Help!

loopyloulou_3

it is his 30th and i have spent most of that already. its an improvement on the first suggestion of going to Vegas for the weekend! i have arranged a party food and hall £300 disco £120 whatever left is for balloons, cake etc. I have budgeted this amount for it (and have saved it all) so I am not worried about this as it is covered.

to be honest, with my outgoings etc, I am not too concerned, although i dont have a lot left each month, I seem to get by. My OH however is where my main concern lies.

nic82

Hi LoopyLouLou :hello:

A few things spring to mind straight away....

Try to get rid of the Studio and Next accounts ASAP. They have astronomical rates of interest.

£500 for your OH's party....I'm guessing that this is for a special birthday. I recently helped with my sister's 21st birthday party. There were over 100 guests there and the whole thing didn't cost more than £200. This was with us doing a (hot and cold buffet), the hire of the hall and balloons etc. Guests paid for their own drinks at the bar. The only thing the £200 didn't include was a DJ, as a friend did this for free. I definitely think you can reduce the £500 down. If you want ideas for food, decorations, etc. let me know.

Is it just you and OH at home? No children? £35.98 seems very high for your water bills. There is just myself and my OH at home and we're on a metre. We only pay £13 a month for our water.

Your buildings and contents also seems pretty expensive. I've got cover through Esure for under £20 a month.

You landline could probably be reduced. Do you make evening and weekend calls only or daytime calls too? Do you make calls to mobiles? BT's most expensive package is £25.50 a month which includes free calls to landlines all day every day. I'm sure you must be able to lower your costs. If you let us know when you make your calls and whether they're to mobiles as well as landlines, we'll be able to advise better.

You're in credit by quite a lot with both your gas and electricity. Can you ring up Scottish Power and ask them to decrease your DDs for a few months? We're (hopefully) heading towards spring and summer now, so your usage should be less, with the warmer weather and longer daylight. If you're in credit over winter, then you're going to be in even more credit over the summer, so I'd reduce the DDs.

Hope this helps a bit. Good luck with it all

loopyloulou_3

eeek sorry the Scottish Power isnt in credit..... thats how much we owe them. I wish they owed it to us!

my OH works from home and uses the phone in the day time sometimes, he does call mobiles, and uses the electricity - i think our electricity is extortionate.

I am trying to get rid of Next and Studio and have just been accepted for a 0% of 9 month CC to try and get rid of some of them quicker without paying stupid amounts of interest.

debsley_pig

On your regular outgoings I would say the following:

You are paying too much for your phone bill. Look at the details on this website on how to save on your phone bill.

Gas and electric seems really high. When you say you have money outstanding, I assume they owe you? If so, get the money transferred to your bank account and at the same time reduce your direct debit amounts. Also, see if you can switch to a cheaper supplier.

Your mortgage insurance is also maybe a little high. I guess it depends how much of a mortgage you have. I pay just over £12pm on an £70,000 mortgage with Scot. Prov. Again, shop around.

Your home insurance is also extortionate, or does this cover the OH working from home aspect? I only pay £16 pm on home insurance (buildings + contents) with Norwich Union. Go to confused.com for some quotes.

I do not agree with the earlier advice of cancelling the £12 pm pet insurance and putting this money aside each month. Pet insurance is not just needed in old age. What if your pet broke its leg and had to have an operation costing £2-3K? It would take rather a lot of £12's to save that up!!! You wouldn't want to be in the position between getting into more debt or having to put your pet down, would you? The better thing would be to save £12 elsewhere! Can you not cut down on your food bill? £200-250 pm is very high. Go to the old style board for hints and tips!

nic82

loopyloulou wrote:

eeek sorry the Scottish Power isnt in credit..... thats how much we owe them. I wish they owed it to us!

Oh no, sorry. I completely misunderstood

loopyloulou wrote:

my OH works from home and uses the phone in the day time sometimes, he does call mobiles, and uses the electricity - i think our electricity is extortionate.

Have you looked at USwitch for swapping your gas and electricity suppliers (I'm not sure how you'd stand with regards to swapping when you owe Scottish Power though).

With regards to the phone, I've just had a look at TalkTalk's website. I think you said your line rental is with them, which means you'll be paying £11 for this. They then have several packages to choose from. There's a package called Talk 3 which gives you unlimited calls anytime to any landline number. This costs £8.99 a months, thereby making your phone £19.99 a month.

A table on http://www.talktalk.co.uk/talktalk/servlet/gben-LLU-PageServer?article=MAIN.UK.TALKTALK.STATIC.TARIFFS.TALK3 shows that calls to mobiles are also a bit (not a lot) cheaper than BTs.

However, if your husband has got a mobile, can he use his inclusive minutes to ring mobile numbers. If he only rings landline numbers from your landline phone and mobile numbers using his inclusive minutes, then (assuming he doesn't go over his inclusive minutes), your landline bill won't exceed £19.99 a month.

I know this is only a saving of £8 a month on your landline calls, but over a year this is £96.

Lots of savings of this amount soon add up to be several hundred pounds which would substantially decrease your debt.

loopyloulou wrote:

I am trying to get rid of Next and Studio and have just been accepted for a 0% of 9 month CC to try and get rid of some of them quicker without paying stupid amounts of interest.

Yep, put as much as you can on to this card. Make sure you put the highest interest ones on there, not the highest outstanding balances (i.e. put Studio and Next on, and then look at the APRs for your other cards/loans and put the card/loan with the highest APR on next.


Nic

loopyloulou_3

thank you! to be honest i didnt think about transferring Next and Choice to my new 0% card. but that is a good idea - hopefully i can see them disappear soon then!

CLAPTON

can i return to the overall situation
OH has 58,403 debts which require at least 1,378 per month to pay the minimum amounts off, currently he has missed several payments.

looking at the next six months what do you expect his average monthly 'takehome' income to be after tax, NI ?

how much is your house worth and what is the mortgage on it?

loopyloulou_3

thanks clapton, yes it is the £58k that worries me most. He hasnt written to any of his CCs, just negotiated when they phone him.

We brought our house 2 years ago for £176k and i cant imagine it is worth any more than £200k at the very most. our mortgage is for £169

lynzpower

In respect of your joint account, clearly there SHOULD be more money left in the joint account than there actually is. Tell me about it, this is one thing I stuffed up badly before my LB moment. If you can bring your shopping down to £25 a week, which is comfortable for 2 a week, then you can save the rest, and use the remainder to chuck at debts.
Saving minimum 150 a month. Saying that maybe its the issue of having that account on you at all times ( i now have cut that card up and we buy food out of our current acocunts) but will be testing different ways ie drawing the cash out of the account. internet shopping to remain in budget etc.

Good luck with it theres plenty of money left there that can be used for debt reduction, but it needs a bit of planning. xxxx

loopyloulou_3

im gonna be good and not waste food shopping money. it is easy to spend too much, my worst thing is cat food! oh well they might have to get used to tesco value!

i am SOOOO worried about it all, specially the £58k. on some cards he is paying £10 a month and the interest is over £100 per month, so it is getting worse and worse.

I have asked him to contact Payplan for some advice, and hopefully he will today.