House renovations have landed us in debt

Foundational

Thanks, Prudent, my DW is interested in looking at Comps - sounds like you've had quite a haul recently. We are now worked to a £200pm budget for food and will be checking the Old Style boards.

Mrs Tine, we're grateful for your input, we do have a hill to climb...

Justicenpeace

Prudent: well done you on the comps - that's great!

Foundational: before you decide what to do with the life assurance perhaps check your pension (if you have one) because some include life assurance as part of the general benefits. No point paying twice if you don't have to - best to check it out.

Best wishes.

WASHER

Is your care really worth £7K, if so do you have finance on it, if not I would seriously think about selling it and buying a slightly cheaper one, even if you dropped to a value of £5K, thats 2k instantly off your debt.

Your mortgage is likely to go down according the news I am hearing lately, they are saying, (and I take it with a pinch of salt at this moment) that interest rates could remain low for at least 3 years.

You could lower your telephone bill, stop talking and use e-mail.

Present £60 is too high especially as you have young children, they do not yet know the value of money, you could cut that in half easily a month.

Have you checked your perks at work to see if you get life insurance, whilst I agree its very very important to have LI, there is no need to be insured twice.

How is your credit rating? Could you look at 0% cards? Use quidco for cashback.

WASHER.x.

Foundational

Thanks, WASHER, for more interesting ideas. Our car (Honda) is paid off and we think it is worth about £7K. We never thought of selling it and getting a cheaper one. It's so reliable that we would some misgivings, but an option to keep up our sleeves perhaps?

At the moment going on to the SVR with our mortgage would leave us better off. If rates stay low, we'll be in a good position come May and we'll make the most of it. If they stay low for three years, then that would be great!

Phone costs we are looking at driving down. Our landline with BT is expensive and we are researching alternatives, including getting on to BT for a better deal. Presents - yep we can reduce the £60 we've been spending.

Life insurance is included with my pension so yes, we're sort of paying twice. Probably need to look at what this would give plus the stand alone Life cover and whether it's more than would really be needed.

Credit's almost ceratinly too stretched now for an additional 0% credit card (turned down by Halifax), but we have Virgin till May or a bit beyond.

Am I the only person to find Quidco a bit confusing? Only really a quick look at the Quidco website, probably need to concentrate more!

WASHER

If you have life insurance with your job, then I would suggest only your wife needs to be covered and not you again, but you also need to have joint mortgage life cover. Does that make sense, its late.

Quidco, can be confusing? which bit do you not understand.

If you have been turned down for credit lately, DO NOT apply for more credit, it will damage your ratings and this could affect your mortgage rate if you decide to apply for a new fixed rate.

BT is expensive, take a look for example the Post office for your homephone, you get free calls in the evenings and weekends at no monthly charge, you still need to pay a landline charge. I have the post office, and I pay £15 per month including line rental, but then I use email rather than phone people. Look at martins advice for home phone, its on the tap at the top of the page, you may find it useful.

Just remember every penny saved is a penny off those debts.

Prudent

Re your phone: I pay for my landline with BT which is £11.50 per month (may have just gone up?) and then pay £9.99 for unlimited calls and internet with AOL. Calls to mobiles and premium rates are extra but rarely cost me more than £2 a month extra. So in total I pay under £25 a month for phone and internet.

Edit: took time to look back at your actual costs for phone and internet. Swapping to a similar package to mine could save you £300 a year. Which with shaving £100 off food is £1500 already

Prudent

WASHER wrote: »

If you have life insurance with your job, then I would suggest only your wife needs to be covered and not you again, but you also need to have joint mortgage life cover. Does that make sense, its late.

This is a really good point. When I streamlined my budget several years ago I also discovered this saving. My job gives me a 'death in service package' of 3X my salary. You maybe able to scrap or reduce your life cover.

Edit: (same reason as before) this could save you a further £600 - bringing total savings to £2100 or £175 a month.

I would also cut the outgoings on clothes and presents and it may be possible to add another £50 to that.

Foundational

We've just been having a good chat now the kids are in bed and we'll be following up the detail of getting a better deal on our phone -we're light users and BT's charges do seem high. We will be reviewing our life insurance and may well scrap our 'additional' cover. I've checked and my job does pay our 3 x salary for 'death in service' - I thought it was only 2x !

As well as good, supportive advice, the technique of totting up the possible monthly savings to a year's amount is inspirational, many thanks, Prudent. Would certainly recommend this to other money savers! You first have to be on top of (or at least in touch with) your monthly outgoings and be doing the spending diary too... after only a short time we are really getting into the discipline of this. I would encourage others to do that SOA and start the diary, and also say that posting on here and getting advice from good people helps such a lot...

Foundational

Forget to mention we signed up for Quidco this afternoon. I found a couple of (very positive) reviews on Caio and Dooyou (just Google Quidco reviews) and they both explained how it works really well.

lynzpower

Yes, over time the quidco money can really total up. I havent ever really bought much using quidco - thge Oh also has his own account, between us weve probably had over a thousand pounds each in the last couple of years.

:beer: