Membership (paid annually)

Eats, Drinks and Smokes
£50 Meals out
£88 Drinking out
£22 Sandwiches at work

Fun and Frolics:
£50 Singing lessons (twice a month)
£10 Cinema
£5 Books, music etc.

Big One Offs (at the moment not saving for these!)
£12.50 Christmas
£18 Summer Holiday
£12.50 Birthdays
£18 Other big purchases

Clothes
£9 New clothes
£4 Work clothes

Odds and Sods
£17 Union Membership
£15 Haircuts


Debt Repayments:
£125 Personal Loan
£100 Credit Cards
£50 Other loan

Grand Total: £1566.50 (i.e. more than incomings when you include the Big One Offs...) :eek:


From the Joint Account (I contribute £600 and my partner £450 p.m. - I earn more so it's only fair!)

£579 Mortgage
£200 Groceries (Adding up I'm really surprised it's this much!)
£26 Water
£25 Electricity (British Gas are the supplier)
£25 BT Phone (This is worst case, most months is less)
£15 Life Insurance
£11 Pet insurance (Our cat's an elderly gentleman, so can't do without this)
£22 Broadband (Will be cutting back when contract's up in April, possibly ditching entirely
£11 TV Licence

Grand total: £914

---

Debts:


£8500 Nationwide Personal Loan (6.1% I think)
£5400 Family loan to buy a house (interest free forever!)
£2000 Egg Green Card (£1000 at 12.9%, £1000 at 0% til June)
£950 Overdraft (14.8%)
£750 HSBC Online Card (14.9% - which is a rip off as it started at 9% a year ago!)
£400 Nationwide Credit Card (0% until June 2006)
£100 HSBC Standard Credit Card (14.9%)

Grand total: £18,100

Plus Student loan £10k approx

Plus the mortgage - £125000 between me and OH.

---

Cut backs / Changes I've already made:

No more sandwiches or snacks at work - saving £22 a month!
Strict budgeting of spending money, esp. for drinking and eating out - transferred to an Egg Money card and spent from there to avoid temptation. Trying to limit to £20 a week. Saving £57!
No more books / CDs unless very cheap on Ebay.
Haircuts - back to the barbers, doesn't look as good, but costs £10 instead of £15 - saving £5 a month!

Balance transfers - transferred £1800 to my Nationwide card to cover Overdraft, Online Card and HSBC credit card - now paying 4.9% per month.

Cut backs I'm considering:
Leaving the Union - may experience some guilt as I support the idea of unions - and ours does do a lot of work for people in my sector!
Ditching the broadband - our phone line is broken and it never works properly anyway. (will be claiming a hefty refund soon!)
How to save money on Groceries - will be looking at the OS board!

So, any help with this would be greatly appreciated! Sorry for the marathon post...

RR

lynzpower

this is a marathon post- but perfect for us to help!

Do you need a haircut every month? Im a girl and lucky if I have one every 6 months lol

Are you not paying back any of your SL at the mo then? Only looking at your salary, you should be.... sorry to be the bearer!

New clothes and work clothes- can they be stopped in the interim?

Can the singing lessons be cut, or at least down to one a month? I used to do them, adn when Im debt free its one of the first things I want to reinstate, but until then, £25 an hour is money that cant be replaced....

You havent mentioned life/contents insurance? Are you paying those at the mo?

Lynz
x

RiffRaff

Hi Lynz,

Thanks for the advice - Life Insurance is under the joint account section, Had missed off the Home insurance, but is now included.

I am paying back student loan but didn't count it as it's deducted straight from my pay before it goes into my account (a whopping £86 if memory serves!)

Probably don't *need* a haircut every month, but I'm vain! Will certainly be leaving it longer (in both senses) in future...

As for the singing lessons, my main hobby is singing / playing the guitar - the singing lessons are a great help towards this so I don't want to cut out if I can avoid it, but may have to consider it!

