OMG Here's My SOA - GULP! Please Help!

silverelephant

Income
Me --> 760
Hubby Job 1 --> 1004.56 (232 pw x 4.33)
Hubby Job 2 --> 350
Overtime & bonuses normally max 433 but not guaranteed
Total Income --> 2547.56 (including unguaranteed bonus/overtime)


Expenses --> Currently --> Once PPI Cancelled --> APR --> Balance
Mortgage --> £240.08 --> n/a --> --> --> 5.49% --> 37174.31 --> Value at least 65000
RBS Loan Me --> £232.29 --> £193.46 --> 11.50%
RBS Loan Hubby --> £197.95 --> £160.30 --> 7.80%
Double Glazing --> £71.78 --> n/a --> 16.50%
Funding Corp --> £155.12 --> ? -->19.90%
Household Bank --> £301.13 --> ? --> 18.90% --> 21079.10
Household Bank --> £86.88 --> ? --> 31.90% --> 5039.04
Lloyds TSB --> £143.00 --> ? --> ? --> 14.9
Car --> --> £250.09 --> n/a -->13.80% --> Originally 15239.4
Credit Cards --> £303.69 -->n/a -->from 15.9 to 26.9 -->10328.74
food/petrol/tobacco --> £433.00
Food is 40 pw so 173.20 (see note further down)
Petrol is 30pw so 129.90
tobacco is 15pw so 64.95
the rest 15pw so 64.95 is made up of 4pw lottery which stops as of yesterday, 1.50pw window cleaner (I live next to a motorway so this is more essential than luxury!) 5pw towards xmas the remaining 4.50 is cigarette papers, bread halfway through the week and the occasional £1 for my £500 savings bank
Phones/TV/Internet --> £130.99 --> £120.99 --> (sky & broadband renegotiated, can't cancel sky until November as on 12 month contract)
Phones breakdown: 1 mobile each on 12 month contract until Nov/Dec apx 22 each per month
My sky as stated above won't let me cancel and is the lowest package they do (according to the b*tch I got at Customer Services this morning :mad: )
My broadband is down from 25 to 17.99 as of today
Home phone aprx 17 per month including line rental and calls

Gas Elec --> £80.50 --> Going to ask them to look at as currently in credit for both
Insurances --> £19.90 --> £7.36 (This is life insurance re mortgage)
store/catalog --> £225.00
Bank charges --> £55.61 --> £34.61
Total Expenses £2,927.01 £2,806.99 :eek: :eek: :eek:

A few further points
Hubbys job no 1 is weekly paid so I've multiplied by 4.33 to give figures for month
Food/Petrol/Tobacco also weekly and x 4.33
Food - I'm sure we can try and get it down further and have been on OS for tips but has already went from £80 to £40 a week
Both smokers, we have gone from paying approx £8 per day for cigs to rolling our own and now got that down to only being £15 per week
Am currently on a diet and off the chocolate (which is saving money) and can't contemplate trying to stop smoking at the same time. (And believe me I can spend more than £7.50 a week on chocolate alone normally )
I work for local council so Council Tax is taken directly off my wage
Car insurance was free for a year when we bought car and will be up in July
Car not quite 1 yr old so no MOT costs
House insurance was paid in full last year and is due up in August
I've been trying to get a 2nd job that fits in round my full time one
I'm in process of trying to cancel my PPI's but having problems with some see my other post here for info
Thankfully cat is a cheap wee chappy and his food is included in the food budget (plus all the mice he brings in grrrr! :rolleyes: )

Have just upped limit on my lowest credit card (15.9%) and done a balance transfer off my highest (29.9%) so cc amounts will be changing.

I should also point out here as I'm sure someone will suggest it that I have no intention of selling my house, it took us 5 years of renting cr*p flats and a lot of money in fees etc to finally get here and our mortgage is only £2 more per month than our last flat was. (And my council tax is still cheap as it's based on it being valued at £38000 when we bought it not the upwards of £65000 it now is)

There's probably more info that's relevant but my head is buzzing with it all (and with trying to make it readable on here - soz about that) and I can't believe how bad it looks in black and white.

