Help me please!

natlie

Hi I have done my SOA as below, I can obviously see some things on it which are causing probs mailny BT phonebill which I have changed but owed money on from when I was on maternity leave have now changed it to a frree evening/weekends on a £3.97 a month thing, I have stopped using my mobile - just can't afford it - its incoming calls only.

I can only see a way around this if I get a higher paid job, work are really messing me about at the moment and owe me £600 in underpayments plus my ex owes me £450 in maintenance.

Edit: have bad credit rating havent been able to get credit for two years, probably a good thing but therefore can't get 0% balance transfers etc

Thanks
Nat

Monthly Incomings:

My salary - £1000
Child Benefits - £29.50
Child Maintenance £100 a month but not been paid for ages (owes £450 at present)
WFTC including childcare element £900

Total - £2118

Monthly Outgoings:

Mortgage - £375.16
Council Tax - £72
Gas - £38
Electric - £31
Water £37.80
Tesco Broadband £19.99
TV License - £10.99
Phone - £81 will be reduced to £3.97 in next few weeks
Food - (partner pays)
Car Insurance - £41.86
Car Payment £132 (partner pays half, two yr loan @ 6.5% ends Feb 2008)
Petrol - £200
Building and contents insurance £23

Childcare
Baby £649
After school club £49

Egg £43 15.9% apr
Barclaycard £79 29.9% apr
Frazercard £39 (god knows?)

Total: £1921.80

wanna-be-mortgage-free_2

Hi, have you looked in to childcare vouchers? Might be some savings there.

Miss_Moneypenny_6

Hi there,

Child care vouchers are definately the way to go, both you & your expartner can claim them, I think it's up to £55 a week each, check out your building & contents insurance, got mine for £18.20 a month over 10 months. If you get the money owed to you pay it off the loan/overdraft with the highest interest rate. Keep a spending diary to see where all the small change goes, it soon adds ups and could pay off some smaller bills.

Some of the guys on here will be able to help a lot more, but hope this helps for starters.

Good Luck

tyllwyd

From your SOA, I think you are claiming the childcare element in your working family's tax credit? If so, you need to check whether childcare vouchers will help or not. (I get completely confused over all this, so I'm not sure!)

http://www.childcarevouchers.co.uk/parent/childtaxcredits/index.asp


I'm not sure about your situation with your partner. You've said your partner pays for food, but are any of the other bills split in half?

natlie

Hi
problem is work aren't doing childcare vouchers yet, Im in local government and about 7 different groups of people have to sgree it before it can be passed etc, will have a look at my buildings and contents though thanks
Nat

emma_nottingham

Not sure who your employer is, however you should have an option to working flexible hours in respect of any children under eightyears of age. (This is the law) Are you able to change your working hours to reduce your child care costs. It may be worth speaking to your personnel dept. May not be applicable in very small companies but it worked for me. I work in the evening when my husband it at home saving us a massive £400 pm in nursery fees. Good luck!

Gemmzie

Child Benefit seems low, I thought it was £17.40 per week for the oldest/first child?

Toomuchdebt

Gemmzie wrote:

Child Benefit seems low, I thought it was £17.40 per week for the oldest/first child?

Yes it is and £11.40 or so per week for every other child

Gemmzie

Thought so ...
So the OP £29.50 per month can't be correct.

msmicawber

Hi Natlie,

I think you could get your bills down a bit more.

I see that Martin's advising that switching gas & electricity supplies is OK again now - could you get a better deal than currently? Look at U-Switch, but make sure that you sign up for Quidco first and clear your cookies before actually switching so that you get some cashback. I'm paying £55 per month for both gas & electricity combined, and am building up credit during the summer months.

Your water bill seems very high to me - why not look into getting a meter. A lot of companies let you try it out for a year so that you can return to water rates if you haven't made savings. I was nervous about doing this, but my water bill has gone down from £380 pa to £140 pa (and I have two children as well).

You don't mention which telephone company you've moved to (or have you just sorted out a cheaper package with BT?). I moved to Primus Tel a few months ago and get free evening and weekend calls and no standing charge. If phoning during the day we use discountdial to lower the call rates and, after a couple of months, was offered broadband for £12.60 a month from Primus as a 'valued customer'. Felt deeply embarrassed as I'd only paid them about £6 in call charges during that time which they told me was high! You need a BT line, by the way, and get can a discount on the BT line rental by paying by monthly DD. I see Martin's recommending TalkTalk at the moment - again, they seem to include Broadband and could be cheaper. The Tesco deal's a bit high in the current price war.

Have a good trawl through u-switch and confused.com and see what adjustments you can make and don't forget Quidco to get your cashback.

Also, £200 per month seems very high for petrol - is there anything you could do to reduce that? Are there any car share arrangements at work that you could join in, or use public transport more? (I know it's hard with children as you're often having to drive hither and yon to childcare places/schools before and after work, running up the petrol bills and making car share difficult.)

Since your ex can't be relied on to pay the maintenance, I would recommend that you don't include it in your budget at all or you'll run the risk of going overdrawn when he doesn't pay and getting even more wound up. If and when he does pay up you can just pay directly into one of your debts or buy new shoes for the children or something. My ex is a useless flake who rarely pays, so I treat any maintenance from him like a lottery win. He got me into my financial mess in the first place, so I was damned if he was going to make it worse. :mad:

The APRs on the credit cards appear high to me (though I don't have a credit card, so am a bit out of date). Could you do any tarting so that you aren't wasting money on paying interest?

Best of luck.