sammy115 SOA - Gulp!

JollyNolly

There's plenty of people here who will want to know more about your debts - like interest rates, minimum payments, etc. Just throwing cash at your debts may not help if you're not targetting the right ones - you've got to work out which debts are most expensive (highest interest rates) and hit them hardest if you have a choice.

lynzpower

Hi Sammy,

My first whingey-bag statement of the day....

I would be saying.. .thinkgs should be getting CHEAPER not more expensive with your 2 kids now "adults". Dont want to sound funny here, but they can make their own lunches at that age, and if they want to buy twizzlerz they can do it out of wages/part time jobs! I do sound like a meany old bag when I say things like this, its just my parents provided provided provided for us, and I think it did me & my sister no good whatsoever. If your older kids keep refusing, tell them, well i want you to find an easier 170pcm saving for us then, luckily they are at the age where they should understand.

Also I would state that your main mortgage is the about same as your income alone. Personally, i drew breath when I saw that, its such a large amount of money, and I would think quite risky. Im sure you know this with what youve recently been through.

Yes there are some major cutbacks to be made here - 360 a year on your mums mobile being the obvious one. And the almost 2.5k on your kids school lunches. :eek:

All the best my love, and well done for posting, never easy is it

MOANY LYNZ SIGNING OUT! Have a good day!

tyllwyd

I take it that your mum is still living in the property you bought and that is why you don't get any income from it, and that selling is not an option? (Have you double checked with a solicitor that everything is OK regarding capital gains tax or inheritance tax issues with the arrangement?)

£4.50 per day is pretty heavy for lunches. Without them taking sandwiches, I wonder if there are any savings you could make eg if they buy crisps, instead of them buying a full packet at school, buy a multipack from the supermarket and send those with them instead. (Obviously crisps are not the healthiest option, but you can see what I am saying.)

QueenB.

Afraid i am going to follow up lynzpowers statement with a similar one of my own.

That much for packed lunches is to high. I have a daughter of my own who is almost 14 and she has found the change from dinner money to lunches hard. But i explained why it had to happen and yes she still grumbles but it was lunches or nothing, so time to put your foot down, and as lynzpower said, if they want it that badly tell them to make some of their own money to supplement the packed lunches.

My daughter is now trying to find some type of work to bring in a few extra pennies as i am having to also cut her pocket money.

Good luck

mintymoneysaver

sammy115 wrote:

left to throw at debts £504.00

Scottish power (old utility provider) £671.00
BT (old telecoms provider) £496.00
3 (Old mobile provider) £120.00 - in dispute
Family loan £400.00
Black horse personal loan £1600.00
Capital One (CC) £650.00
GE Capital (Store card) £716.00
GE Capital (Store card) £137.00
Barclaycard (CC) £1699.00
Barclays personal loan £3500.00
Bank of Scotland (CC) £3055.00
La Redoute (Catalogue) £377.00
Goldfish (CC) £2024.00
Chantry collections £1081.00
NatWest (CC) £1873.00
Next £450.00
Overdraft £6200.00
Argos additions £600.00 - in dispute

Total Outstanding £25,649.00
:

So with your £1000 freelance work ( hopefully) put it all towards your debts, the ones with the highest interest rates.You could get rid of Next ( and I know how hard that is!) La Redoute and your smaller store card, and that will be 3 debts gone! Then like everyone else has said we need to know the interest rates, it is no point making settlements if they are off the wrong amounts. Your best bet is to find the % and then use a snowball calculator to pay off the higest interest first.Sorry don't know the link but someone else will.With £500 to throw at those debts you could clear a few of them really quickly and then throw the money at the others.It is achievable, but you will have to do without a lot of the things you are taking for granted, eg new clothes....
Hope that helps.

Annie_Fanny

Sammy115 - sorry to be harsh but have you had a lightbulb moment yet? Statements like the ones below make it sound like you are still in denial about the fact that you are £25K in debt!

"Dinner money - fussy spoilt kids who don't eat sandwiches". They will have to get unfussy - explain the situation to them.

"I will probably cancel my gym membership but it is about the only thing outside of the house that DH and I do together and its lovely in summer (yes it is david lloyd with a nice outdoor pool and everything)". Going to the gym that costs an astronomical amount of money is the only thing you and your hubbie do together outside the house? That's a shame. What about 'free' activities - walking, running? These will get you fit too! This is not about forever though - just until you get the debt paid off.

