Help with sorting out this mess please

Morley's_mum

Another suggestion - you can feed a dog for less than £15 per month. We have a springer spaniel (very greedy) and a large sack of dry food costs £14 and lasts nearly 3 months. The odd bone or chew to top it up.

Good luck - but paying the mortgage is more important than feeding steak to the dog!

spud30

It depends how big the dog is.

Ours has a large sack of dry food a month.

regularsaver1

the mortgage and council tax should be first priority - what have your mortgage lender said as they may be able to make an arrangement?

Gemmzie

Hootie19 wrote:

Child benefit should increase, as this figure was the last one the DWP sent to me, and was based on my two older ones having left full time education. However, they have both been offered and have accepted places at college, starting first week in September. I have written to DWP and told them this.

I informed the tax credits (I can barely even bring myself to type those words without hyperventilating!) about my change in income, expecting our payments to reduce. Instead they paid a further £60 odd into my bank two days later. Then we received a letter saying that from next month, our tax credits payment would be £10.62 every four weeks (really - is it worth it!?) However, as I am convinced that we have been overpaid for the last two years, I haven't included this in our income, as I'm sure once it is sorted out, it'll turn out to be another debt, rather than part of our income!

Child Benefit will be paid for all three children, if they are in full-time further education until their 20th birthdays.

Keep nagging Tax Credits to check the amounts so that you don't end up getting asked for a huge amount back. And remember - the amount you pay back can be tailored to suit how much you can afford to pay per month.

newleaf

Do you have a prepayment certifiate for your prescriptions? It's worth it if you are on a few different medications long term.
I don't mean to pry but, as you claim DLA, are you entitled to a blue badge for your car? That could help with reducing your parking costs.
I agree with others about pocket money, £10 a week each is too much, especially for the older ones who should be earning something themselves by now.

dlb

Maybe me not getting this right, but i get child tax credits and working tax credits and i get free prescriptions, the tax credit people sent me a card that i show when at chemist.
Maybe worth looking into.

Gemmzie

dlb wrote:

Maybe me not getting this right, but i get child tax credits and working tax credits and i get free prescriptions, the tax credit people sent me a card that i show when at chemist.
Maybe worth looking into.

That's because of the Working Tax element, which the OP won't get because their income is so high

frankie1_2

Mortgage must not be compromised as this is your family home.
Sky package can be downgraded. I reduced mine from £42 to £18, you can reduce this further or buy a freeview box ( £30 )

There will be lots of vacancies especially in retailing and hospitality for students as exisitng students will be leaving to start college or university. Can your youngsters get their cv's together and start posting them off to employers asap

Hootie19

Thank you for all your input. I do appreciate it. I am now going to be the type of person I hate, and just go through and say why some of the suggestions are no-goes! Sorry this is going to be hideously long.


The gas and electricty are shocking, I know. We are with Scottish Power, who have consistently come out as the cheapest for us when I check with Uswitch. We were paying £82 a month, and then I got on my high horse, and made everyone unplug everything at night, switch lights off when the room was empty etc. At our last annual review, it seemed to have been working, as the monthly payment came down to £66 a month. That was after just six months of me being a PITA about it, so I was looking forward to getting it even lower. Then last month we had a letter from them (presumably after their latest price rises) saying that our payment has to go up to the ludicrous sum they want from us now. I’ve just had Martin’s latest email saying that it’s time to switch again, so I will look into that again and see if I can reduce it at all. Unfortunately, we desperately need to replace our windows and doors. The windows defy all my attempts to seal the gaps around the edges and don’t so much let in a draught, as let in hurricane force winds. Enough to move our heavy, velvet, lined curtains, anyway. So the heating tends to be on quite high and quite a lot during the winter to try and compensate. However, now that I am working full time, the heating won’t be in use during the days this year (apart from when the kids are home from college on their days off) so our useage might reduce a bit.

