Another day, another SOA...

tyllwyd

Just a small thing ... I noticed your £5 on books and music - that is not a huge amount, but does it mean that you've got some things that you might want to sell? That way you might be able to recycle the money into new books and get this down to £0 for a few months (especially if you can find stuff to read from charity shops, which often have good paperbacks turning up - or libraries, of course).

ms_london

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)



After these items are paid/accounted for, you are left with £496.50, with these you need to:



a) Repay your debts



b) Take into account what you have listed here:



Eats, Drinks and Smokes
£50 Meals out Surely some of this could come out of your £200
£88 Drinking out joint food budget?
£22 Sandwiches at work

Big One Offs (at the moment not saving for these!)
£12.50 Christmas Is this the total amount or 50% of what you need to
£18 Summer Holiday save each month (assuming your partner is paying
£12.50 Birthdays 50% towards it too?)
£18 Other big purchases




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



Clothes
£9 New clothes
£4 Work clothes

Odds and Sods
£17 Union Membership
£15 Haircuts





£8500 Nationwide Personal Loan (6.1% I think) - £125



£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%)



£5400 Family loan to buy a house (interest free forever!)



So, with the above debts, you are only repaying £275 a month, is this correct? You say that £50 is for your “other loan”, is this your student loan? If not, which debt is it, as its not listed above?



What are your goals with sorting out your budget & preparing this SOA? Do you want to repay your debts as soon as possible? Are you trying to save for something?



You need to decide how much of the £496.50 you are going to throw at your debts each month, and how much you need left over to budget for the items you have listed above?



Does your partner contribute towards these debts or are they just yours? From the looks of it (taking into account the APR and balance) you should try and pay more £££ to your Egg Green Card and your £950 overdraft. In terms of reducing your OD each month, all you need to do is to call your bank and ask them to reduce it by £X each month, that way you wont pay off money & then spend it again (if you see what I mean).



You obviously do budget to some degree, so well done for that. But you need to make sure that the money you are saving each month for the “Big One Offs” etc, is being saved for it – so open separate accounts for each items and set up transfers!!



Debt Repayments:
£125 Personal Loan
£100 Credit Cards



£50 Other loan = Student loan??????

RiffRaff

Hi tyllwyd -
Yes, I can almost certainly clear out some old books etc. - I've been using the local library recently so trying to cut down on book / CD spending entirely! Am off work all this week and one of my jobs is to have a clear-out! Is it best to sell books / CDs on Amazon or Ebay do you know?

RR

RiffRaff

Hi Ms_London
Thanks for the tips:

Meals / Drinks out - yes, some of these probably can come out of the joint budget. I was quite surprised to find out we actually had some space left in the joint budget to be a bit flexible about this stuff!

Re: Big One-offs - I've accounted for 50% of cost of the big one-offs as you suggest - but at the moment I've not been saving for these at all - have included as they appear in Martin's budget planner!

Re: Debt payments - the £50 is the interest-free grandparents loan. I forgot to include student loan in my payments as it comes out before my salary - currently paying £86 a month on that.

The debts are nearly all just mine - the £745 HSBC online card is joint (but in my name). I'm going to be using a BT to clear my overdraft, which will bring the interest rate right down.

My one goal is to pay off these debts as quickly as possible! Having bought our house a year ago we have some bits of work that need doing to it - but I don't want to rack up any more debt so I'm aiming to clear these and start saving!

Cheers,

RR

ms_london

RiffRaff wrote:

Hi Ms_London
Thanks for the tips:

Meals / Drinks out - yes, some of these probably can come out of the joint budget. I was quite surprised to find out we actually had some space left in the joint budget to be a bit flexible about this stuff!

Re: Big One-offs - I've accounted for 50% of cost of the big one-offs as you suggest - but at the moment I've not been saving for these at all - have included as they appear in Martin's budget planner!

Re: Debt payments - the £50 is the interest-free grandparents loan. I forgot to include student loan in my payments as it comes out before my salary - currently paying £86 a month on that.

The debts are nearly all just mine - the £745 HSBC online card is joint (but in my name). I'm going to be using a BT to clear my overdraft, which will bring the interest rate right down.

My one goal is to pay off these debts as quickly as possible! Having bought our house a year ago we have some bits of work that need doing to it - but I don't want to rack up any more debt so I'm aiming to clear these and start saving!

Cheers,

RR

I suggest that after the £496.50 you decide what you are going to repay to each creditor each month, take into account your "big one off" savings, and then try to live off whatever is left over.

Perhaps if you could reduce your joint account outgoings - shop around for better telephone/tv/gas/water/elec providers etc - you will have more money each month to play with!!

So long as you budget you will be fine!! Well done for posting though.
xx

RiffRaff

Thanks ms_london.

And everyone - I'm bowled over by the support I've received on here! Will keep you posted about how I get on.

RR

angela110660

Well done for making a good start. Local college hair and beauty salons might be worth a look for your hair cuts as they charge peanuts and have the experts there to supervise the cutting, colouring whatever you are having done. Some catering colleges also do lunch and evening meals at a snip of a high street restaurant so have a look in the phone book.
The library is excellent for books and for cds and videos - ours also lets you use the internet for free. If you want to download music off your own computer, try Shareaza - its free and my son uses it lots and then transfers to cd or stores on the computer to listen to it.
You spend a lot on eating/drinking out and maybe this could be cut back in the short term? Invite people round to eat and it would cost far less than you might suppose without losing your social life.
If you love the cinema, what about getting a month or year ticket for a birthday/Easter present rather than something you do not want eg chocolate!! Less clutter and something far more worthwhile while you try to be more frugal.

ms_london

RiffRaff wrote:

Thanks ms_london.

And everyone - I'm bowled over by the support I've received on here! Will keep you posted about how I get on.

RR

You're welcome. Now, I must get on with some work :0)

tyllwyd

RiffRaff wrote:

Is it best to sell books / CDs on Amazon or Ebay do you know? RR

I'm not sure - I've never sold on e-bay, but I have sold a couple of things on Amazon which was very easy to set up. I'm sure that there are other people here who can tell you more about the pros & cons of Amazon/Ebay. I was a bit surprised to find that on Amazon you have to pay VAT on your sales, which eats into any profit quite a lot.

Another option is greenmetropolis for books - they give you £3 for every book sold, but out of that you have to pay second-class postage, although you can add on a bit of postage for heavier books. I got caught out a couple of times with the postage, so be sure to check before you list anything! But still, I sold several books that were cluttering up my shelves, and used the credit on their site to buy more recent books that I wanted, so I was pleased!

Chell

RiffRaff wrote:

Hi tyllwyd -
Yes, I can almost certainly clear out some old books etc. - I've been using the local library recently so trying to cut down on book / CD spending entirely! Am off work all this week and one of my jobs is to have a clear-out! Is it best to sell books / CDs on Amazon or Ebay do you know?

RR

Try https://www.greenmetropolis.com too. Books sell for £3.75, they give you £3 of which you pay the psotage so you should make just over £2 on paperback books. There are no listing fees and books stay on there till they are sold or until you take them off.

You don't need to photograph the books or enter a description, put in th ISBN and then just select the best descrition of the books condition. Each book takes seconds to list.