My Budget, Need Help

RAS

misspoppy wrote: »

You might as well go bankrupt which I think is what you want to hear. Wipe it all out and carry on spending and having a life. You started this thread because you can't pay your DMP and tax debts well you know why now, you need to sit your oh down with the SOA and give her the choices BR or cutback and DMP

Also, as far as i can see, there are no joint debts, so both would have to go BR.

The problem would be the car - the loan is with family and the car would be taken by the OR. Missus would be allowed a run around to replace it but probably only £1000 to £1500. She would still want to but not be allowed to repay the loan.

thriftylass

nirelandguy wrote: »

Ok, Here is an updated COA, I have been wondering why I have been having issues making payments to Payplan and its obvious really isn't it, I haven't been able to pay tax credit overpayments either, we simply dont have enough money. -Yes you do!

Sure there is a few obvious things like.
Mobiles saving £50
Smoking saving £40

You could cut a few extras but this will leave me feeling totally demoralised and make working a pointless exercise. And Yes I know the telephone is expensive but stuck in contract until March.


My Pay 1000
Parnters Pay 376
Child Benefit 132
Child Tx Credit 480
Total 1992

Rent480
Tax Credit Overpayment 60
HB Overpayment 5
Electricity 60 -we use an average of 40 a month over the year
Oil 50 - turning down the CH by a couple of degrees won't kill but save more
Car Loan 100
TV Lisence 11.61
Telephone (Inc Net) 73 - way too much if you pay that much for your mobiles already, even with being stuck in an expensive contract there must still be loads of unnessecary calls in that number
Mobile 120
Mobile 2 25 - do you need two mobiles ?
Road Tax 25
Insurance 25
Petrol 160
Food 400 - even including nappies and cleaning products that could easily be under £300, check out the Old style forum or live on 4k forum
Maintenance 50
Clothing 50 - don't need, make do/mend what you have, get kids clothes through friends or freecycle etc
Childcare£ 300
Dentist etc 45
House Insurance 13
Credit Union 60
Hair Dressing 20 - luxury
Smoking 40- stop immediately
Lottery 16 - stop immediatly, even if it's your OH playing, she should see the pointlessness of wasting money on it in your situation
Saving 64 - use to pay off debt, you don't need 12x£64 for Xmas presents
Total 2152.61

GREEN = BOTH PAY
RED = PARTNER PAYS
BLUE = I PAY

Just skimmed through your thread, sorry if things have been mentioned before, but I see about £300 of possible savings a month. You have no reason to go bankrupt, in your case it's the easy unneccasary way out. You have to accept that you got into debt and overspend and now you have to accept the consequences and cut down your spending. Obviously you made some not very clever decissions about taking out credit but you have to see that you can't go on like this, which I see as a danger if you go bankrupt. Other people are much worse off and deal with it.

On a more positive note, you made it here and asked for help, hopefully your OH will see the light too . Cutting down now to pay off your debt will also put you in the right mind set for after when you'll hopefully be saving for what you want to buy.

dancingfairy

Basically you have some tough choices to make and the sooner you make them the better as you are getting in a worse mess all the time.
Make the decision - grit your teeth and cut back, go bankrupt or take some of the other suggestions but you need to make a decision.

To be honest the ability to feed yourselves, keep a roof over your heads and clothe yourselves is far more than all those poor people in the Phillipines have right now - it kind of brings things into perspective - well for me at least - maybe you can mention it to your OH?
You can do it - yes it will be tough but we brits are made of strong stuff - we survived 2 wars and we don't have hurricanes and tsunamis to worry about so we can do it.
Go for it.
df

thriftylass

nirelandguy wrote: »

I dont have a clue, Im almost 30, I have been broke since I left school at 16, it hasn't changed one bit, dispite training etc I may as well have pee'd in the fire for all the good it did so my patience is starting to wear a bit thin with life in general, Had I maybe lived a bit prior to getting in debt it might of helped a bit, I dare say the next 30 years won't be any different. Sorry if I'm feeling sorry for myself but there you go, and as for the advice I am greatful to all those who contribute and I will impliment some of the suggestions.

