We are in a bit of a mess...

BeautyandtheBeast_3

Webbigail wrote: »

Thanks DF you are a great help. Do you really think 3-4 years? I would be thrilled if that is the case. Do you think DMP? I am now getting excited at the thought of speaking to Payplan tomorrow....if they give me an answer of 3-4 years I will cry with joy!

Beauty and the Beast - just 1 pet, a dog! Does £12 sound excessive? My child is only a baby so no breakfast club at school just yet!

Cute little baby!!!
£12 does sound a lot! i have a medium sized female dog and we pay £6.79 per month (fully comp if you like).

Katie-Kat-Kins

My suggestions:

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 1
Number of cars owned.................... 1
Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 988
Partners monthly income after tax....... 1800
Benefits................................ 161 Have you checked you are getting all you are entitled to? Tax credits and things are pretty complicated so it is worth checking
Other income............................ 0 Try to get another income, a second job, evenings or weekends or home working, avon, betterware, ironing, typing, ebay selling anything.
Total monthly income.................... 2949
Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 1411 Check whether there are any options your mortgage provider can offer, maybe extending the term to reduce your payments or switching to interest only while you are struggling.
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 141 As someone else said check your banding, and check you have worked this out per month correctly I suspect that if you pay over 10 months this might actually be £117.50
Electricity............................. 60 take weekly readings to moniter your usage and try to decrease your usage week on week. When you have a few weeks readings use these to do a comparison accurately and get the cheapest provider. Keep taking weekly readings to ensure you usage goes down not up. There are lots of tips on the utilities board for reducing energy usage - a big one though is tumble dryers they gobble leccy!
Gas..................................... 30 - do the same as with the electric, your combined usage looks high, we use less than £100 worth all electric
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 31
Telephone (land line)................... 20 you should be able to reduce this by switching provider
Mobile phone............................ 40 this can be reduced to about £15, even if you are still in contract, phone your provider and explain you are in difficulty and ask to be switched to the cheapest contract available or PAYG.If your contract has expired then just cancel and go PAYG.
TV Licence.............................. 12
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 25 Ditch this or if still in contract reduce it to the minimum, take it from me you can live with just 5 channels!
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 0 You need to do a budget for this, it is probably where you surplus goes. So do a budget and moniter it carefully to make sure you stick to it. The O/S board is great for working out your groceries spend.
Clothing................................ 0 You need to allow for this long term but short term not spending on clothes is a good saving to make. Be honest with yourself when doing your budget though, you will need clothes at some point and so will the little one.
Petrol/diesel........................... 50 This is fairly high, I do over 500 miles a week on not much more than this. Can you cut it down? Use the car less, drive more efficiently, even trade in the car for something smaller.
Road tax................................ 0 Be honest you need to budget for these
Car Insurance........................... 0 Be honest you need to budget for these
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 0 Be honest you need to budget for these
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 300 Check the position re childcare vouchers at work and check whether you are using the most cost effective care, compare say nursery with a childminder.
Other child related expenses............ 150 ???
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 18 Are the contacts essentials? Could you just use your glasses and ditch these for a while? Or use them less so you can halve your spend? You can get a pair of standard specs for £60 at the asda optician. If you must have the contacts check you are getting the best deal, the health board has advice on this.
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 12 Shop around, you can probably get this cheaper
Buildings insurance..................... 32 Shop around, you can probably get this cheaper
Contents insurance...................... 0 This is a false economy, you should get some.
Life assurance ......................... 49
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 0 Making these neutral is a good idea, so is leveling with some people and agreeing not to do presents to save money but be honest is a neutral spend realistic???
Haircuts................................ 0 Should you have something in here? Or do you get free cuts for the whole family? If so well done, I get mine done free saves a fortune - thanks mum!
Entertainment........................... 0 You should have a little something in here
Holiday................................. 0 Well done for accepting that this should be something you sacrifice while you are struggling, so many people treat it as an essential when it is a luxury.
Emergency fund.......................... 0 You should pop something in here just in case the washing machine breaks or whatever
Total monthly expenses.................. 2381

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 0
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 3000 What is it? Is it worth "downsizing"? For the same money (or even less??)could you get something smaller but more modern and efficient? Might save you money on your expenses.
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 3000

Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 0........(1411).....0
Total secured & HP debts...... 0.........-.........-
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR Can you putthe APR in so we can advise on snowballing too please!
FD Loan........................4800......121.......0
FD Loan........................4700......125.......0
Virgin Credit Card.............17400.....200.......0
FD Credit Card.................4200......100.......0
Egg Credit Card................3800......100.......0
Total unsecured debts..........34900.....646.......- Sounds like a good place to start will be contacting all of these and asking them to freeze interest and accept reduced payments. There is good advice from people who have done this on here, or use one of the free DMP companies.

