I'm taking the DFW plunge-but boy do I feel SicK!

Sea78

Hi,

I understand the wanting to be df before having a baby - my aim for the next one! (have 2 already)
Here goes...

newleafer wrote:

SOA:

mortgage - 794.92
Home maintence - 6.50
Home ins - 29
Council tax - 121
Water - 33
Gas - 30
Electric - 25
BT - 22 Can you get a better deal? Just pay for line rental and then use a cheap provider (what are they called? Primus 2?)
Broadband - 22 - Could get this cheaper.
Mobile - 85 (joint) WOW!! Need to get this right down. when can you cancel/change?
Life assurance - 84.84 Again extremely high - search on MSE to find better deals.
Food shopping - 200 A lot for the 2 of you when trying to pay off debt - check out the Old Style board - I aim for £170 for 4 of us, and that's quite extravagent!
pet food - 15.90
Car maintence - 37.50
Car tax - 26.25 Do you have 2 cars?
car ins - 35.90
Petrol/diesel - 200 ( I work 40 miles from home, hubby works 100 miles away and stays away 4/5 days a week ( looking for a new job now)
sky - 18 Needs to go - do some DVD tarting.
tv lic - 10.99
newspaper -10.39 Again, not needed, read on internet.
union - 22 Not sure if been mentioned, but make sure you claim tax back on this as it's professional duties

Debts-

Egg loan - 13775 now 13152.83 (apr 6.9%) ends mar 11 pyt 457.67
Natwest loan - 25000 now 21900.33 (apr 6.5%) ends sept 11 pyt 271.00
Barclaycard CC OH - 1475.50 limit 2000 (apr 19.9%) min pyt 36
WOW High APR make this a focus for paying off
Barcalycard CC me - 462.74 limit 1200 (apr 19.9%) min pyt 25 AS ABOVE
Egg CC OH - 4063.76 limit 4500 (apr 15.9) min pyt 82.63
virgin CC me - 4409.04 limit 6500 (apr 22.4) min pyt 110 Try to clear this/swap it to lower APR ASAP, the min payment won't be doing much at all.
Virgin CC Oh - 3491.53 limit 4000 (apr 15.9) min pyt 72
Natwest CC me - 3685.51 limit 3800 (apr 17.4) min pyt 82
Overdraft - 2700 interest charges 20 a month as well as 12 charge for advantage gold acct.

One of the ways we've getting round the deficit is by not putting the car tax/maintence money.

But by cuting back there you'll have to find the money from somewhere...


I think you can cut back and then make your outgoings much more easily. I don't know about CCCS - others will help there I'm sure.

Sell all you don't need on Amazon/ebay and left over stuff at car boots and throw the money at those high APRs...I use to think what's the point about little amounts until I got on here and now realise that they really do help!

Sea xx

funkymonkey

have added some bits of info! snowballing is your best bet! keep positive!

newleafer wrote:

So here we are (hubby and I) we just had our light bulbmoment:eek: . 7/07/06
After spening 24 hrs reading threads and following martins suggestions I realised our debt is quite bad £52641.25 :mad: so here we are feeling sick, embarrassed, desperate and very stupid. And there are no reasons just the excuses, the usual spending what we dont have, consildating and spending again.

I snowballed yesterday and its a good feeling knowing how and when, but I have a problem in that I am 31 and have been desperate for a baby for years now, but never would while we had all this debt, so as much as the snowball is great, i could be 37 before its possible to not need my salary !

So yesterday I was looking at secured loans, but having taken martin's advice i know that would be stupid. So I do want to be DF so I'm willing to make changes, so here follows or SOA's and the imediate plans I have for reduction any other suggestions would be great. An incite in to us is that I am a born worrier but hubby is quite calm and collected but he got really low 2 days ago, not like him at all so thats my inspiration.

