Where Do I Begin?

LizD_2

Hi

I would like to be debt-free! Here is my SOA (figures approx)

Income

£940.00 salary (take home)
£80 betterware (average)
total - £1020.00

Outgoings
(live with other half, not contributing to mortgage at the mo)
£70.00 (bills)
50.00 (petrol)
30.00 (Insurance and tax)
28.00 (Contact lenses (includes 8 for Cl checks,eye test and emergency care)
25.00 (mobile phone)
100.00 (food)
total - 273.00

Debts
500.00 loan (finishes Oct 06) 55.00 a month 8%
7500.00 loan 127.00 a month 7%
400.00 HP 27.00 a month - 14%
3000.00 deferred Career loan (80.00 starts Aug 06) 5% (approx)
800.00 CC 1 paying 40.00 a month 19%
1400.00 CC 2 paying 50.00 a month 12.9%
750.00 CC 3 paying 30.00 a month 14%

total debt- 14350.00 (gulp)
repayments - 329.00 (minus career loan)

i also need to start saving for my wedding next April. Arghh!

tyllwyd

As you've shown it, your total outgoings plus debt repayments are £602. Where does the rest of your money go? (I can see that you haven't shown anything for car insurance/tax etc)

MrsTinks

Contact lenses... £28? I'm sure you can get them cheaper Martin has an article somewhere I am sure! (If you have a costco membership then it's worth noting that 2 weekly lenses for 6 months has just cost me £35... eye test and contact fitting £10 inclusive of aftercare).

As for the debts then do you have PPI on any of it? I'd advice cancelling if you do and taking it out independantly (cut over £2000 of my loan by moving that...).
Any chance of you listing the %apr on each debt?

As far as I can see you have over £400 spare each month from your descriptions? Are you throwing this at any particular debt at the moment?

dinkylou

Hi Liz,

welcome to MSE.

You have made a good start here but you need to post everything that your money goes on (car insurance/other insurance/which bills and how much) and also all of your APR's on your loans and cards. That way we can advise you better on which debts to fight first.

Also, I noticed that you are paying £28 per month on contacts. This is way too high.

You can get them online much cheaper and same lenses. Try https://www.visiondirect.co.uk then just go to opticians for check ups.

LizD_2

Tine - don't have PPI on these, even before MSE I could see it was a rip-off!
Dinkylou - will get back with Apr (at work at the mo). Is it easy to get CLs on the web? A person I worked with found the online places wanted a copy of her prescription for those specific lenses and her opticians wouldn't give her one.

MrsTinks

the opticians should give her a copy of her prescription after all this is what she paid for when she had it done Unless it's free as part of a deal then I guess they could refuse to give it?
Eye tests are usually about £10 and yes you should send that off to the suppliers and make sure you still get your aftercheck etc. Tesco do contact lenses too...

T

LizD_2

please have look, have added APR

Chortle_2

You need to clear some of those high APR's!

What is your credit rating like? Any chance you could get them onto 0% cards, or low life of balance cards?

Put your debts into this snowball calculator to decide which ones are your priority, and how long it will take you!

tyllwyd

You haven't said what kind of a do you are planning for your wedding next April? How much are you expecting to contibute to the wedding/honeymoon? Because if you are serious about clearing a reasonable amount of a debt of £14K in the next year, the last thing you want to do is to immediately run up more on top, and weddings just run away with money. If the debt is a priority, would you consider delaying the wedding for another year or two, or making it a tiny registry office ceremony?

nic82

Tesco contact lenses are good - the cheapest that I've found. Also, if your opticians won't give you your prescription (although, like someone else said, they are actually obliged to), then Tesco will ring them up for you. You just have to sign a form and send it to Tesco saying that you give them permission to contact your optician.

shazzer22

Hello, Welcome to MSE.

Contact lenses seem to be very expensive as the others have already mentioned, you could just phone them up, if you feel you can't change, and ask them for a better deal. I did this and saved £5 per month just by saying I was gonna go elsewhere.

Of the £70 of bills, what is this for? Could you find some savings? If you list the different utilities and amounts I'm sure that we could tell you where you might be overpaying on some of these.

How much do you think you will be spending on the wedding and is anyone else helping out?