You could start by stop feeling sorry for yourself and start taking responsibility and start taking in the rather good suggestions the people gave you so far. JUst trail through the various forums here. For instance to learn how to budget and cut down as no-one taught you so far as you've been broke since leaving school despite having had training and job. And definitely try to get your OH more on board. Also for your kids future and to be an example to them. I'm sure you can do it

Keeley_p_2

Honestly, I'd suggest showing your OH the thread on here. Maybe once she realises just how worried you are, and how daft she is being (£40 on Tesco clothes?! I don't think that would fit in my wardrobe!!) with stuff that, at the end of the day, she wouldn't miss, she'll start to help out a bit more?

System

To be honest it wont matter what I do, when the OH decides to have nights out and weekends away with her mother etc not alot I can do, Yes her latest idea is a weekend away, she is also out on Sat night, of course worst in the world if you say something, I haven't been out since 05, its been so long I hve no interest anyway so it doesnt bother me.

ExNicotineQueen

nirelandguy wrote: »

Actual food itself comes to about £60 a week but then there is nappies, bread and milk everyday, cleaning products, deodorants/shampoo etc. It varies obviously £100 is top line

Dentist £45. That includes 5 prescriptions we get monthly, actual dentist is £10 on one of there plans.

As for savings, this is something my OH does for Christmas time, we need to in order to buy gifts, in saying that half is spent this year already due to a problem we had with the with the car, which was paid from a loan from a family member

You mentioned the actual dentist charges £10 per month on a plan. So that leaves £35 which you are paying for 5 prescriptions monthly, is that correct? If so, have you thought about an annual or 4 monthly pre-payment certificate? From the article below it states that prescriptions will be free of charge in Northern Ireland from April 2010 and that it would be £9 for a total of 4 months of pre-payment certificate. By my calculations £18 would cover you for the next 8 months, taking you up to the April 2010 date.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7641637.stm

£100 for food, cleaning products etc is excessive. I used to be like you and would spend £100 per week on food for 2 people including cleaning stuff, toiletries etc. I have now shaved this down to £40 per week. How? By dropping a brand, shopping around and buying in bulk. Also, toiletries don’t have to cost the earth, I don’t see why 1 bottle of spray deodorant shouldn’t last 1 month between you both. My OH is what I call an ‘over-sprayer’ meaning he always sprays much more than is actually needed but the bottle usually lasts 1 month, if not 6 weeks and that is 2 showers twice a day for both of us. Even if say you want separate deodorants, Boots, Superdrug etc usually have BOGOF offers. My point was, you don’t need to spend the earth.

Food shopping I cannot stress how important it is to go in armed with a list of what you are going to buy and stick to it. I used to stick everything on my card and this almost always guaranteed overspending and not sticking to my budget. Nowadays for shopping I withdraw the set amount of cash and use that per week. Another tip is to make sure you have eaten before you go shopping as going on an empty stomach again makes you pick up carp that you normally probably wouldn’t. Hunger does strange things.

There are also other little things you can do to ekk out and make things last longer. If you are drinking a lot of milk have you tried buying UHT milk? That can work out cheaper than buying fresh milk plus it has a longer life. And it also prevents any situations where you might go to the shops ‘just to buy a pint of milk’ and end up coming out with £10 of carp on top of that. You could also try watering down the milk with water to make it last, I sometimes do this with OH and he hasn’t noticed lol.

As for cleaning products, Stardrops should be your new best friend. I used to be a brand junkie i..e Flash, Cif etc different sprays for the kitchen, bathroom, one for cleaning mirrors, you catch my drift. I read a thread on here about Stardrops and decided to buy a bottle. It only cost something silly like 69p for a 700ml bottle and I read the back of it and all the wondrous claims that you could even use it on clothes and as washing up liquid? Surely not, I thought, however it has replaced all my sprays and cleaners and now I have 2 bottles of Stardrops (the brown one multi-purpose and the green one disinfectant). I purchased them in summer 2008 and over 1 year later they are still half full. I have refilled my spray bottles with Stardrops and water and use this to clean around the house whether that be bathroom, kitchen, toilet etc. No need to waste £££’s on harmful chemicals when you can just buy one bottle that does near enough everything. If you have a Poundland near you they stock them too.

