New Diary - Hope to be DF eventually....

Emma285

Just run the snowball calc on CC - taking out what we're hoping to transfer to the loan and i'm a little confused about which cards it recommends snowballing first. I've got £600 on Halifax at 0% til May and £1572 on Tesco's at 0% til Dec - so why does it recommend that i overpay on Halifax over Tesco's?? I know the apr is 2% less on Tesco after promo rate, but i won't pay interest on Halifax for another 6 months or so??

Primula

Hello and good luck with baby, debtbusting - well everything. Your SoA looks not too bad to me, but I am no expert at all, mobile at £45 jumped out at me as being high though and buildings and contents def very high, as is car insurance? You could prob make savings there. Good luck

Emma285

Hi Primula, thanks for your comments. The mobile is two contracts one for me and the other for DH. The same goes for the car insurance - 2 cars, don't know if that's still high - but OH just renewed and got a reasonable deal. I've joined all our finances for the SOA as it seemed easier.

The buildings and contents is £50 pm but this includes a personal possessions thingy where items that leave the house get covered. My DH is into photography and has a lot of stuff to cover. Despite this, i still think its far too high - yet again another product with Halifax that i'm really keen to swap for a cheaper one! Must get on and look at that!

Catzpaws

Emma285 wrote: »

Just done SOA, so here goes...

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 1
Number of cars owned.................... 2
Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 533
Partners monthly income after tax....... 1430
Benefits................................ 120
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2083
Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 787.1
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 120
Electricity............................. 35
Gas..................................... 30
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 37
Telephone (land line)................... 15
Mobile phone............................ 45
TV Licence.............................. 11
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 150
Clothing................................ 0
Petrol/diesel........................... 90
Road tax................................ 20
Car Insurance........................... 58
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 0
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 25
Contents insurance...................... 25
Life assurance ......................... 0
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 0
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 0
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1448.1

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 170000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 10000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 180000

Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 136952...(787.1)....5.6
Total secured & HP debts...... 136952....-.........-
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Halifax .......................6800......110.......19.9
Egg............................4737......120.......19.9
Barclaycard 1..................3969......110.......6.9
Barclays CDL...................0.........158.......0
Tesco..........................1572......60........0
Barclaycard 2..................3300......90........6.9
Total unsecured debts..........20378.....648.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,083
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 1,448.1
Available for debt repayments........... 634.9
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 648
Amount short for making debt repayments. -13.1
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 180,000
Total HP & Secured debt................. -136,952
Total Unsecured debt.................... -20,378
Net Assets.............................. 22,670
Created using the SOA calculator at make sense of cards
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using IE browser.

Hi Emma

Thought I'd come by your diary again to see the latest updates!

Have you completed everything on your SOA? For example, you have nothing against:

Internet services
Clothing
Car maintenance and parking
Child related expenses
Presents
Haircuts
Entertainment

???

If these aren't filled in, then your amount available for debt repayments will be lower. Shows a shortfall at the moment, so the shortfall is actually higher... sorry :-(

Grocery budget does look good tho.

Regarding the credit cards thing on your snowball calculator, sorry, not sure why that would be. Hopefully someone else can help with this.

CP x

Emma285

When i edited the SOA, i forgot to add in the extra details like - internet services come with the phone contract for £15pm - great deal with orange that includes line rental and unlimited broadband. :money:

As far as anything else goes well it's all a bit hit and miss. Clothing and Haircuts tend to be very adhock when i've earn't more than usual, or if i get given money for birthdays / christmas's or any ebay sales (not that i do enough).

Car maint - car had to go to fords this month as no one else could deal with the issue i had (fortunately 2 garages returned it FOC as their computers couldn't identify the prob!) and that ended up on a CC. Other little bits get swallowed up i suppose, although i'm lucky that DH can do a lot of things himself on the cars - except plug them in.:(

Child related expenses - depending on what this is, mostly goes in with our grocery bills. DS has a relatively large savings account and we will use his money if he really needs anything we can't do with the intention of putting stuff back at a later date. But we do things frugally, only buying things he really needs etc. I do occasionally use washable nappies though..

Presents - we're fortunate that we don't but for many people, and those we do understand we can't spend a fortune. I've never added this up though, and we only have my dad in december, the rest should be after i've gone back to work in March.