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,949
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 2,381
Available for debt repayments........... 568
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 646
Amount short for making debt repayments. -78
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 3,000
Total HP & Secured debt................. -0
Total Unsecured debt.................... -34,900
Net Assets.............................. -31,900

Hope that helps

Jesthar

BeautyandtheBeast wrote: »

Cute little baby!!!
£12 does sound a lot! i have a medium sized female dog and we pay £6.79 per month (fully comp if you like).

This can depend a lot on the insurance type (just done mine for my cat and it's a minefield!) - £12 doesn't sound overly bad if the policy is per condition per year (which would cover ongoing illness for life, rather than just the first year). AXA, PetPlan and NFU are the market leaders for that. If it's not per condition per year, then yes, it is on the expensive side.

Fortheloveofmoney

Webbigail wrote: »

Thanks dancing fairy, I have left some gaps I know, its so difficult! My car insurance is paid for a year and isnt up for renewal until Nov. The mobile phone is for 1 not 2 a and the £18 is for contact lenses. I will defo shop around to make savings on our insurances even if its just a couple of £££'s And I can see that the mortgage is our biggest problem. This is probably due to getting one of the 110% mortgage offers about 4 years ago as we were first time buyers. At the time I was working full time but we have a child now so I am now working part time Hence we are only breaking even (well almost!)

I really dont think we can change the mortgage.

Well done for posting your SOA. It's always hard to do.

Do go through and add in your car expenditure and food though because this will give you the complete picture.

I know you say that the car insurance isn't due until Nov but how will you pay for it then? It's only 3 pay days away. When you enter a DMP you're not allowed to get any further in to debt so the money needs to be available for this. To work it out divide what you paid last year (even though you'll probably shop around this year) and divide it by the number of pay days left until you need to pay it.

Once you've done this and added in food, you'll probably find that you don't almost break even but are quite likely £400ish a month short. I don't want to panic you but you do need to see the whole situation before you can improve it. I've been there so I know what it's like.

Good luck.

BeautyandtheBeast_3

Jesthar wrote: »

This can depend a lot on the insurance type (just done mine for my cat and it's a minefield!) - £12 doesn't sound overly bad if the policy is per condition per year (which would cover ongoing illness for life, rather than just the first year). AXA, PetPlan and NFU are the market leaders for that. If it's not per condition per year, then yes, it is on the expensive side.

I use Petplan for my horses but i found them to be ridiculously expensive when it comes to domestic animals. However Petplan do payout without any hassle and promptly (well with my horses anyhow!)

gfplux

Hello webbigail,

Well done for posting your first SOA.

You have already had lots of great advise.

In my opinion to make the conversation with Payplan more valuable tomorrow you need to redo your SOA including all of the suggestions, ie car tax, car insurance etc, etc.

For additional advise and help why not look here http://www.cccs.co.uk/ and here www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/ They both offer help for FREE.


Good Luck tomorrow.

belfastgirl23

I'm wondering if part of the issue is you working part-time. I know this is a very personal choice so just making the observation that it often costs almost as much to have part time childcare as to have full time childcare. Do you think you might go back to work full time in order to hit the debt harder?

Again though obviously this is something that people can feel strongly about so no offence intended.

Katie-Kat-Kins

Going full time is worth considering, or having two part time jobs. In fact seriously consider all of your circumstances and whether you are making the most of childcare and work. When you add up, child care, travel etc how much do you actually make from your job compared to being a SAHM?? Might you be better looking for a different job that would require less childcare?

worried_jim

Glad you have contacted Payplan and I hope the future is a bit more straight forward for you now.

krisskross

If your little one is under a year old you will lose the baby element of tax credits when s/he gets to 1, this will halve your child tax credits.