Huge kick up **** plus advice needed please

emylou

I have been a lurker on this site on and off for years, sadly however, mainly "off" which has led to me going through phases of money saving & then falling dramatically off the wagon

My current situation is; I am 29, renting a room living in my brother's flat, so cheap rent but does have its downsides (will come to that later). I am a teacher so on a good wage and worked during the holidays at a playscheme to get some extra money to go towards my holiday which was put on Barclay card & now needs paying off.

I have 1 yr left on my car loan £254.44/month
Rent is £340
2 outstanding balances on Credit cards
Mint I need to check & Barclaycard £340

My brother is very good with money and is trying to help me save as much as possible for a house deposit so he goes through my budget with me and for the last few months I have been withdrawing a specific amount of money for petrol/food/entertainment etc and he looks after it and gives it to me as required, this has the effect of me feeling like I'm asking for pocket money but because I used to spend without thinking about it and not check my balances he at least keeps me on the straight & narrow (kind of) by saing "you only have x amount left for the rest of the month".

Related issues are I'm crap at cooking & thus food shopping becomes a bit willy nilly and I end up wasting alot of food and also having alot of take aways which is one of my downfalls too the other side to this coin is that when my boyfriend comes over a couple of times a week we don't have any privacy cos my brother is in 99% of the time so me & bf end up going out and spending money just so we get time together. Me & bf went away during school holidays so my brother didnt have quite such a tight reign on my spends and due to car insurance & tax also being due I now have just enough money for petrol this month, £20 for food (but no idea what to buy that will make substantial meals and not get wasted) and about £9 for "entertainemt" hence me and bf will have to go for walks and find free stuff to do so we are not under my brother's feet but not bored either :S

I used to tutor during term time but this has stopped now as the girl has gone to secondary school and before that I did babysitting with an agency but was getting worried that I'd be in trouble for not declaring it to the Tax people so I ended up stopping but now I am thinking I should start again?
I have sold dvds/educational books on ebay & Amazon before but these days things only seem to sell for pennys but with amazon they will have to be kept (in my very small room) until they are bought & I know I need to have a huge clearout so don't know if it's worth listing them or just taking to a charity shop?!

Thanks for reading, sorry for the longwinded post. Any advice/help/KICKS welcome

Tixy

Hi Emylou

Good to hear you are ready to tackle your debts.
A couple of things I would suggest
Firstly with your cooking/food bills - this really is easy to remedy, although you say you can't cook it really is easy to learn. If you try the oldstyle board on MSE there are some lovely posters who will help your learn to buy cheap, healthy and easy to cook meals and will post receipies and instructions on how to cook. When you are feeding just yourself you'll find it easy to cook meals where all the ingredients are 'bunged' in one pan and left to cook - pasta, stiryfrys, rice etc are all really easy plus they'll be a lot healthier as well.
Is there just you and your brother living there? Do you eat and cook together? This often saves money as you can bulk buy foods - and learning to cook with someone else can be fun as there is someone around to laugh at any mistakes!

Whilst I can see that your set up with your brother works well in the short term the problem I see is that you are not actually learning to budget for yourself and control your spending. If you do get a place of your own he won't be around to dole out your spends in the same way. Ask him to help you set up a system which doesn't need him to be involved.
Maybe you could set up a seperate bank account to put your 'spending' money in each month and then use that to pay for your normal spends.
Also I'd suggest you need to set up another seperate account to save towards items that you don't pay for each month - you say you have paid car insurance and car tax - think how much easier it would be if you saved 1/12 of the annual cost each month so the money is sat there ready when you need it.

If you haven't yet got internet banking then get this sorted and get into the habit of checking your account at least weekly (but better still daily) so that you know where you are with your money. Same with credit cards, get signed up to check the accounts online and make sure you keep an eye on them.

It would help if you could post a statement of affairs http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html (you can use the budget you have done with your brother as a starting point but the SoA ensures you don't forget those one-off items) If you post on here I bet we can find ways to save you money.

