£77,366.35 reasons to be debt free!

mel19632

Hi workinghard - my OH is exactly the same! Luckily I have managed to get him on board so that he gives me all his wages and I give him back pocket money. Obviously its based on a lot of trust that I'm not spending loads of money without telling him!
Good luck with your journey - it becomes quite addictive after a while...
I will be following your diary x

WorkingHardDFW

It certainly does become addictive doesn't it. I'm going to have to find something to fill the void when I do become DF!!

In_my_dreams

Nice to come back and see some messages

Going to adjust my SOA later as forgot to include dancing lessons and football for the kids and the dinner money :eek: So far we still have £25 left from weekly spends and I blagged a free lunch today as well

DH normally works from home but when he is based elsewhere he gets lunch there and is reimbursed, and costs about £20 a week. So technically should I take this out of the £75 spends as we get it all back at the end of the month or list it as a separate expense on the SOA which we are reimbursed at the end of the month. Suppose I could include it and when it's reimbursed just pay it as a lump sum off the debt? Decisions, decisions.......just want to make sure we don't get left short!

NSD today and still got £100 in savings which I put aside and have no intention of touching yet so I can let it build up. No news yet from tax man and OH is owed some more commission which we are hoping to get. All of it will go off the debt and could make a decent dent (well about £1K which isn't a huge dent in £77k!).

Really must do ebay but no motivation at all!

In_my_dreams

:jproud moment alert:j

I am dying for chocolate, OH has offered to go and get me some and I have said no!! He said it would only be £1, not much, treat yourself..............but no, it would mean breaking into the £20 note in the tin that I want to keep until Saturday so I can overpay.

Am thinking about Cadburys Chocolate Clusters but I will resist!!!

In_my_dreams

Another day.....up bright and early, done a bit of work and at 9am off to get the carpet cleaner as the carpet really needs doing! If I get it early enough should have it back by 6pm and it will only cost £14.70. Prior to last week I was looking at getting someone in to do it for me which would have cost far more!

Set aside Sunday as my ebay listing day, I have:- three bags of kids clothes, a laptop, a running watch, a notepad computer and some old toys that the kids just think have disappeared.......Would like to think I could get a few hundred pounds off them.

Am also thinking about selling some of my books on Amazon, but the problem is I adore books and hate getting rid of them, but I do have a lot.....

Also need to work out getting rid of Sky, we have an additional box which we pay £10 for and want to get rid of it but try and get the freeview channels, but not sure if it would work here, if you see what I mean.

On weekly spends front, decided with OH last night that we would put aside £80 a month for his refundable expenses and just transfer the money across every month. So far from the £75 taken out on Saturday we have £38 left, only need to pay for the carpet cleaner and no plans to spend anything tomorrow, so we could end the week with £23.30 left which I will pay off Egg. :j

david_hellier

In_my_dreams wrote: »

Ok, here goes!! Deep breaths - no judgments, hopefully you're all in bed and this will go unnoticed :cool:................

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 2
Number of cars owned.................... 2

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1827
Partners monthly income after tax....... 2790
Benefits................................ 132.8 - Child Benefit
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 4749.8

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 1684
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 152
Electricity............................. 35
Gas..................................... 55
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 40
Telephone (land line)................... 0 - Husband's work pays for landline
Mobile phone............................ 35 - my mobile, know I need to cut back.....
TV Licence.............................. 11.95
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 55 - includes cost of calls, looking at cancelling it if we can get freeview in our area.
Internet Services....................... 0 - Husband's work pays.
Groceries etc. ......................... 300 - first Grocery challenge this month to see if I can drop it down.
Clothing................................ 60 - only guessing based on extravagance before, but will reduce a lot!
Petrol/diesel........................... 150
Road tax................................ 20.83
Car Insurance........................... 34 - average month as normally pay it in full
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 45
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 56.44 - swimming lessons and babybonds
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 25.66 - Denplan
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 50 - four pets, may need to have another look around.
Buildings insurance..................... 10 - guessing both as paid them in full
Contents insurance...................... 10
Life assurance ......................... 16.24
Other insurance......................... 180 - Critical Illness cover, Unemployment/sickness cover.....I know, I know!
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 50
Haircuts................................ 25
Entertainment........................... 88.5 - gym and golf membership
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 3189.62

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 250000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 7000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 257000

Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 220440...(1684).....6.19
Total secured & HP debts...... 220440....-.........-
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Natwest........................8923.74...210.......0
Halifax........................8623.53...87.1......0
Virgin.........................11180.6...63.4......0
Natwest Loan...................22253.....310.3.....0 have the figure outstanding as it is now, not settlement figure
Barclaycard....................8466.19...160.......5.8 LOB interest rate
Egg............................11127.9...200.......0
MBNA...........................6790.82...25........0
Total unsecured debts..........77365.78..1055.8....-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 4,749.8
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 3,189.62
Available for debt repayments........... 1,560.18
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 1,055.8
Amount left after debt repayments....... 504.38
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 257,000
Total HP & Secured debt................. -220,440
Total Unsecured debt.................... -77,365.78
Net Assets.............................. -40,805.78
Created using the SOA calculator at www.makesenseofcards.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using IE browser.

At the moment we pay all of the above as detailed however for insurance, kids/our clothes, presents, car insurance etc we are putting £280 away every month to cover these items.

£300 is put away for food and £150 for petrol. We pay in total £1200 off our debts as opposed to the £1,560.18 which is left. We than have £75 per week which we take out of the bank and put in a tin. My thinking is, if we don't leave ourselves short, we CAN do this! Anything left out of the £75 per week will go straight off the debt.


My OH also gets bonuses every 3 months of between £100 - £500 and so we can use this to pay the debt and I have a new contract with new terms re commission so that will help.


Re Insurance - OH's industry was in a bit of a mess a few years ago and I was threatened with redundancy a few years ago as well (panic stations) and so we have found the cheapest redundancy cover. Also got cover for Critical Illness. For me, these are essentials as if we are made redundant, we have no savings etc and would be stuffed!


Gym and Golf - we both agreed to keep one thing unless things get really bad and this was them. We use the memberships a lot and have got our money out of them and I feel it is important for us. Obviously if things became dire we will cancel them.

So that's that, actually doesn't feel too bad looking at it. Haven't factored in costs of a holiday as we have decided no holiday until we have tackled at least a quarter of the debt.


Phew..........all done, off to bed.


Be kind!

Hi and Welcome to the site.

I'm sure the others have helped you suggest ways of cutting back, so I thought I'd take a look at the figures.

According to my calculations you have £228.49 per week to spend on food, clothes and anything else. This will avoid further overspend. I suggest you write this in the START box of the book (LBDC) and deduct spending through the week. Try to get to the end of the week with some left to carry over. If you have an OD you need to make an allowance to reduce this too. If you are running joint finances, then you each have £114 per week each. you will need to agree how to buy food together.

Good luck, the figures:

incomeweeklymonthly
self1827.00
partner2790.00
benefits132.80
total0.004749.80
divide by 4.33 £ 1,096.95 £ 1,096.95 total weekly income
rent/mortgage1684.00
council tax152.00
elec35.00
gas55.00
water40.00
secured loans
TV licence11.95
fines0.00
mob35.00
sat55.00
petrol150.00
road tax20.83
car ins34.00
car maint45.00
child exp56.44
medical25.66
pet ins10.00
build ins10.00
life16.24
other ins 180.00
gym and golf88.50
natwest210.00
halifax87.10
virgin63.40
natwest310.30
b card160.00
egg200.00
mbna25.00
total0.003760.42
divide by 4.33 £ 868.46 £ 868.46 total weekly spend
Start= income - spend = £ 228.49 per week

In_my_dreams

Thanks for your message. Although we do have £228 per week left I have divided it into weekly distribution:- £75 general spends, £75 food and £70 for savings for the bigger things, so that goes away at the beginning of the month. Will have to revise these as forgot to include kid's things and need to do this later.

Cleaned my carpet and it looks ace although it was bl00dy hard work! Had to do a bit of shopping and got some stuff for a friend. Normally I would tell her not to worry about the money as it's only a few pounds, but this time I will gladly take it. Being too generous has got me into the mess!

No more intended spends today hopefully..........but I did give up on chocolate, thought I deserved some whilst cleaning the carpet!

david_hellier

Great system, best of luck!

WorkingHardDFW

Well done on the resisting chocolate and the carpet cleaning. Thats something I really must get around to doing. What sort of cleaner did you get/use?

Ref the expenses thing we've struggled with that over the years as well particularly with petrol. This may also have caused some of our debt problems as well. Both my OH and I get petrol expenses and they can be quite a lot but equally our fuel costs are high as well. We've tried it several ways but now we budget for petrol (i've a seperate account for it) what we acutally spend pm and as part of our income I allow for a slightly below average expenses income. The difference is generally in our favour but it means any suplus gets put in a debt fund or paid off something specific if we've overspent. It works for us but we've spent a good few years figuring out how to make it work for us- daft I know.

In_my_dreams

In the past we've spent £1000's in advance for OH's work and it has nearly broken us! As we have a little extra left I am putting £80 in the joint account and then once it is reimbursed I will just have to keep replacing it every month!

Carpets look fab, just hired this medium sized thing which was a hoover and spray, not very big or heavy. Took me a few hours to do the whole house but not as hard work as I thought and only ended up costing just over £20!

Have caved on chocolate and had two bars!!!!!!