So there we go, sorry for the essay, I'm trying my best to keep my humour at the moment but it ain't easy. Go on, tell me what I've missed, you know you want to :rotfl:

TIA

Added info:
Selling car is a no-go for several reasons 1. depreciation 2. hubby needs it to get to 2nd job as public transport would take 2 hours (car journey 15 mins) and he only has 1.5 hours between finishing 1st job and starting 2nd 3. I need it for work every day too 4. some of the loans we have relate to having had a few bangers in the past and paying hundreds and thousands to get them fixed, new car has warranty, saves on insurance, is economical

Hope this helps and thanks for help so far

BlondeHeadOn

I just want to say welcome to the board, and you've come to the right place. I'm sure some of the canny money experts will be along soon to help save you some money - not something I am good at myself, so I will leave it to them!

Hugs
:grouphug:

tyllwyd

The one thing that jumped out at me was a £15K loan for a car that you are paying back at £250 per month. Is there any chance that you could sell the car to pay off some of the loan and get a much cheaper car or has depreciation made that a non-starter?

sanfrancisco

What are Bank charges?

You could definitely cut down on phone.tv.internet.

How is your credit rating? Could you get a 0% card?

Even if car has depreciated you soulc still look into selling it and just retaining a small shortfall as debt, which will still lower your repayment considerably.

climbgirl

That's quite difficult to read, but two things jump out - the phones/tv/broadband seems huge! What's the full breakdown on this?

You need to split everything out - don't lump food/petrol/tobacco into one category. Split out each individual expense and it'll make it a lot easier to spot places where you can make cut-backs.

kar

Hiya, I would suggest that the first step for you would be to phone up and get the balances on all thoses debts for which you've only got monthly payments written down. ie. RBS loans, double glazing etc.

Also just a quick question is "store/cataloge £225.00 " how much you spend a month, how much you pay off a month or total outstanding balance?? It seems a hell of a lot on store cards/catalogues if its the minimum payment every month and the interest on these is phenomenal !

Sorry to ask you more questions but it would help to clarify the SOA a bit for me and then maybe we can come up with some suggestions for you.

You've got bank charges written down as well. What are these for? If they are unauthorised overdraft fees etc. These are "illegal" and people have been claiming these back from the banks - i'm sure someone will link the thread for you if necessary.

kar

silverelephant

sanfrancisco wrote:

What are Bank charges?

You could definitely cut down on phone.tv.internet.

How is your credit rating? Could you get a 0% card?

Even if car has depreciated you soulc still look into selling it and just retaining a small shortfall as debt, which will still lower your repayment considerably.

Have amended phone/tv/internet above

Can't get another credit card but have just increased balance on lowest apr one and transferred balance of my highest apr today

Bank charges are interest for constantly being in our overdraft and a 10 pm fee for the account. Have just cancelled the loanguard cover today so should save 21/22 a month.

Car is worth approx £7000 as was bought brand new for just over £11000 add to that the interest and the shortfall insurance which pays out if car is written off (this happened to my brother and well worth the additional couple of hundred as he is still paying for a car that was written off 5 years ago). I will cancel the shortfall insurance once the loan value is coming down to be a wee bit more like the value of the car.

Thanks

silverelephant

climbgirl wrote:

That's quite difficult to read, but two things jump out - the phones/tv/broadband seems huge! What's the full breakdown on this?

You need to split everything out - don't lump food/petrol/tobacco into one category. Split out each individual expense and it'll make it a lot easier to spot places where you can make cut-backs.

Have now edited original post so hope it's a bit easier

Thanks

CLAPTON

you show a shortfall of £259 after you make your saving in PPI
excluding debt repayments your costs are £640
in the short term the cost of debt cannot easily be reduced so to simply break even every month you must save £259 from the £640
and/or
increase you income
and/or sell the car (assuming there is nothing else significant to sell)

moving balances around credit cards will reduce the overall interest but you still pay the same amount each month so wont give you any cash flow benefit.

you dont break down food/petrol/tobacco but does this include work lunch/snack, haircuts, optical/dental/newspapers, magazines, going out, presents. also you will need to start budgetting for car tax, insurance for july presumably (are there any servicing costs associated with the car?