SOA:

mortgage - 794.92
Home maintence - 6.50
Home ins - 29
Council tax - 121
Water - 33
Gas - 30 is this the cheapest suplier? same with leccy
Electric - 25
BT - 22 this is expensive! use a cheaper company for your calls! see martins phone section in money tips!
Broadband - 22 again this is very expensive! if you are out of your 12month contract - change to a cheaper provider - see the broadband section in forum for info!
Mobile - 85 (joint) again WAY too much! if out of contract maybe go PAYG or if in contract ring them and ask to move to a cheaper tarrif
Life assurance - 84.84 well done on using virgin money!!
Food shopping - 200 do the monthly grocery challenge on MSOS forum - for a couple without kids and two cats i do monthly shop on around £100
pet food - 15.90
Car maintence - 37.50
Car tax - 26.25
car ins - 35.90
Petrol/diesel - 200 ( I work 40 miles from home, hubby works 100 miles away and stays away 4/5 days a week ( looking for a new job now)
sky - 18 cancel and go freeview with the old sky dish!
tv lic - 10.99
newspaper -10.39 cancel these - use the internet or watch the news!
union - 22

Debts-

Egg loan - 13775 now 13152.83 (apr 6.9%) ends mar 11 pyt 457.67 is this figure right? seems way too high! did you mean £157.67
Natwest loan - 25000 now 21900.33 (apr 6.5%) ends sept 11 pyt 271.00
Barclaycard CC OH - 1475.50 limit 2000 (apr 19.9%) min pyt 36
Barcalycard CC me - 462.74 limit 1200 (apr 19.9%) min pyt 25
Egg CC OH - 4063.76 limit 4500 (apr 15.9) min pyt 82.63
virgin CC me - 4409.04 limit 6500 (apr 22.4) min pyt 110
Virgin CC Oh - 3491.53 limit 4000 (apr 15.9) min pyt 72
Natwest CC me - 3685.51 limit 3800 (apr 17.4) min pyt 82
Overdraft - 2700 interest charges 20 a month as well as 12 charge for advantage gold acct.

Outgoing £3001.12
Incoming £2949.00
Deficit £ 52.12
One of the ways we've getting round the deficit is by not putting the car tax/maintence money.


I've included every thing, i plan to get rid of sky and tv lic, we dont watch much tv mainly DVD's. So we can forego it for a while, Mobile contract due to expire, will look for a better deal and lower th cost.

Any suggestions welcome.

Stil feel sick , but facing the demons. I've read some of ccc's website, do you thing we should approach them or carry on with the cost cutting and snowballing?

thank you

Newleafer x :rotfl:

in*the*red_6

Hi newleafer

Your mortgage is pretty big. Do you have equity? Perhaps you could consider selling up, paying off some debts and renting until you are on your feet again?

TBH though, if I were in your situation, I would contact CCCS and have a play about with figures on what you'd need to survive with one income. If you go onto a Debt Management Plan your credit rating will be screwed for quite a few years but what's more important to you - having a family or a good credit rating? I can guess what the answer will be.

DrEvil_2

The banks love you because you are only paying the minimum each month. Apart from your mortgage, your highest bill is your interest bill.

The biggest gain you can make is by reducing your interest bill.

Apply for 0% credit cards.

Phone the credit card companies and ask for lower interest rates. Virgin can do this, but phone them in the morning as they have a daily quota. Hint that you will take your business elsewhere f they don't.

Are you getting the best deal for your mortgage? Perhaps a fixed interest could help you budget, especially with a baby in the future.

One more suggestion is to change your mortgage to interest only, and throw the difference at the highest interest rate debt.

Finally, make a detailed budget. This is important because underestimating your outgoings usually leads to more debt. Stick to the budget. A little trick I use is to give myself a spending money limit, and use the number of days in the month to work out a daily limit. E.g. £200 divided by 31 days in July gives me £6.5 per day. That way I don't overspend in the first couple of weeks after payday.

Josie_Jump_3

Not that I'm an expert on these things, does your husband have to pay for lodgings whilst he's working away ? I know you mentioned he's looking for a new job but as your mortgage is quite high would it be worth considering selling your house and moving closer to your husbands work that is if property prices are better there ? This could release some equity in your house, reduce your mortgage & save on travel expenses although it may be that you would need to find a job in your new area. I suppose it depends on who is the higher wage earner etc.

