My SOA

Plutos_2

Income - £1277 after tax a month


Monthly outgoings (the water, gas, elec figs are my half of the bill)

Rent - £730
Gas - £50 a quarter (EDF)
Electric - £50 a quarter (EDF)
Water - £20 (EDF)
Phone/Broadband - £0
Mobile - £35
Council tax - £65
Travel - £60 (£3 a day on tube) + £40 (to go home 'up north' twice at £20 return)
Food - £50 a week (mostly sandwiches / other rubbish when at work)

Other - ? (not sure where money goes, keeping diary)


Debts

Capital One Card - £900 at 29.9% apr paying £35 min payment / month
Natwest Card - £800 at 16.9% apr paying £20/month min payment
Natwest Overdraft 1 - £1600 at 0% apr
Natwest Overdraft 2 - £350 at 22% apr
Student Loan - £10k, not paying back yet
Library fines - £0.90

Owe friend £800, he's happy (ish) to wait until January.
Owe College £600 (they are happy to keep adding a small amount of interest after I talked to them)
Parents: £1000 I want to pay back after they helped with flat deposit. They don't expect this any time soon, but I promised I'd pay when I had the money.

What do you recken?

Plutos

Plutos_2

Oh yeah - forgot the Student Loan of about £10k which I'm not yet paying off.

Also of note that I get a bonus of £3-5k (before tax) in January.

This is really worrying - it looks like up to this point I've been spending money I 've not been earning. I had a car and sold it when I moved to London at the beginning of the year so that got me £3k in the bank, and I didn't have that level of credit card debt.

Help!

southernscouser

Hey plutos!

OK, here we go!

Gas and electric. Have you shopped around? They seem really high! Do you pay all the rent?

Can you transfer the money from your 22% interest to your 0% overdraft?

Normally your priority debts should be those with the highest APR but as you owe friend and folks money do they need this back by a certain point?

chriz1000

Rent - £730
Gas - £50 (EDF) - You should be able to find a cheaper supplier.
Electric - £50 (EDF) – As above. See Martins tips on how to save.
Water - £20 (EDF) if EDF – Good price, but using the same company for all 3 utilities is more expensive over all when you look at your gas and electric bill.
Phone/Broadband - £0
Mobile - £35 – If your near the end of your contract you should be able to negotiate a much better price.
Council tax - £65
Travel - £60 (£3 a day on tube) + £40 (to go home) Can you buy monthly/seasonal pass to save money? To go home I take it you mean to visit your family? National Express (coaches) does some very good deals and might be able to save you a lot.
Food - £50 a week – Very expensive, I wont try and preach too much as I spend a lot on my food shopping. If its just you that you need to feed you could bring this down to probably £50 a month if not less just by cooking from scratch.

Other - ? (not sure where money goes, keeping diary) – Well done.

Debts

Capital One Card - £900 at 29.9% apr paying £35 min payment / month
Natwest Card - £800 at 16.9% apr paying £20/month min payment
Natwest Overdraft 1 - £1600 at 0% apr
Natwest Overdraft 2 - £350 at 22% apr

What are the limits on your two credit cards? If I was you I would try and apply for a 0% APR card to shift all your interest accumulating debt onto. If you have higher limits on the cards you may be able to shuffle to debt and pay a lot less in interest.

Current Total outgoings: £1155

Molanole

Okay - I'll give it a go......

Monthly outgoings (the water, gas, elec figs are my half of the bill)

Rent - £730 I know you're in London but is this a bit high? I'm in West London (Ealing) and not paying anywhere near that - possible you could be somewhere cheaper maybe??
Gas - £50 (EDF) This is really really high - especially if it's only your half of the bill. Have a look around and see if you can find a cheaper supplier, there's loads of good stuff on the utilties board and have a look at uswitch for a comparison
Electric - £50 (EDF) - As above
Water - £20 (EDF)
Phone/Broadband - £0
Mobile - £35
Council tax - £65
Travel - £60 (£3 a day on tube) + £40 (to go home) I'd get an Oystercard if you haven't already got one, they return significant savings even on prepay. If you need overground you can do this on most providers if you have an osyter season ticket but best to check
Food - £50 a week Is this just for you? It's a bit on the high side if so but this is the bit I am struggling with the most too. Menu planning is the way forward and why not cook in bulk so that when you get homelate and can't be bothered you already have something prepared.

Other - ? (not sure where money goes, keeping diary) Good plan, a diary will really help.


Debts

Capital One Card - £900 at 29.9% apr paying £35 min payment / month
Natwest Card - £800 at 16.9% apr paying £20/month min payment
Natwest Overdraft 1 - £1600 at 0% apr
Natwest Overdraft 2 - £350 at 22% apr

Owe friend £800
Owe College £600 (they are happy to keep adding a small amount of interest after I talked to them)
Parents: £1000 I want to pay back after they helped with flat deposit.

What do you recken?