I think your priorities are:
keep a detailed spending diary so all costs are captured and to update the budget for yearly type costs
increase in income seems fairly essential
or sell the car

silverelephant

kar wrote:

Hiya, I would suggest that the first step for you would be to phone up and get the balances on all thoses debts for which you've only got monthly payments written down. ie. RBS loans, double glazing etc.

Also just a quick question is "store/cataloge £225.00 " how much you spend a month, how much you pay off a month or total outstanding balance?? It seems a hell of a lot on store cards/catalogues if its the minimum payment every month and the interest on these is phenomenal !

Sorry to ask you more questions but it would help to clarify the SOA a bit for me and then maybe we can come up with some suggestions for you.

You've got bank charges written down as well. What are these for? If they are unauthorised overdraft fees etc. These are "illegal" and people have been claiming these back from the banks - i'm sure someone will link the thread for you if necessary.

kar

RBS loans : mine 20 payments left = 4645.80
Hubbies: 7720.05 @ 39 payments left
The double glazing I will phone about but we've only had it a year and it was a 10 year loan (and we couldn't have gone another winter without the double glazing!)
Funding corp was a loan we took out to pay for our wedding last year was in a queue for 45 minutes today before giving up so am writing to them instead!
Store & catalogue are as follows:
Next directory 180 per month balance around 1700
Simply Be catalogue 45 per month balance around 1000

Bank charges are interest for constantly being in our overdraft and a 10 pm fee for the account. Have just cancelled the loanguard cover today so should save 21/22 a month.

Thanks

silverelephant

CLAPTON wrote:

you show a shortfall of £259 after you make your saving in PPI
excluding debt repayments your costs are £640
in the short term the cost of debt cannot easily be reduced so to simply break even every month you must save £259 from the £640
and/or
increase you income
and/or sell the car (assuming there is nothing else significant to sell)

moving balances around credit cards will reduce the overall interest but you still pay the same amount each month so wont give you any cash flow benefit.

you dont break down food/petrol/tobacco but does this include work lunch/snack, haircuts, optical/dental/newspapers, magazines, going out, presents. also you will need to start budgetting for car tax, insurance for july presumably (are there any servicing costs associated with the car?

I think your priorities are:
keep a detailed spending diary so all costs are captured and to update the budget for yearly type costs
increase in income seems fairly essential
or sell the car

Thanks Clapton, I've detailed somewhere in a post above why we can't sell the car but I do appreciate on paper it doesn't look too good

Hubby gets overtime at job 1 and bonus at job 2 though neither of these are guaranteed. Over the last month job 1 has been providing apx 45 pw additional i.e 194.85 and job 2 will give a bonus of apx 50 this month so we will break even (with a little jiggery pokery)

Have now broken down food/petrol/tobacco on original post.

Haircuts :rotfl: last time I went was cos I got a voucher for my birthday, hubby gets sheared by me

optical/dental/newspapers, magazines, going out, presents. again :rotfl: Optical/dental neither of us been for years hubby desp. needs new glasses can't get reg'd with a dentist anyway round here so even if we wanted to go we couldn't. Hubby reads newspaper at work when colleagues buy. We haven't been out since 2 years before our wedding when we started saving up for it, we've now been married ten months and the night out after the wedding still hasn't happened :rolleyes: Presents - we don't buy any and tell everyone we're skint so they know not to expect. I make my own cards so the get a nice handmade card and can lump it

Oh if you could see my loft you would know I have stuff to sell :rotfl: slowly but surely started working through it all on ebay and this week alone have made £55

I've been looking for an additonal job (just got a "no thanks" letter last week for one :rolleyes: ) but think up until now I've been a bit choosy. Was gonna try asda/tesco and then I'll get a staff discount too so will save more on food