The money you put aside for savings should be going towards your debts. You don’t need to spend nearly £800 on ‘Christmas’ and all that it entails. As a compromise, if you halved it, that's still like £30 you are saving per month.

Even with smoking, £40 per month is pointless really. Are you a social smoker? A pack of fags costs about a fiver I think, that’s what, 8 packs a month? It’s just not worth it. I used to spend about £120 per month on tobacco/rizla and I was only on about 5-10 roll-ups per day. Today it has been 18 months since I stopped smoking. :j I went to see a hypnotherapist, 1 hour later I was a non-smoker and haven’t looked back since. One week later my OH went to the same guy and he too is now a non-smoker. You could possibly from the savings made from reducing your shopping bill and the prescription charges, pay for 1 session (and that’s all you need) of hypnotherapy and give it a go. You need to be looking at long term investments and that £40 per month could be spent on treating your family, or if you want, spoil yourself.

You don’t need to go bankrupt in my opinion. I am by no means an expert in all this, I too find it hard paying off debts and trying to have a life at the same time but you get through. I think your biggest obstacle is your OH’s attitude to money. You need to have a serious sit-down and talk to her. It can’t all be one-sided with you putting in the hard work to reduce your debts and try and make a better life for your family if she keeps coming along and destroying all this by spending on carp in Tesco and playing the lottery. I wish you luck nirelandguy, it sounds like you have some tough choices to make.

gfplux

Hello again nirelandguy,

I have just caught up with this thread since I last posted.
I have had to skim many of your posts as they make for very sad reading.
You are definitely in a bind and have a real problem with money and from what you say your partner.
It might be water under the bridge but I have to say that much of your debt has come from spending more than you earn BUT also perhaps on the wrong things.
It might be the debt comes from buying a lot of S+it over many years and not things that will make you both happy.
However that is the past.
You both have to live with the present and the future.
You have to get your partner to see the problem NOW or you will get further in debt buying even more s+it.
If you go Bankrupt it may clear your debts but there is a human cost to pay.
Is your relationship with your partner strong enough to cope with bankruptcy?

I think you need to get her to see reason NOW otherwise you both will have to deal with bigger problems in the future.

Good Luck

System

I could cut back, no problem, and I hate to sound like I am blaming my OH but when shes no in with me I think whats the point, why should I bother. Something I think my shift her would be a visit from a debt collector, that might get her into gear, but in saying that I thought debt collectors were supposed to be frightening figures? I opened the door to one a few years ago, he was about 5'3, bald, fat and 60+, But it may still get her into gear

elfen

nirelandguy, there's been a lot of things said, that you NEED to pay attention to. Main consensus seems to be:

1. TELL your OH what is going on with money, and her spending 40 quid cos "you don't have a life" might be the reason for it.
2. Your CTC is VERY low for someone who earns around £15 grand, and if your OH only gets 400 a month there is NO WAY you have hit a threshold. Can you get Working Tax Credit and see if the CTC is correct too? Also, do you have one or two nippers? As something has said one and something has said two and I'm getting confused.
3. You NEED to look at the food spending. Cut down from brand name to own brand stuff, try and use reusable nappies (I used to wear them and it did me no harm) and cut down on the !!!!! that goes in the trolley. Better still, do it online and save a bit more.
4. The savings, how much does this work out and for how many people? Tell your family you're a bit short, so only the kiddies will get gifts, and you don't mind if you only have one or two. Most will understand, after all it's a credit crunch. Also, take some of the "savings" and buy some stuff for your nippers to make Xmas cards for your family too.
5. The smoking needs to be cut down or go completely. This doesn't help AT ALL, as that £50 can go elsewhere.
6. See if you are better off without OH working so you can save on childcare, or compromise (she goes back to work P/T when nippers start school) and see if she can do a distance learning course or OU course until then.