Bigbubble's disgraceful SOA - help

Bigbubble

Hi

OK – here it is – my SOA as a few of you have suggested I post - I feel physically sick about this.

Have also started a spending diary –

I am becoming obsessed with money (and addicted to this site) I can’t sleep and I know this is affecting my ability to think rationally.

Thanks to everyone who has already offered advice – all ideas and suggestions gratefully received…I do feel that there is some bizarre sense of comfort in finally being open (albeit anonymous)


My salary - £2 200
Expenses claimed - £40
Husbands contribution - £712 (he has recently lost his job but has had enough work offered to him that hopefully this will continue – used to take home just over £1100)
Child Benefit - £70
Tax credit - £42

Total - £3 054

Monthly Outgoings:

Mortgage - £1071 (60% repayment and 40% interest only)
ISA (+critical illness) - £114 (40% of capital – doing really well over last 2 years)
Council Tax - £177
Gas - £83 – should be lower now as have switched supplier
Electric - £52 - should be lower now as have switched supplier
TV License - £10
Water rates = £19
House insurance - £33 recently switched
GCH insurance - £16 (reluctant to cancel as quite old system)
Phone line, basic TV package and broadband - £28 – just negotiated a reduction from £52
Phone charges - £minimal
Mobile phone - £23 (incl 500 mins) – negotiated down from £30 with Tmob
Food (3 adults + 1 child) - £400 (need to reduce this a lot – tend to include the odd treat, magazine, etc – but in my defence always try to use vouchers from MSE!)
Pet food - £10
Car Insurance - £31 – recently changed co
Car maintenance - £15
Car tax - £16
RAC - £0 – pay for with Tesco vouchers
Petrol - £90
Childcare - £231
Music lessons - £60
Clothes, shoes, etc - £45 (for my daughter and I – try to buy in sales)
Haircuts - £15 (for daughter and I

Sub total: £2539

Egg CC – Balance £11 000 (limit £11,500) Int/mth 1.24% Min pay £200
Marbles CC – Balance £6 000 (limit £7 900) Int/mth 1.3% Min pay £124
Tesco CC – Balance £6 849 (limit £9 800) Int/mth 1.3% Min pay £204 (Majority of balance relates to BT at 0% interest)
MBNA CC – Balance £5 700 (limit £6 400) Int/mth 1.3% Min pay £31
MBNA CC – Balance £5 228 (limit £16,200) Int/mth 1.4% Min pay £60
Mint CC – Balance £1 000 (limit £5 424) Int/mth 1.4% Min pay £122
Beneficial Bank CC – Balance £2378 (limit £9 400) Int/mth 1.7% Min pay £47

(Total credit card debts = £38 155 – oh help me)

Mint loan - Balance £??5 400 APR 6ish% Length of term 60 months, 46 months to go Repayments - £118


Nearly forgot overdraft – don’t even consider this as money I owe. Should do as reclaiming bank charges and could have my account closed!!!

Overdraft - £1000 (limit £1 450) APR ?% pay about £3 interest each month

(Total owed: £44 555)

Sub total: £909

Grand total: £3448

OVERSPEND £394!!!

There are loads of things that I haven’t included e.g. birthdays, Christmas, holidays, school trips, daughter’s friends birthdays, eating out/socialising, home improvement, dental fees, vet fees, home maintenance (incl replacing old broken washing machine last month). I guess this stuff accounts for the credit card balance.

Savings £0
ISA £11 000 (to cover £67 000 of mortgage in 17 odd years)

Mortgage £187 000
Outstanding £185 000
House value £290 000

Have recently signed up for quidco, pigsback and yougov
Am trying to claim back £3000 in bank charges – Sent LBA on 28th July having received an offer of £345!
Need to sell anything and everything on ebay, amazon or anywhere else

**purpleprincess**

Firstly, just wanted to say hullo and welcome!! :wave: you seem to be on the right track with switching suppliers etc. The main thing I can see if the food bill, which you've said yourself you need to get down. Check out the OS board for ideas. I'll find some links for you later. The only other thing that I can see is your ISA.........that could cut your debt down a lot and you can always restart it later with the money you're not paying off your debts.............

sanfrancisco

Purpleprincess is right. It makes no sense to have savings (I know they are to pay off mortgage) when you are paying higher % on the debts. Do you know how much you have?

If you have had your lightbulb moment (it seems you have) then this will be the best thing for you to do. It will also give you a psychological boost, hopefully by getting rid of a couple of the debts.

You are right as well, you need to get that food bill down, could be halved. Also, if you are serious then haircuts,clothes and music lessons should also be culled.

ZTD

Feel free to ignore any/all of this - but:

Find out what your OD APR is.

Shuffle your CCs so you max out your lowest APR cards with balances from your highest APR cards.

Don't save towards ISA. Think REALLY hard about critical illness - they reject about 20% of all claims.

Look around for a new GCH system. See how much it will be, how much it will save (more efficient, and don't forget to include GCH insurance) and work out a "payback period". If this is less than how long it will take to repay your debt, then think REALLY hard about using some of your ISA money to get a new one. And then cancel the insurance as it will be under warranty.

I know that seems counter to the "cut everything" ethos - but sometimes you do have to spend to save. Obviously don't do this if you are thinking of moving within the payback period.

Use your ISA (or what's left of it) to wipe out what's left of your highest APR cards - and/or OD depending on its interest rate. Don't forget to leave some emergency money.

At 1.5% APR per month, 10K will lop off £150 per month off your outgoings...

CLAPTON

well done on posting the SoA and for starting the spending diary.

It is however very important to add absolutely everything to the SoA so that you can really see where all the money goes and see the real state of your affairs...so you really need to add birthdays, xmas, holidays (surely you have none planned?) etc. etc. only once you have all the facts you can prioritise your spending and see where cuts are necessary

you say there are three adults in the household...is the third adult contributing to the househod income??

Presumably the ISA is not contractually linked to the mortgage i.e. you could cash it in to repay the debts?
If you can then i would suggest you cash the ISA and pay off the highest APR debt...this would free up the 100 you are paying in and about 200 of CC debt repayment hence reducing your outgoing by over £300 per month

this brings you within striking distance of breaking even each month although you will still have to cut back further...its essential you dont simply start spending on the CC again.

you should be able to reduce gas&electric by simply using less...check the timeswitch for the central heating...cut the time by at least half an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening..you probably dont even notice the difference and it might save you 10-20 per month....also why is the electric so high...do you have outside security lights that come on every time a cat walks by, use the tumble drier rather than hanging out washing, have lots of spotlights/halogen lights in the house...well worth investigating in detail..
clothes, haircuts, music lessons need to be considered if you cannot otherwise reducing spending to be below income.

is there any way to increase income...can you/OH get part time work..a few hundred extra would start making a real contribution to reducing debts.

lynzpower

hi there

just a query from me- you say theres 3 adults in the house, who is the other one? And what do they contribute ?

lynz
x

black-saturn

OK, heres my four pennet for what it's worth:

Mortgage - £1071
ISA (+critical illness) - £114 - This money would be better going towards the debt. The interest you get on an ISA is less than the interest your paying on the same amount of money in the debt.
Council Tax - £177
Gas - £83 – Get this down by putting a jumper on instead of the heating, using a slow cooker for meals instead of the oven. Don't switch to Atlantic, IMO they are a rip off.
Electric - £52 - Plan what you want to watch on TV and only have it on in those times. Have candlelight in the evenings. Switch everything off when not in use. Do not leave anything on standby. Switch to energy saving light bulbs.
TV License - £10
Water rates = £19
House insurance - £33
GCH insurance - £16
Phone line, basic TV package and broadband - £28
Phone charges - £minimal
Mobile phone - £23 (incl 500 mins) – negotiated down from £30 with Tmob
Food (3 adults + 1 child) - £400 - I spend £45 per month on 3 peoples meals. I'll give links to my menu planners at the end of the post.
Pet food - £10 - Will your pet eat Tesco Value pet food? They do food for most pets.
Car Insurance - £31 - Do you really need a car?
Car maintenance - ""
Car tax - ""
RAC - £0 – ""
Petrol - ""
Childcare - £231
Music lessons - £60
Clothes, shoes, etc - £45 - Try ebay or charity shops
Haircuts - £15 - Time to let it grow long?

As for socialising try to keep this to a once a month treat. You will have to live like your unemployed for a few years until you get the debt paid off otherwise the overspend is going to keep building up.

Go round your house and gather up things you don't need anymore. Start selling on ebay and you will be amazed at how much you will get for dvds you never watch anymore, cds you never listen to anymore, games you never play anymore, clothes you never wear anymore, books you never read anymore etc etc. You might be able to clear the Mint loan with just a few weekends of work on ebay.

Heres my menu planner for a whole weeks meals:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=157526&highlight=black-saturns+menu

and heres for a week of evening meals:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=2340412&posted=1#post2340412

Bigbubble

Thanks for all the helpful advice

CLAPTON wrote:

you say there are three adults in the household...is the third adult contributing to the househod income??

Sadly, no - my teenage son is between jobs.

CLAPTON wrote:

Presumably the ISA is not contractually linked to the mortgage i.e. you could cash it in to repay the debts?
If you can then i would suggest you cash the ISA and pay off the highest APR debt...this would free up the 100 you are paying in and about 200 of CC debt repayment hence reducing your outgoing by over £300 per month

This had never occurred to me - I'll look into it

Bigbubble

black-saturn wrote:

Gas - £83 – Don't switch to Atlantic, IMO they are a rip off.
Electric - £52 -

Aaaargh:eek: This is exactly what I have done!!!

What's wrong with them???

black-saturn wrote:

Food (3 adults + 1 child) - £400 - I spend £45 per month on 3 peoples meals. I'll give links to my menu planners at the end of the post.

These are fabulous!! :T

black-saturn wrote:

Go round your house and gather up things you don't need anymore. Start selling on ebay and you will be amazed at how much you will get for dvds you never watch anymore, cds you never listen to anymore, games you never play anymore, clothes you never wear anymore, books you never read anymore etc etc. You might be able to clear the Mint loan with just a few weekends of work on ebay.

I have started this.

One question - I have thousands of books. How is the best way to sell them?

On Amazon the majority are listed for 1p (why would anyone do that as the postage rates look like they could be problematic?) and on ebay many books don't attract any bids at all.

kevin_M

just having a quick look over everything 1 thing i would do is BT the Mint CC – Balance £1 000 (limit £5 424) Int/mth 1.4% Min pay £122 to another card then close this card down. stops the spending on it plus u can save a little on intrest as well
same with
Beneficial Bank CC

one thing to look at is a capital1 plat its 18 months 0% and u could prolly BT a few cards accross to it. rember to close cards down that u get to 0. to stop the temptation of spending on them.

xela_17

Bigbubble wrote:

One question - I have thousands of books. How is the best way to sell them?

On Amazon the majority are listed for 1p (why would anyone do that as the postage rates look like they could be problematic?) and on ebay many books don't attract any bids at all.

People list their books for 1p because you always get the same amount of postage money, whatever the selling price. I think it's about 2.50. Therefore selling small books that won't cost that much to post and getting £1 ish (after fees) is still better than them sitting round the house. Obviously, if the book is heavy then it's not worthwhile. There's an amazon thread on here that will tell you more.