Regarding going out with your BF there are plenty of cheap things to do. If he comes twice a week perhaps you could aim to have 1 no spend night (either going for walks etc or watching a movie in bed) and for the other night keep an eye on the offers on MSE for 2for1 meals and similar or use orange wednesdays for cheap cinema tickets. This deals link may give you some ideas http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/

Good luck

dancingfairy

Hi. I agree with Tixy - it's great that your brother has been helping you out with budgetting but it doesn't seem like it is going in - if as soon as you can you go on holiday away from his watchful eye and spend what you want anyway.
Also with the boyfriend - as Tixy said you need to put a little more effort in and take responsibility - there are plenty of free/cheap things to do - ie cheap/free cinema tickets, 2 for 1 meals out, walks in the park, maybe National Trust places/ gardens that are open if you like that sort of thing - cheap if you get a membership and go regularly, curry night/steak night whatever at your local pub or go when there are offers on, look in your local paper for cheap/free activities at weekends - free festival events, car boot sales etc, etc, maybe an evening class together - salsa dancing or something? swimming?
Agree with the cooking thing as well - cook a big batch of something and eat half and freeze half so all you have to do is take a meal out of the freezer in the morning/or cook from frozen - mince is good - spaghetti bolognese, chilli, lasagne base, stir frys are dead easy, sausages, frozen pizza (or even make your own), burgers, chicken?, curry? even if you start off making things with jars of sauce it will get you the idea and you can then easily learn to make your own sauces - planning is the key to ensure you don't waste things and that when you are busy you go for quick and easy ie microwave jacket potatoes and chuck cheese and beans on (now that really is easy).
Anyway a bit more organisation and thinking about things a bit more will really help.
Best of Luck
df

emylou

Thanks for your replies am so grateful, have been feeling very down recently due to a mixture of money worries, work, health, future etc so it was lovely to log on and see friendly & helpful replies

I will do an SOA tomorrow when I get in from work as have had a horrible day today so a bath & bed is calling me :S

You are right that it's probably not helping me entirely with him helping me budget so I will sort something where it's a bit more down to me- the initial idea came from me asking him if I should open separate accounts to have as "spending" and "bills". I do save monthly for car tax and insurance so they are coming out of my savings but because I wasn't very organised this year I had to pay it out of current account & then transfer over from my savings. Before my brother helped me I used to end up in my overdraft & then end up transferring back from my savings to get me back in the red thus meaning I never saved anything so at least I am actually saving now although I know it's probably not the best way to save whilst I have 2 outstanding credit cards but am trying to think ahead for my future?!

Sorry for the waffle, thanks again for your help and any future advice is greatly appreciated

BeautyandtheBeast_3

Hi your brother sounds great!!! try selling stuff on ebay - you never know!!

emylou

Hi BeautyandtheBeast,
my brother is great thank you! (shame he doesn't think so; he is suffering from depression which is hard to see him deal with and makes me feel partly helpless but also sometimes to blame).
Sorry for going off the point....

I used to sell on ebay; have got some cds, dvds and school/educational textbooks I was thinking of selling but when I checked ebay yesterday things looked like they weren't selling or were just going for pennies?! I did sell my unwanted upgrade mobile to put towards extra savings tho Have got quite a few clothes I could sell too- was thinking of a carboot sale but when I did that a few years ago people wanted everything for a quid and the most expensive item I had (a reebok jacket I think it was) ended up being stolen!!:eek:

BeautyandtheBeast_3

never been or done a car boot so cant help you with that one! xx

tealady

Hi Have you tried Amazon or Green Metropolis for selling books?
Re the budget. What I do is each month work out what I need to set aside for the bills and emergency fund. Then I divide the balance by 5.
Each week ON THE SAME DAY I take out that fifth (or less if it's an odd amount) that is my spends for the week.
Most months I have a week "in hand" so to speak so can use it for what I like.
HTH

emylou

emylou wrote: »

340



I used to tutor during term time but this has stopped now as the girl has gone to secondary school and before that I did babysitting with an agency but was getting worried that I'd be in trouble for not declaring it to the Tax people so I ended up stopping but now I am thinking I should start again?

I got a text today from the agency saying they were very busy & would I like to receive messages/jobs from them again? I am contemplating it as I used to do a few jobs a month & each job paid about £23 for minimum of 4 hours so it wasn't bad money and was usually very local but would I need to declare it to the Tax people as a second job?

Thanks for your replies

Tixy

Hi emylou
Assume the agency didn't pay you and deduct tax on your behalf? If not then you should declare this income as self-employment and complete a tax return - you would pay 20% of what you owe as tax (unless you are a higher rate tax payer) and this would be saved up and paid to HMRC twice a year.

That is the correct way to deal with it, plenty of people do not declare tax on casual or cash jobs. Some get caught.