Entertainment - forgotten what this is... :rotfl:
We have freeview & download stuff off iplayer or equivalent... have / go to friends for meals rather than go out... generally other cheap things that cost little or no money - MSE is free!! :money:

I'm sure the shortfall should be higher, but i think it probably balances out a little as i've paid things like car tax, insurance, tv license upfront. Also, hopefully my diesel bill will come down quite a bit whilst i'm off and child benefit and tax credits should go up at the end of nov.

It's certainly going to be tight - i did join the grocery challenge yesterday though so hope to see if i can reduce this.

Catzpaws

Child related expenses - depending on what this is, mostly goes in with our grocery bills. DS has a relatively large savings account and we will use his money if he really needs anything we can't do with the intention of putting stuff back at a later date. But we do things frugally, only buying things he really needs etc. I do occasionally use washable nappies though..

Presents - we're fortunate that we don't but for many people, and those we do understand we can't spend a fortune. I've never added this up though, and we only have my dad in december, the rest should be after i've gone back to work in March.

Entertainment - forgotten what this is... :rotfl:
We have freeview & download stuff off iplayer or equivalent... have / go to friends for meals rather than go out... generally other cheap things that cost little or no money - MSE is free!! :money:

I'm sure the shortfall should be higher, but i think it probably balances out a little as i've paid things like car tax, insurance, tv license upfront. Also, hopefully my diesel bill will come down quite a bit whilst i'm off and child benefit and tax credits should go up at the end of nov.

It's certainly going to be tight - i did join the grocery challenge yesterday though so hope to see if i can reduce this.

Sounds like you are being pretty frugal at the moment, so well done on this :T.

I look at my budget over a 12 month period, so even if have paid for something already (e.g. my car tax), I still put it in as this will need paying again... Also, there are expenses that happen that are out of the ordinary... like for me, I'll need to pay for insurance excess for couch and I've had to pay for library fines. So, these kind of need to be accounted for somewhere. The more complete the picture, the less surprises there'll be!

Guess that your current budget is only until March and then you'll need to revise? I'll be updating mine after Christmas, once hols and Christmas is out of the way.

Lemon_Tree

hi and welcome to the boards, you're in the right place to get help and get control of things. Just a little thing, if you do get offered the loan don't forget to cancel the credit card accounts that it will be paying off. Apart from the risk of running up the debt again (talking from experience) if you don't cancel it then it will show as available credit on your credit report and my hinder any future money plans that you have.
also i agree with Catspaws, if you pay for some bills annually then start saving for them now, as you clear and close cards there will be less options available when you need to actually pay them and you don't want to end up getting stuck.
good luck and hang around with us, we'll help you get there.
PS maybe you need to train your OH because if you're anything like the rest of us you're going to end up spending a lot of time on here, checking out things, or talking to him about the options which are available to you etc.. I'm sure mine's learnt how to sleep with his eyes open when i get started on the money chat

Emma285

Thanks CP and Lemon Tree, I'll try and include everything when i re-do budget for March. Hopefully this will be easier as i'll be keeping track of things much more closely from now on.

We've had to live fairly frugally since DS was born, and we managed to get married in this time as well so i know why we're in so much debt. (Not to mention all the DIY we've done mainly went on CC's) THere's still room for improvement tho...

Got a letter from Tesco's today approving the loan in principle - and yes, we'll definitely close those cards as they're expensive ones. Others we have are far better rates and get left at home for emergency use only!!!

On the downside tho, Barclaycard won't do a balance transfer to a debit card or overdraft so i'd need to bounce it through another card - great except i'll pay two lots of transfer fees :mad::mad:

Emma285

Oh, forgot to add, DH does do the sleeping with eyes open thing at the moment, especially if i mention money!!
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Generally, he knows whats best for him so is getting a little more involved!

Emma285

I've just registered with Quidco today and was wondering whether anyone knew if you go through an insurance broker and insurer that are both registered - do you get credit with Quidco for both or do i need to work out the best offer? Just looking at switching home insurance.

OH finally got round to opening an account with A&L the other night, so as soon as the paperworks through i'm going to start transfering our joint finances too. Hoping for £125 each for switching and recommending! Only regret not doing it through Quidco, as i think we could have got more - maybe not but who knows.

Popped into town today to try and return an unwanted gift to Boots, fully expecting them to say no, or that they wouldn't give me the full amount as it was probably purchased on one of their 3 for 2 deals, but they just stuck the full amount (£20) on a giftcard! :j I'm going to use it to buy some xmas prezzies as i have no budget for this.

I also officially start my maternity leave this week so really need to watch those pennies extra carefully!