We have three kids. Aged 18, 16 and 14. The 18 year old has applied for loads of part time jobs, but has had no success. She has an application form to return to a local shop who are advertising for weekend staff. I don’t hold out much hope for her, as all the staff I’ve ever seen in there have been middle aged or older. Our income is too high for her to claim EMA, so we figured £10 a week is a realistic sum as they have to budget for everything with that – holiday spending, Christmas/birthdays, magazines, mobile phone top up etc.

The middle one has special needs and his chances of finding a part time job, I would imagine, are minimal. We do look around for him, but so far haven’t seen anything that looks even halfway hopeful. He is on the “waiting list” (which I don’t believe actually exists) for our local weekly freebie paper rounds. They advertise their rounds in the paper each week, (which they wouldn’t have to if they have a waiting list), and every week he rings them and is told they’ll put him on the waiting list. He also is unable to claim EMA.

The youngest one is too young for any work that I’ve seen, apart from a paper round, and while I’d be happy enough for him to do that during the summer, I will not let him go out in the dark mornings in winter time.

I know our food budget is ridiculously high. I have had it lower than that, but that was before I started working full time. I need to start planning more again and spending time freezing ahead. A lot of the tips given on budgeting sites are no good for me unfortunately. I have a breadmaker which is useless. I don’t think I’ve ever had an edible loaf out of it, no matter how I try juggling the ingredients. I am a hopeless baker, so cakes, biscuits etc have to be shop bought. The only thing I can reasonably make is chocolate chip cookies, and it’s cheaper to buy a packet of Tesco’s own. I can’t do pastry to save my life and if I try it comes out so bad, that it gets binned, so it’s a false economy. I just can’t work out how to fill three bottomless pits (i.e. teenagers) on a budget though. They are *constantly* hungry, and my daughter is diabetic, so she has to eat regularly.

I’d love to be able to get rid of the tv and buy one. I know it would be much cheaper in the long run, but unfortunately, we don’t have the money to go and buy one outright, and don’t have the credit rating to allow us to borrow to get one (which would seem a bit daft, given that this is the debt free wannabe board!). I’m not even sure that with such a poor credit rating, we’d even be able to move to another rental place and get something cheaper.

Sky – well, yes, it *is* my only entertainment (apart from the computer). We don’t have the top package though. We have a Sky+ box and a second sky box. We don’t have the movies package, but I think we’ve probably got everything else. (Middle child is the sports fan – as I said above, he’s special needs and doesn’t go out, or have friends to “play” with, so the tv really is his lifeline, and for this reason, I’d be reluctant to get rid of it if it could be avoided.) I will get my husband to have a go at “cancelling” and see if he can cut some kind of a deal with them as suggested. We can’t get freeview in this area without upgrading our ariel.


Premium Funding is the insurers (Zurich) for my husband’s car. He needs a car, no question, as his employer is in the middle of nowhere, and is inaccessible by public transport. My husband works shifts, some weeks finishing work at 10pm, so public transport is a no-no unfortunately. He has just renewed his car insurance, and PF were the cheapest quote.

The house contents and buildings insurance is due for renewal in October. We’ve had two claims this year though, so I don’t anticipate that coming down by much – if anything, I anticipate a rise in premium.

My prescriptions are a bit of a nuisance. I have arthritis and have been taking five different drugs for it. They weren’t working, so I am now on a different drug, which is paid for totally by the NHS (which is wonderful, as it’s about £100 a dose). However, the consultant has me “piggybacking” with three other drugs, until the new one is fully into my system. So the prescription charges won’t be forever, but it doesn’t seem realistic to buy a “season ticket” (which I don’t have the fee for anyway), when it’s not a forever thing.

My daughter’s contacts are the monthly ones. I have noticed that places like Quidco and FreeFivers do cashback on buying them online, so I will look into doing it that way.

Transport to college – we can delete my daughter’s as she has decided that she can walk to and from college. My son’s college is on the other side of the next town, so has to be bus journeys. The local bus company do a £3 a day ticket which you can use for any journeys during the day of purchase. His college course is only going to be 3 days a week, so a weekly pass or more, would probably cost more than doing it 3 days a week. He’d be taking the bus from home into town and then town to college (and returns, obviously). I can’t work out a cheaper way for him to do it.

