My soa

debt.b.gone

have psoted this on my diary but jsut incase nobody reads it will post it here too...

Well im going to do something scary now and post my SOA....never done it before as always feared what it said! Before i do though it is quite scary because it says we have a shortfall!! Money is tight but we do seem to get by each month and make overpayments....but i guess we dont take into account car tax per month. Here goes...any suggestions welcome...although we do live by bare minimum already.....

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.................... 1
Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 0 - applying for jobs left right and centre at the moment!
Partners monthly income after tax....... 2059.44
Benefits................................ 122.48
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2181.92
Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 486.4
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 296
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 6
Council tax............................. 101
Electricity............................. 31.5
Gas..................................... 31.5
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 46.53
Telephone (land line)................... 25
Mobile phone............................ 15
TV Licence.............................. 12.29
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 160
Clothing................................ 1 - have put £1 as it wouldnt let me put £0.....reality is clothes buying is well off the list at the moment.
Petrol/diesel........................... 30
Road tax................................ 12.5
Car Insurance........................... 26
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 8.33
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 232 - this is currently subsidized by the lovely parents.
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 8.65
Contents insurance...................... 7.2
Life assurance ......................... 28.42
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 8.33
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 40 - have put £40 here as we are prone to the odd take-away but are trying hard to curb these demons and get the figure down!
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1613.65

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 135000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 6500
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 141500

Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly.. .APR
Mortgage...................... 111010...(486.4)....2.65
Hire Purchase (HP) debt ...... 10659....(296)......12
Total secured & HP debts...... 121669....-.........-
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly.. .APR
hsbc loan......................5712.78...248.6.....0 - o% now as all interest has been paid so full amounts now coming off loan total! :-)
black horse....................906.4.....55.08.....0
lloyds loan....................283.07....105.7.....13.9
lloyds o/d.....................3500......50........9.96 - currently a premier customer in order to get cheap interesst rates, the £25 fee at moment gives us benefits we wouldnt have if we paid the higher rates on overdraft...make sense?
lloyds cc......................1644.26...30........21.9
barclaycard....................5362.44...81.66.... .14
lloyds cc......................2775.09...56.63.....15.9
virgin f.......................3357.74...76.09.....27.9
MBNA...cc......................3153.75...69.35.... .26.4
Hsbc cc........................3087.42...77.19.....21.9
home learning college..........1182.75...62.25.....0
Total unsecured debts..........30965.7...912.55....-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,181.92
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 1,613.65
Available for debt repayments........... 568.27
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 912.55
Amount short for making debt repayments. -344.28
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 141,500
Total HP & Secured debt................. -121,669
Total Unsecured debt.................... -30,965.7
Net Assets.............................. -11,134.7
Created using the SOA calculator at www.makesenseofcards.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using IE browser.

catspaw

Hi,

OK you SOA looks almost too good to be true and says that you have £568.07 left for debt repayment each month.

Your min card payments say $451 or there abouts leaving £117 ish aavailable.
Are you paying the minimum on your cards every month?

What you need too do is keep a realistic spending diary: every newspaper/pint of milk/chocolate bar/take away for a month and then you will get a realistic idea of what you are spending.

Its when you say that you get by every month and make oveerpayments and yet the SOA says a short fall:D

JasX

can you cut/suspend the childcare nursery costs while you're out of work?

debt.b.gone

catspaw - we have £568.27 available for debt repayments...but thats before making any...these come to £912.55 per month so the shortfall is £344.28.

Jas X - childcare costs are covered by my parents so maybe i should remove them from the SOA....if i dont include childcare then our shortfall is reduced to £112.28 per month.

planning_ahead_2

If you are going to put childcare expenses down then you have to show 'income' from your parents to cover it otherwise you are skewing your figures. Probably best to remove the childcare if you don't have to pay for it at all.

What lovely parents you have btw

planning_ahead_2

Have you checked you are getting all the benefits you are entitled as family? I don't have children under 18 so no nothing about what you may be entitled to but do know that you can check benefits online (link will be around on this site or someone will be along to point you in the right direction shortly)

talana

Ok, so remove the £232 childcare from the equation for now. That puts the monthly shortfall at £112.28. Your Lloyds loan will be coming to an end in 3 months by the look of it, so that's another £105.70 available which will just about wipe out the shortfall. That's good news.
Have you considered swapping your car for something a bit cheaper? If your car is worth £6500, then that's a lot of capital tied up.

Tixy

Have you so far kept up with all the minimum payments on your debts?

To me there doesn't look like much you can cut down on, have you considered a DMP? have you talked to one of the free debt advice organisations?

If you found work then I assume you would be able to meet all the payments? Therefore if you feel hopeful that you will find work (I know its impossible to know) and that this is only a short term problem instead of a DMP maybe you could find out if you can take a payment holiday on the 2 loans for 3months or so? Some loans allow it. [EDIT - or just the hsbc loan as I now see then lloyds one will finish anyway soon -thanks Taluna]

That would buy you 3 months whereby you could just manage and then if you found work in that time you could then start making real inroads in to debts.

If not then I think you would need to look at seeking professional advice with regards to a DMP or other options.

Good luck with job hunting.

velrist

Check that you're getting all the benefits you are entitled to and good luck with the job hunting!

You're going to have to cut down on as many non-essentials as possible until your Lloyds loan is paid off to free up the extra £105, even then you'll be £10 short but you should be able to manage to reduce that from your grocery and entertainment budget. Have a look a the Old Style forum for ideas.

If you can get through the next 3 months until your Lloyd debt is cleared then at least you can stop things from getting any worse.

Then put all your debts into the snowball calculator to determine which one to make additional payments off first.

It might be worth dropping one of the £25 overdraft fees in the short term at least unless you think you'll end up with more bank charges as a result. You say you get added benefits but are they really necessary and worth the extra you're paying compared to being able to pay more off your Virgin or MBNA cards?

debt.b.gone

Thanks for all the replies people!

Velrist - we are charged £25 on the lloyds account (for having it) and the rest is interest.....with the account we have an interest free part of £500.....if we were just a basic account then the interest would equal what we pay now....so at present i think its worth us sticking with it, we get breakdown cover, travel insurance, experian credit reports, card security and phone insurance with the account.

On the benefit front we are getting what we are entitled to so dont think we can get anymore.

Tixy - Yeah we are up to date with everything, never had any late payemts or defaults. So far i am trying to avoid a DMP as at present we seem to make all payments and I feel like we have the control, if things get very difficult then we may have to look into it.

I didnt think there would be much we could improve on, ive become quite a MSE, but just need to get rid of the debt now.

Fingers crossed i can find a job asap...just posted 4 applications off and applied for 10 onine! If i can get a job then we will have extra to pay off debts and i can really start kicking them into touch!

Talana - yep if we can hold out til march we will be £105.75 better off and less of a deficit. Also no water & council rates feb & march will ease the situation.

Planningahead - yep my parents are a great help!! Should they stop paying then im afraid little one wouldnt be able to go. So very grateful to them for that.

Once again thanks for the advice & responses.

RAS

Hi

Can you look round and see what there is that you no longer use, toys, babyclothes, boks, DVDs.

Look at e-bay, amazon and the car boot sale. If you can get enough to tide you over the next three months, great. If you get enough to do that an knock a bit off the virgin account, even better.

Look at clicks, survey etc. Use www.quidco or other cashback sites to change insurers etc, even if there is no saving in payments. I doubt if you are getting £300 a year's benefit from the bank account, as some of the benefits will be included in other insurances already but do the sums and see what the answer is.

Join www.freegle.co.uk to get stuff "pre-loved".

What is the limit on the barclaycard?