CLAPTON

Looks to me as if you have already done the hard bit - well done.
Although you show as overspending by £100, you have already identified about 85 of savings. If I read it correctly, there seems about 130 of spare in the joint account ..can this be used to reduce debt?
Moving your cc to 0% or low rate cards will reduce how long it takes to pay off the debts but you do really need to put as much as possible to reducing the debts.
Have you tried putting your debts in the snowball calculator? it can be a bit depressing but it does show how increasing the payments really starts to reduce the debts.
Your 'big one offs' come to about £40, maybe there is some scope to reduce this a bit.
You may want to explore use of https://www.call18185.co.uk or https://www.call1899.com for phone calls ...much cheaper than BT although you still pay BT line rental.

Great start

address of the snowball calculator
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1089226742,17582,#planner

RiffRaff

Hi Clapton,

Thanks for your message, I haven't tried the Snowball Calculator yet - that's the next step. Will also check out the other call options -although we don't make many calls on the home phone, every little helps!

It's great to get encouragement and to be told that the things I've done so far are helping!

Will look into reducing the amount going into the joint account too.

RR

black-saturn

I'm not being funny but all of these things you could cut down on:

Home:
£600 Joint Account (see below)
£90 Council Tax
£10 Mobile Phone (PAYG)
£9 Home insurance

Transport:
£173 Petrol
£35 Car Insurance (paid annually, just taken out, fairly sure it's the best deal)
£20 Car Maintenance (paid as and when!)
£10 Car Tax (paid 6-monthly)
£10 Train travel
£3.50 RAC Membership (paid annually)

Do you REALLY need a car?

Eats, Drinks and Smokes
£50 Meals out
£88 Drinking out
£22 Sandwiches at work

Take packed lunches instead of eat out and limit the time you have meals out

Fun and Frolics:
£50 Singing lessons (twice a month)
£10 Cinema
£5 Books, music etc.

Cut out the books and cinema

Big One Offs (at the moment not saving for these!)
£12.50 Christmas
£18 Summer Holiday
£12.50 Birthdays
£18 Other big purchases

Clothes
£9 New clothes
£4 Work clothes

Montymoo_2

With regards to hair cuts, my boyfriend has a pair of clippers. Ok he had to spend around £20 to begin with but he does his hair every month and hasnt been to a barbers for over two years, would this be an option?

black-saturn

I havn't been to the hairdressers for over 3 years. Now I have nice long wavy hair

RiffRaff

Hi,

Thanks for your replies -

Black-saturn - it would be really difficult to get to work without a car - I currently do a 70-mile round trip each day, hence the high petrol spend (my car's actually very fuel efficient!) The alternative would be to get the train but having costed up, it would take over twice as long and actually cost more than traveling by car... any novel ideas for travel welcome (have been searching for a car-share partner at work but no luck as yet!)

As said above I've cut out sandwiches etc. at work, and will be cutting back on meals out, cinema etc.

Re: Haircuts - thanks for the tip - we actually have some clippers somewhere as my girlfriend used to cut my hair for me. She stopped as hated doing it and decided that it looked rubbish when she did it! I've not tried doing it myself - is it easy?

Thanks again to everyone that's responded!

RR

Montymoo_2

RiffRaff wrote:

Hi,

Re: Haircuts - thanks for the tip - we actually have some clippers somewhere as my girlfriend used to cut my hair for me. She stopped as hated doing it and decided that it looked rubbish when she did it! I've not tried doing it myself - is it easy?

Thanks again to everyone that's responded!

RR

I do it for my boyfriend and it really easy or he just stands in front of a mirror and does it himself. I check the back for him just to make sure he hasnt missed a bit. Takes about 5 mins to do and about 5 mins to clear up the hair.

Montymoo_2

black-saturn wrote:

I havn't been to the hairdressers for over 3 years. Now I have nice long wavy hair

Me either, just tie it back