I finally did it...

lynzpower

1st off you need to start by giving yourself the after tax & NI figure. I estimate this is somewhere about third. So after tax & NI, you come out with 2117 ish. ( not including your partners income) You need to be ensuring that the money is set aside for the inland revenue and you HAVE to be paying your NI contributions. Set up a direct savings account for this. Its vital.

You are overspending per month something like £450.

If I was in your shoes, Id be directing your partners income directly towards the debt (along with whatever you are paying) and the debt only. You can then cover everything else comfortably on your own.

As it is, if your OH is paying for living expenses ie rent & bills? I am looking at this and is proportion is much more than you have been paying. Do the sums and make sure he is paying half and half only. Currently I fear his income is subsidising your lifestyle of taxis & other silliness.

I think its jsut a question of getting a handle on where the money goes. Have you looked at the budget planner. You havent been budgeting for presents, dental, holidays, days out, anything like that. If taxis is something that you are not able/ willing to give up, they need to be accounted for in the transport section.

Go through the budget planner and note down everything and that is literally everything that you will spend money on all year round.

sammy115

What kind of self employed are you. Do you work from home. You can put a lot of expenses down to your business. For example mobile, travel, internet, etc etc. Plus if you work from home the IR will allow some of your home phone bill and some heating costs to be put against your IR.

Lynz - are you having a red day!

sammy115

Unneccessary spend
Misc (shopping and other foolishness) - £750 (WHAT iS THIS? I SUSPECT STUFF YOU HAVENT BUDGETED FOR LIKE DENTAL, OPTICAL, PRESENTS, NIGHTS OUT, ETC)
Food and Drink - £195 ( MEALS OUT?)
Cash withdrawals (for taxis and other foolishness) - £315

ME again. All unneccessary spend money could be thrown at your debt over the next few months till your October date and you could be debt free.

lynzpower

sammy115 wrote:

What kind of self employed are you. Do you work from home. You can put a lot of expenses down to your business. For example mobile, travel, internet, etc etc. Plus if you work from home the IR will allow some of your home phone bill and some heating costs to be put against your IR.

Lynz - are you having a red day!

I was and then I changed it all!!!

CosmoCat

lynzpower wrote:

1st off you need to start by giving yourself the after tax & NI figure. I estimate this is somewhere about third. So after tax & NI, you come out with 2117 ish. ( not including your partners income) You need to be ensuring that the money is set aside for the inland revenue and you HAVE to be paying your NI contributions. Set up a direct savings account for this. Its vital.

You are overspending per month something like £450.

If I was in your shoes, Id be directing your partners income directly towards the debt (along with whatever you are paying) and the debt only. You can then cover everything else comfortably on your own.

As it is, if your OH is paying for living expenses ie rent & bills? I am looking at this and is proportion is much more than you have been paying. Do the sums and make sure he is paying half and half only. Currently I fear his income is subsidising your lifestyle of taxis & other silliness.

I think its jsut a question of getting a handle on where the money goes. Have you looked at the budget planner. You havent been budgeting for presents, dental, holidays, days out, anything like that. If taxis is something that you are not able/ willing to give up, they need to be accounted for in the transport section.

Go through the budget planner and note down everything and that is literally everything that you will spend money on all year round.

lynzpower, goodmorning

I'm an actor which means we are selfemployed for tax purposes only, employer at the time takes out NI. I pay tax. I am still paying off tax bill from previous year, on a job where i didn't make as much money and had to put on my credit card. We also bought our first property last june. so that's where alot of the credit card debt came up.

as for my OH, he is not subsidising my lifestyle. He pays to my account £650 towards mortgage (£915), egg loan (£247) and council tax (£81). total = £1225, so he's paying a little over half those bills. the other half i pay. The only bills he's responsible for is the water, the sky and the tv license. I pay the rest. I'm not so sure how it seemed that he was subsidising my lifestyle. could you point it out to me, if i wasn't terribly clear.

CosmoCat

lynzpower wrote:

I think its jsut a question of getting a handle on where the money goes. Have you looked at the budget planner. You havent been budgeting for presents, dental, holidays, days out, anything like that. If taxis is something that you are not able/ willing to give up, they need to be accounted for in the transport section.

Go through the budget planner and note down everything and that is literally everything that you will spend money on all year round.

I also wasn't finished posting...sometimes this computer gets the better of me.

lynzpower you are also right that i need to get a handle on my spending. i am not budgeting correctly for one off holidays and I am also not budgeting correctly for things like subscriptions and photos that i must have for my profession. I have to say though, when i get a good job, i spend alot of time playing catchup from times when i didn't have a job or had a job that paid quite a little.

thank you for your wonderful advice.

CosmoCat

sammy115 wrote:

What kind of self employed are you. Do you work from home. You can put a lot of expenses down to your business. For example mobile, travel, internet, etc etc. Plus if you work from home the IR will allow some of your home phone bill and some heating costs to be put against your IR.

hello sammy115, thank you for your comments. I do put alot of these expenses down to my business, but have to be careful how much and what i claim. I've been a good girl when it comes to tax, been doing this for over 5 years now. because most of my business occurs outside the home i cannot honestly claim home utilities. thanks again for your comments.

CosmoCat

woke up with renewed energy this morning. decided to take the few hundred i had in savings account and pay off the capital one card. no more 24% interests. will call them on monday and cancel the card, or see if they will close the account and give me one of their new platinum ones which is 0% until september 2007. it's worth a shot.

thanks again to all, keep the advice and the kicks up the bum coming. and watch this space for updates!

lynzpower

Hi there love
Sorry, I hope you didnt take offence at what I wrote, its just that until recently Ive been doing that, using lodgers money to buffer my lifestyle. Please dont take offence it really wasnt my intention at all .

Basically I added up the bills that you were paying and split in half, so this means that his share of the bills you listed was 565. I didnt know that he was repsonsbile for the loan, though so I guess it works out you are subsidising his side if you see what I mean.

Do you have a seperate account for rent & bills or does it all come out of your current account? i have a seperate one, and it takes care of itself never really need to look at it.MAybe this might make things more in control? Then OH and you can have standing orders for both into that account. If you have bought the house together it makes sense to pay for things "together" in that say whoever has the gas bill with a massive rise doesnt get lumbered, or whatever.

Lynz
x

OberonSH

Hey melabarrie,

Welcome to the forum. Don't worry about beatings or bashings, that's not what this place is about. We're all here cos we owe people money, and to support each other. I hope you find it helpful, I know I have.

From glancing at your SOA your earnings are fairly high, and you already know you have a bit of a tough time with buying 'stuff'. I still have the odd day where I think 's*d it, I'm going to treat myself to lunch today instead of taking sandwiches again', but on the whole I find a good way is to ask yourself whether you'd like to be debt free a bit earlier or have that handbag/shoes/posh shelving unit!

A friend of mine used to whack everything on her credit card, then I asked her to work out how much interest she was paying on her handbags etc, and if that was the price in the shop, would she pay it. It worked out a handbag she bought for £50 was actually costing getting on for £75 when she added the interest she would pay by not clearing the card off. She ws shocked.

My advice would be to discuss with hubby freezing all the non essentials like sky, charity etc for a few months. I find that by getting rid of these type of things, you very rarely miss them enough to put the back again. Plus ther'e an article about giving to charity without costing you a penny in the Articles section. And every little helps, by knocking them off for a few months you could be debt free that much sooner.

At least you've caught it before you have companies knocking on your door, so be glad that you're the sensible sort. We'll have to licked into shape and boring the ears off total strangers with talk of DFD's, SOA's and how much money they could have saved on XXX if they'd visited this site first!