Budgeting issues

gemmacantan1

Hi all,

Me and my husband were doing okay a few months ago despite the credit crunch we seemed to be on top of our finances and everything was (and still is) being paid on time. Until April that is when everything started to go wrong! Firstly we earn £1960.00 not to bad really. We have a £200 overdraft (which we can't increase due to bad credit in past) plus we have £191.00 paid to us because of having our daughter. I.e. Tax credits and child benefit because she attends nursery.

Before April everything was okay until all at once things went wrong. My husband lost his valuable over time which paid for extras (he earnt £350.00 a month on average), then we lost our £291.00 a month tax credits while they reviewed our account. This caused us to go over our over draft. The bank then contacted us concerned. We explained the problem but they still charged us bank charges anyway. When we finally sorted out our tax credits we wers shocked to learn that it was going from £291.00 down to £63.00 a month! We actually relied on the payment to help pay for the nursery fees but because my husband earnt alot last year with over time they over paid us so have taken that in to account this year. I tried telling them that this year he won't earn anywhere near the same amount but they wouldn't listen.

I've gone through our budget 100's of times trying to find a way of cutting down our out goings. We don't smoke or drink, we don't have take aways, we never go out and everything on our budget is essential. Our bills are £1749.56 a month. Then there is £450 on food & petrol and £90.00 on savings. Which leaves us with £21.44 a month. Unfortunately we pay £200 a month for some old debts we have and we plan to pay the off completely when we remortgage but that isn't until November time.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Can anyone offer any advice? I've recently taken on a part time job as an independant consultant on top of my full time job but the money isn't there yet as its early days. I'm just really confused on what we can do for the best!

Thanks

Gemma

CLAPTON

i would suggest you post over at the debt free wannabe board... people there are very supportive and have lots of ideas for money saving.
post up your financial budget and details using this format

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


I'm a bit confused why you are saving 90 when you are being charged fees for being over the OD limit