Emmzi

do you already have some life assurance through employers benefit scheme? Many pay 3 or 4 times salary on death...

I would also ask on the tax board about what hubby can offset against tax for work expenses...

shayshay

Hi Newleafer

Dont be so hard on yourself, you are not very stupid at all. getting credit is way to easy and after all it could be argued that those who know they are in debt but are not prepared to do anything are the stupid ones but that is an entirley different story.

As mentioned there are numerous ways you can cut your outgoings, and the living off £30 for food is possible. If it were not for our three kids (2 being in nappies) we would easily be able to live on £20 max, albeit without those little luxuries but we have had them before and thats why we are where we are.

As for the family.......sure having kids can cost you money, but it is possible to get all those baby bits for nothing such as cots, changing tables, clothes etc from either Freecycle or Charity shops. Sadly we did not know of Freecycle before but everything we had for our eldest has been used on the other two as well, so equipment wise we have not had to fork out for new equipment as we were able to look after it in the first place.

Good luck and rather than beat yourself up, instead give yourself a pat on the back for doing the hardest part and actually facing the debt, it sucks but at least you know now how and where to go from here.

Dr.Shoe_2

myrnahaz wrote:

Cancel the Advantage Gold part of your current account immediately - it's a total rip-off. Think hard about what benefits it's brought you (I bet it's none). There are NO advantages to having this account.

They're just taking advantage of their most vulnerable customers. The only people to get gold out of it are the ones taking advantage.

newleafer

Firstly thank you all very much for your suggestions, i will try and answer as many of your questions as I can remember.


I found out about tv lic today, sucks doesn't it!
Will call sky and cancel, someone said about using dish for freeview, is that via the sky box, do I need a new card? We only bought our house a year ago and we don't have an aerial, but we do have a integrated digital tv set, can sly lead be plugged into tv?

Egg Loan Pyt and Natwest Round the wrong way Egg Loan 271 a month and natwest 457.67 a month.

In answer to questions about mortgage we only justed moved to this our first house last year, we moved 120 miles from rented property because property was so expensive to buy there. Our fixed rate perios runs out on the 31st march 07, and if we paid it off early we would owe more than originally because of redemption fee. We only have a small amount of equity like 11K as its a new house and only a year into paying for it.
Something that concerns me is that we may not be able to get a new mortgage at the end of the fixed rate period due to our credit rating, and if that is so our mortgage repayments will go up by £150-200

Hubby still working that distance away due to having not be able to complete full work duties due to awaiting a knee op that he had this year and now he has return to full duties, hence why he is now looking for new job and he earns the better salary, he stays with his nan when at work, so not paying any costs but its hard to food shop for him for there (including lunch) and for me while alone and then for when he is home, I will look at MSOS forum.

Advantage Gold cancellation, I think this helps keep overdraft costs down, also it includes identity fraun ind, ins to cover mobile phone inc call costs(dont have ins on mobiles) amongst others. What do you think?

Bt- We hardly use the phone 82.99 in calls in the last year the rest is service charge and cost of caller display-any suggestions?

Gas/Elec- we recently got conned into changing and its become a long drawn out saga thats still not resolved and its cost us more money, so we are in the process of changing make to our old company and in a few months when I can do a proper comparison I will change it.

What about broadband we have an 8meg line? I was thinking of changing mobile to orange as they have free broadband, but hubby is a bit concerned as the have a limit and he spends hours online gaming, also friends have said reception not great in our area, is there a way of finding out about reception in your area.

Life assurance is for mortgage, this is joint cover including critical illness, and was a long drawn out process due to hubby's knee problems, and a back problem I have due to work, it took 5months, it was horrid.!

I think I've cover everything, if not I will post smaller replies.

Thank you everyone for your support and suggestions.

Newleafer x:T

newleafer

OOH! What is old style boards, being a newbie I dont even know how to use these forums very well.