Getting out of debt is about tightening the belt, sacrificing the luxuries in the short term for the benefit of long term. If you face up to it you will see that by cutting out Sky, school lunches, gym memberships etc etc it will bring your Debt Free Date along much much much sooner.

Anyway on a practical note have you heard of the 'Snowball Calculator'? Have a look here: http://www.whatsthecost.co.uk/snowball.aspx
It will help you to work about which debts to hit first in order to pay them off quicker. It will also give you an estimated Debt Free Date...

Good luck

Annie

tyllwyd

sammy115 wrote:

I sometimes pick up freelance work and I will be earning a £1,000 at the end of this month in addition to my normal take home pay.

I'm freelance too, and I hope you aren't making the mistake I always do, and forgetting to put something aside for tax!

sammy115

You lot keep me grounded, don't worry about the grumbling I don't mind at all. Yes I have thought of everything you have asked me too. The size of the mortgage has never been a problem until last year when my OH got made redundant. We thought we had enough money to last 12 months. Unfortunately we were very very hard up at the start of our marriage, as soon as we had money we spent and spent and spent. And yes we have spoilt our kids so much that they turn their noses up at sandwiches for lunch.

My one big problem is no one son, who is 17 and we are having a lot of problems with him. He has left home 3 times in six months, been sacked from his job, wants to go to college now and basically if food is in the house then he eats it. (not a lot to stop him when I am at work) The only way round this is to hide food. I don't buy crisps or biscuits and the kids don't really want them for school. The good news is that No 1 daughter leaves school soon and goes to College. She is on her own then! She already has a part time job and both her and No 2 daughter no longer get spends.

This is the second time I have had a light bulb moment so I do see what you are saying when you see me grumbling at the gym membership etc, but what you have to realise is that Rome wasn't built in a day. I know myself well. I tend to throw myself in full throttle. If i deprive myself all at once I will crack in a couple of months and do something stupid. One thing at a time!!!! It has taken me all weekend and most evenings to pull my SOA together, it is by no means finished and is certainly not the finished article. It was put in as a starting point, so that maybe in twelve months time, I will look and go 'you stupid cow, why on earth did you say that!!!'

I did the snowball thing in December when i had a job but it all went totally pear shaped when i lost my job. I am working on interest rates and minimum payments, but it is taking a while (in between four kids and two jobs). Some of my creditors have already frozen interest and charges for six months so I will post an update - hopefully by the weekend, when my goal is to have a plan.

And yes I have put my tax due on my freelance work away - I am not sure whether to admit this or not, but I am an ACCOUNTANT!!!!!! This is the shameful thing about this saga, I am supposed to know what to do.

One thing is for sure, I am never going back here. It has been hard the last four months, I realised this morning that if I can live on £129 per week I can cut my housekeeping down. Some days I wasn't even sure if I could afford milk for the baby! :embarasse

Keep up the good work you lot!

jesster_2

Definitely do a snowball calculator, like Annie Fanny suggested. In fact, do two. One where you look at how quickly you can pay it off carrying on as you are now, and one where you add in the extra you'd save from cancelling gym membership, reducing sky package and DEFINITELY getting the kids off the dinner money. I don't mean to attack them, but you and your OH run the house, not them. My dinner money stopped when i went to High School. I had a weekend job, and if I wanted to buy stuff to supplement what i brought from home then that was my responsibility. It'd certainly make savings for you, and at least you'd know they were eating something half decent instead of the rubbish they probably get from the canteen or shop. You can guarantee, when they're paying for the junk themselves, they'll eat less of it. It's a win-win situation!

There are lots of ways you can cut back if you're serious about it. But until you do the snowball calculations and realise how those little savings make a big difference, maybe you won't have the determination. Even if you don't snowball, adding the 'little' expenses up into annual sums and realising what difference they would make to your debts can be a real eye opener. Even if you halve what you're spending on dinner money by buying extra stuff for packed lunches, that's more than £1000 a year!

I have made what seem to be only small changes to my spending: shopping with a list and sticking to a housekeeping budget, NEVER going to the supermarket while hungry, going once a week and getting everything, not popping in on the way home from work. I have managed to keep some things like gym membership (a cheap one though!) and eating organic fruit and veg, but i'm still paying off way more than I was before. You don't have to jettison everything, but look seriously at where you are throwing money away. Good luck!

lynzpower

Dont be hard on yourself Sammy, there are quite a few accountants on here too