How do you say No to things you really need

dancingfairy

P.S There is a no way I would say get rid of the dog - I've no doubt that for some people with mental illness it provides a sense of purpose and forces you to focus on other things beside yourself, also the sense of companionship it must give you.
df

hillcats

Do keep your chin up fella, it sounds like you are doing a really good job whilst under quite some strain, YOU WILL WIN.....

zarazara

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 2
Number of cars owned.................... 1
Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1316.49
Partners monthly income after tax....... 0
Benefits................................ 410.67
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 1727.16
Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 210
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 113
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 116
Electricity............................. 66
Gas..................................... 30
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 37.57
Telephone (land line)................... 14
Mobile phone............................ 25--this is high,have you investigated PASG? give yourself a low budget eg £5and when its gone ots gone until next month
TV Licence.............................. 12
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 24---unaffordable luxury at the moment
Internet Services....................... 30
Groceries etc. ......................... 300
Clothing................................ 0
Petrol/diesel........................... 200--ouch!
Road tax................................ 15
Car Insurance........................... 29
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 0---it never needs oil change or anything?
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 80---can this be reduced?
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 70---look at season tickets for NHS stuff.
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 25
Buildings insurance..................... 15
Contents insurance...................... 10
Life assurance ......................... 10.48
Other insurance......................... 53----what is this? do you need it?
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 0
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 20----reduce to £10
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1680.05

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 165000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 1500
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 166500

Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 40000....(210)......2.49
Secured Debt.................. 17500....(113)......3.99
Total secured & HP debts...... 57500.....-.........-
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Barclaycard LOB................6059......135.......0.7
Virgin.........................1600......40........0
Total unsecured debts..........7659......175.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 1,727.16
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 1,680.05
Available for debt repayments........... 47.11
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 175
Amount short for making debt repayments. -127.89
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 166,500
Total HP & Secured debt................. -57,500
Total Unsecured debt.................... -7,659
Net Assets.............................. 101,341
Created using the SOA calculator at www.makesenseofcards.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using IE browser.

theres money to be saved. see in red type above. What about a second part time job? would that help out?

Norfolk_Jim

Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions.

If you have a spouse who will work with you so that you takle these things together, that person I would say is worth their weight in gold.

Yes, a return to the Malawi bush appeals, but I am a bit old fashioned, when I think of divorce or seperation I remember that I vowed on my wedding day "in sickness or in health" and "for better, for worse".

Mrs Jim was a wonderful wife until she got sick. Since then it has been a lonely life, and then I got sick too.

I get a lot of inspiration from these boards - I've always managed to cope before but there is just a never ending progression of differing unexpected expences - they never seem to end. How do you all cope?

I hope Mrs Jim will get a job once we move - in the meantime I keep trying to stand still even. will consider these new suggestions now, thanks - JIM

swampduck

I feel for you as it seems everything keeps kicking you when you are down - others have come up with good ideas for savings. But while I appreciate you both have health problems, Mrs Jim seems to laying her problems at your door too for you to deal with.

Not everyone can cook - but they can all peel a potato can't they? Even if you menu plan - some things still need doing. Perhaps if you get the energy together to bulk cook some meals and coerce the family into helping by chopping onions or whatever then they may actually start to appreciate you a little more. Then before you get in from work someone can pull the prepared meal out of the freezer, peel some spuds and away you go.

It's easy for people to say budget and spend xyz amount and no more! I've been there -some weeks shopping is more expensive - some weeks not.
I used to find that I'd allocate a certain of amount of money eg £200 for a month. In week one I'd spend maybe £55 instead of the £50 allocated - but life is like that! So I then say ok there's 3 weeks left so divide the amount of money left by 3 giving an allowance of £48.33 per week but on the second week I'd only spend £30 which meant that there was £120 for two weeks which meant £60 per week (riches!!) I used to find that if you divide your money by x-amount of weeks you always knew that you had some money even if it was only £20 Not that you had spent the lot and what the heck were you gonna do?!!
At the end of 4 weeks you could stick any underspend in your back pocket or a money box for overpayments or simply emergencies.
Its all about being flexible. Life throws stuff at us so its easy to give up and think why bother!!
Just another thought if you live miles from where you work why not shop on your way home - loads of supermarkets are open late and it's means you dont have to do an extra journey on the weekend with Mrs Jim. That saves you 40 miles (probably a gallon of petrol say!) so your money will stretch a little further that way.
I hope you can understand the drift of what I'm trying to say but hang in there and stand firm with the family and get them on side however old they are. After all whatever life throws at you - means you all sink or swim together!

Good luck

Swampy

niccatw

Aw Jim, I could feel the tears !!!!! as I read your last post. You wife is very lucky to have such a rock to support her! Sending you big hugs and many, many positive vibes.

I know exactly how you feel with expense after expense that you just weren't expecting (water coming in through the living room window - and not just a little, possibly unsafe gas hob and a wonky boiler)! Sometimes I just think, "Why me, give me a break. I'm trying"! (other things I think, I couldn't possibly post on a public forum )

I don't have the family pressures you do but I live on my own so understand the lonliness - it really does help if there is some-one you can let off steam to! For me there isn't and that has impacted on my mental health and I'm currently off with anxiety. Trying to get that back on track - and I'm with you on finding inspiration on the forum. It reassuring to know there are lots of other people working through the same problems!

And I think we probably all do what you do; we get on with it. And we cope, but perhaps only just! And we thank our lucky stars for the good days. And wish we had a padded, sound proof room to go scream in on the bad days!

I guess we're all in this together and I hope we can help each other out.

Take care

niccatw

Oh, I've just realised that every now and again, when the forum turns my words into exclamation marks, it's because it can't read context and the word obviously has multiple meanings, not all of them innocent! Can't believe it's me this long to work that out! I always was a slow learner!

pelirocco

GeorgeUK wrote: »

Not easily - i have a different size of family and most of my info on this comes from the oldstyle board.

Here are a few threads that may be worth looking at though.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2176651
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2254127
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=326929
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1437561

Where you but items will also make an impact on the price. Also if you use vouchers it will help.
Sites like this may help too if like me you can't cook much more than toast.
http://www.supercook.com/

Actually my post should have a had a roll eyes smiley lol . i do know how to cook , and I budget but every time someone posts an SOA they are always told they can save on groceries , even when they dont appear to me to be extravagent

I clicked on the first link you posted , if you read through the whole thread ( ive read it before ) you will see the OP , didnt include a lot of things in his ( her? ) challenge and in fact spent far more

Norfolk_Jim

hermum wrote: »

Hi again Jim, I don't know if you've seen this link
http://www.ocdaction.org.uk/files/2009/11/advocacy-at-work-newsletter.pdf
has your wife applied for disability living allowance? Does she have a CPN or is being seen by the mental health team? If so try & get to an appointment with her & see if she can have a support worker, someone other than you may be able to get through to your wife that she really does need to curb the spending, easier said than done I know as I have bipolar & most of the time spend zilch, other times I can go crazy & blow loads on nothing. Also maybe you could take away the cards & give a budget that you've both agreed on for spending. It really does sound as if you need outside intervention to keep you both well. How old are the children?

As far as seeing the mental health team goes, for us both, in the first year (years for Mrs) there was councelling and some help from mental health nurse. What we found was that these professionals are really overstretched and they prioritise, which I can understand. They've given us "Coping strategies" and we do cope - I work - she can do all the normal things people expect.
When I tried looking for help in the past they were mainly interested in can she dress herself, feed herself, organise her own medication, and she can. So we were pretty much left to get on with it.
Until very recently I did give some spend money to Mrs Jim every week, but it was never enough. I have to strictly control her access to the bank, to cards, to the internet for fear of uncontrolled spending - it makes me feel terrible, like some kind of abusive monster. I posted some time ago about how going shopping is horrible, all the looks I get as we go around the shop with me say "no" "put it back" and "we dont need / cant afford that" , its like being pestered by a big kid. People who know nothing about us look at me like scum and I feel ten inches tall and wish there was a way to crawl under a rock somewhere. So I try and go shopping alone if I can. Its an unhealthy way for husband and wife to be but I have no better answer. Mrs Jim needs to find a job and then she can spend on what she wants with her own money.

My kids are 14 and 11, one is really talented, in the "gifted" form at school for art, the younger one is Statemented and can barely write or add up. They are both my precious ones - I would lay down my life for either of them. Warts and all, in spite of the teenage strops and sillyness of youth, they are my pride and joy.

earthmother

I can sympathise with your post earlier today - it is very difficult when the person you married changes, for whatever reason - for us, it was DH who became physically disabled just weeks after our first child was born (and just as I was hitting a major bout of PND) - all our plans and dreams of what family life would be like went out the window in one fell swoop. We only just kept it together that first year or two, and almost 9 years on, and we still sometimes struggle to come to terms with the 'loss' of what could have been - someone once told me it's effectively a form of grieving you have to go through, and I think they're right.


On a practical front - I can't offer much that hasn't already been said, but have you spoken to your mortgage provider about going to interest-only terms? We did that when it came to our time to sell up, and it made a substantial difference to the finances for those few months. If you're definitely selling anyway, then it's not going to affect you in the long term, and it may give you a little respite, and maybe give you a chance to save up removal costs and the such, in the short term.