Dottyannes 'in need of support' debt diary (all new)

dottyanne

Income £1150.00
OH Income £1150.00
C/Benefit £185.60
Other Income (tax credits/maintenance) £622.56

TOTAL - £3108.16

Expenses:-

Mortgage £660.47
Car Loan £288.43
Child Support £120.00
Secured Loan £364.00
House Insurance £21.64
Gym £38.34
Sky/Internet £57.00
Mobiles £55.00
Insurances £103.95
Council Tax £121.00
Warer £80.00
Gas £100.00
Elec £100.00
TV License £13.95

£2123.78


Plus

Food £480.00
Kids £60.00
Petrol £160.00

£700.00

Debts/Repayments

Bryan Carter (GUS) £60.00 per month (o.s £370.74)
Dad Nil per month (o.s £10,339.00)
Brother Loan £39.67 per month (o.s £555.38)
Capital One (OH) £10.00 per month (o.s £577.77)
Capital One (me) £30.00 per month (o.s £530.00)
Fenton Cooper (Lloyds TSB) £25.00 per month (o.s £1.285.93)
Capquest (Egg Card) £25.00 per month (o.s £762.64)
Very Catalogue £25.00 per month (o.s £450.00)
Capquest (Egg Loan) £100.00 per month (o.s £17,507.10)
RBS (just recd CCJ) was paying £125.21 per month (applied to stay same) (o.s £5293.61)
TV £68.26 (o.s £750.75)

Total Monthly Repayments - £508.13

* No provisions for card tax/mot, birthdays, haircuts, holidays and xmas etc...any ideas.

Shortfall of £223.75 per month !!

dottyanne

Oh and to add, I'm currently saving £2 coins as per my sig for Xmas pressies so i guess you could say i am saving for that event, though for the 'important' stull i have zilch, i really want to get to the stage where i have a little emergency fund that would cover anything really - say a £500 buffer - any thoughts on how to get it though

SilkCutSilver

Hi dottyanne - I saw you posted on my diary so I thought I'd come and check out yours. I'm doing the same with the £2 and now have £80 in the pot.

I have also started puttting £30 a month in an old bank account which I have forgotten the PIN for my card- it adds up pretty quickly - that's currently my emergency fund.

dottyanne

Hi, good going on the £2 coin fund!! Im saving mine to cover xmas for the kids this year (or as near as damn it!), i dont have £30 to put in another acct at the moment - if you see my SOA as above you will see why :S

SilkCutSilver

Oops sorry forgot to read up. :embarasse.

Lemon_Tree

hi, the thing that jumps out at me is just how much you're spending on groceries. you could easily lop a large sum out of that by going on the old style boards. As an example my sister has a family of 6, with 4 children with hollow legs and though it's not ideal she is spending £50 per week on food, and that includes the cat food for 5 or 6 cats as well. Nobody says it's going to be easy but for the short term i really think you could cut back in this area and get you through the short term cashflow problems.
Do your children have part time jobs so that they can start contributing towards their activities and you don't have to pay everything?

SilkCutSilver

Using your method (and not including interest) my daily "pot" needs to be £7.25 to hit my goal before I am 30..I'm not sure if that makes it sound more manageable or less!

On your SOA your elec,gas and water sound quite high. I know 5 people probabably use a lot more energy than two people but this seems like a lot to me? Agree with LemonTree on the grocery thing -that's one area where you can cut - I have started getting great tips from that Economy Gastronomy show (if I was ever at home to cook..grrr) and it's great.

*Jellie*

I'm fairly new to all this so can't really help with the SOA. Would there be any way you could stop gym membership for a bit and do something like running or workouts at home?

Alsohave you checked out Martin's tips on saving petrol? Use petrolprices.com, keep tyres at right pressure etc.

The PAD method you worked out sounds great!

Tixy

Hi Dotty

On your SOA the utilities all look really high - are you paying gas & elec by DD? are these accounts in arrears? do you give actual readings at least once a quarter (and better once a month). Is there any reason why you would expect your usage to be particularly high? I would expect your Elec to be well below half of what you are currently showing.

Also water is high as well - is this metered or unmeasured? Have you looked into whether you would save if you were on a meter?

What do the Insurances cost of £104 relate to? Is it all car insurance?

How many of you in your family for food at £450? EDIT just seen there are 5 of you, I think this could be cut back a bit by buying cheap, healthy filling foods, maybe you could aim for £400 this month and then try to cut to £350 next month (old style boards has loads of ideas that don't just mean living on own brand beans on toast)

Good luck, now you are back you will soon get back in the swing of things!

dottyanne

Lemon_Tree wrote: »

hi, the thing that jumps out at me is just how much you're spending on groceries. you could easily lop a large sum out of that by going on the old style boards. As an example my sister has a family of 6, with 4 children with hollow legs and though it's not ideal she is spending £50 per week on food, and that includes the cat food for 5 or 6 cats as well. Nobody says it's going to be easy but for the short term i really think you could cut back in this area and get you through the short term cashflow problems.
Do your children have part time jobs so that they can start contributing towards their activities and you don't have to pay everything?

Hi, I am keeping all receipts for everything spent foodwise, this month alone we have exceeded the food budget so this is one area we definatley need to adress, Kids are looking for part time jobs, to be fair they do a lot of jobs around the house etc and if they want something we cant afford they save up..