In the recent nice weather, I have been walking to and from work, so the parking fees haven’t figured in the budget. However, as I have athritis and it’s affected by the cold and damp, I won’t be able to do it during the poorer weather months. (I am not deemed bad enough to be eligible for the higher rate for mobility and thereby to be able to claim a blue badge.) The car park costs £4 a day or £12 a week. If I use the bus it is £3 a day, so it’s cheaper to use the car park. Some weeks, I can get a lift into work with my husband, but when he’s on those day shifts, he doesn’t finish work until 6pm and doesn’t get back into our town until 6.30pm. I finish work at 5.30pm and I am definitely not hanging around town for an hour to wait for him!!

If I was to use the car all year round, then apparently, the company I work for will make a contribution towards parking expenses, but I don’t know how much etc.

The £31.50 endowment is for the extra element of the mortgage when we remortgaged a few years ago. We have got to somehow sort out some new kind of insurance for the original portion of the mortgage, as we got so far behind with the original one that it was stopped. (Far too many “head in the sand” moments for comfort, embarassingly.)

I may have overestimated the dog’s food. She is right out of food at the moment, so I will make a note of how much I pay for the bag of food today and see how long it lasts. She is getting a good make of dog food (James Wellbeloved) but certainly isn’t getting fed steak!!

I know that realistically we can’t afford my son’s golf lessons. However, he has so little in his life, and he is so good at his golf, that I’d really like to continue them if at all possible. At the moment, he’s not having them as he has recently had microsurgery on his arm and hand, and so hasn’t been able to play. He has been told by the hospital though that he can resume next month.

Thanks Gemmzie for the info on CB. I thought I’d heard they were paying for up to 20 years of age now, but I wasn’t sure. Hopefully, I will hear back from them soon, with the new amount they will be paying me, and I can add that into the budget.

We do have debts which I will post details of later (if anyone has had the fortitude to even get this far with this waffle!) It’s basically

Capital 1 credit card with about £900 balance
Lloyds TSB credit card with about £1,000 balance
Tesco Visa card (paid via a credit agency, so no interest being added) with a balance of around £900 and being repaid at £50 a month by agreement.
A loan we had for new central heating. We’ve been through the court proceedings for it, and have a 2nd charge on our property. This is being paid back at £35 a month. There’s about £5,000 left I think.
Barclaycard visa with about £1,500 balance
Sainsbsury credit card with about £1,500 balance
Smile visa with about £500 balance

We have started a compensation claim for a missold endowment. Of course, this has no guarantee of a result, and it probably won’t be any time soon, even if we are successful.

I am also trying to claim back £1,500 in bank charges from my bank. We are also collating information for the same with my husband’s bank and credit cards. Again, no guarantee of success, nor any idea of timescale.

We also do FreeFivers and Pigsback. My husband is up to £16 odd and I am up to £9 odd on daily clicks only on FreeFivers and we have just ordered our 5th £10 Boots voucher from Pigsback, which will help with Christmas expenses (which I hardly dare even think about). Not huge sums, I know, but it’s free money and I won’t turn my nose up at that!

Thank you again, all of you, for taking the time to reply to my post, and I’m sorry if I seem to be ignoring the advice. We have written to our mortgage company, based on the advice given in the paperwork we have from Payplay, which suggests that you should aim to repay the arrears in five years, and offering them £35 a month extra to this end. I just hope they will accept this.

msmicawber

Just a thought re a replacement TV. I bought one for £60 seven years ago from a pawn brokers and it's still going strong even though it only came with a 3 months' warranty. Why not have a look somewhere like that or one of those cheque exchange places that also have second hand stuff. Alternatively, check your local paper and/or newsagents windows. Lots of people are upgrading TVs at the moment, so there are many bargains to be had.