Good luck! Keep us posted with your progress!!!

black-saturn

I agree with all of the above statements but I just wanted to say about National Express vs Trains. I travel from here to London every weekend and up until now have always used National Express. Recently though the trains have changed their ticketing policy and the outward journey is always £5 no matter where it's to. So sometimes a journey can work out cheaper. I used to pay £20 for a return ticket on National Express, now I'm paying £15 for a return ticket on the train wheras it used to be £24. But like I say, it depends on what the journey is.

Plutos_2

Thanks guys - this is great stuff!

Some answers:

RENT: I'm sharing with a friend in a nice area of London. It is very expensive, and I wanted to be central for my first year. To be honest we went a bit over the top with the flat. It does mean I'm in zone one, so the tube is only £1.50 each way with Oyster and I don't take any taxis. I'm going to start walking back from work which means I will halve my London travel costs.

The contract finishes at the end of January, so this is a pretty large part of my income gone until then. I intend to move further out after this.

TRAVEL: As above, I'm already on Oyster, but I should be able to halve the cost by walking more. My 'going home' budget is for going 'up North' and I pay on average £20 return which is pretty cheap really. I'll often pick up the first class deals which cost £10-12 each way rather than £6-£10 so there are some savings to be made here (£15 a month).

My girlfriend lives up home, and becuase I stay with my family it means free food and drink for the weekend so its pretty cheap.

GAS/ELEC: good advice, I'm going to eat then get on uSwitch to see how much I can save. I'm renting - can I still switch?

FOOD: it's expensive. I've got a busy job and have got into the habit eating no breakfast then grabbing something in the morning (~£3) then something in the afternoon (~£3 again). My evening meal is not too bad - at the moment I'm eating a lot of ready meals from Tesco (5 for £4) and making my own stuff.

I have purchased porrage, bread and cheese so from tomorrow I will eat breakfast and make my own lunch to take in!

DEBT: my 0% overdraft is maxed out. I've applied for a 0% deal (egg) and a lowish rate loan to consolidate this but have been refused. I can't really keep applying. The problem is that I've only lived at my address for 5 months, and only worked for 5 months.

My experian score is 387, and I have a couple of missed payments from my student days. Over the last 6 months it shows my payments (bar one in Feb) up to date. I have always paid my phone bill.

Any advice on how to transfer this to cheaper credit would be much appreciated. Even if I could get it all down to 10-15% it would be much better (and only having one payment would be easier). I really don't know what to do because I don't want to keep making apps.

I should mention that I am starting a claim for bank charges from Natwest becuase I was frequently charged by them in my student days.


Thankyou everyone - you're being really helpful!

chriz1000

Sounds like you have already started to make some good financial choices.
Have you maxed out all your credit cards or is it just the overdraft?
Since you have two credit cards try speaking to Natwest first and ask them to lower your interest rate, tell them you are currently paying less interest on another card. Then ask about there deals and rates for balance transfers.
If you are near your limit ask to have it increased to around £2500, explain that there reason you want the increase is because you want to transfer all your debt to there card.
If you don’t get the results you want try doing the same with Capital One.
You probably won’t get everything you want, but hopefully you will get some positive results.
You then want to balance transfer the 29.9% Capital One Card and the 22% overdraft onto your Natwest Card. This should substantially reduce the amount of interest you’re paying on your debt without them going into your credit file.

CLAPTON

your gas and electricy isn't expensive is absolutely astonomical...total of £2,400 per year for a two bedroomed flat...ask your parents what they pay for your family home..
check the meter readings....is the heating and water on all the time 24/7?

Plutos_2

chriz1000 wrote:

Sounds like you have already started to make some good financial choices.
Have you maxed out all your credit cards or is it just the overdraft?
Since you have two credit cards try speaking to Natwest first and ask them to lower your interest rate, tell them you are currently paying less interest on another card. Then ask about there deals and rates for balance transfers.
If you are near your limit ask to have it increased to around £2500, explain that there reason you want the increase is because you want to transfer all your debt to there card.
If you don’t get the results you want try doing the same with Capital One.
You probably won’t get everything you want, but hopefully you will get some positive results.
You then want to balance transfer the 29.9% Capital One Card and the 22% overdraft onto your Natwest Card. This should substantially reduce the amount of interest you’re paying on your debt without them going into your credit file.

That's great advice, thanks. I'll give them both a ring tomorrow and see if they want to retain me as a customer! Both the cards are pretty maxed out (within 100-200 £ of the limit) at the moment.

your gas and electricy isn't expensive is absolutely astonomical...total of £2,400 per year for a two bedroomed flat...ask your parents what they pay for your family home..
check the meter readings....is the heating and water on all the time 24/7?

You're right! It's actually much less then that (silly me!) the bill is quartery i think. I've got to check that one out with my flatmate when he arrives home

thanks everyone.

Plutos_2

I've checked out the figures:

Gas £50 a quarter
Elec £50 a quarter

(these are my halves of the bill)

I have cancelled my economist subscription (£12 a month) and have taken the Spectator instead (5 issues for £1, I'll cancel it after this) as I need something to keep me up to date with current affairs. Will I be able to re-take the economist (they offer 63% discount when you subscribe) again, or is it in their TOCs not to let you do this?

Saving £11 a month this month!