I want to be a better man

Happytogetdebtfree

Hi and welcome,i wish you all the best, and well done for posting x

Fitzer2000

Hi Ashamed, First off, you're in the best place in the world for FREE advice. As you can see everyone here is in the same boat, that's why we're here. I've only recently got the courage to join and have had some life-changing advice. Please change your name because you have nothing to be ashamed of. It must have taken a great deal of courage to finally pull your head out of the sand and look forward to a debt free life with your family, well done mate. I still have a wee bit of sand behind my ears but i'm slowly shaking it off!

pure_dead_dopey

Hi Ashamed

I'd change that name for a start!!! I know you live in London but groceries cost the same as PC says, so I would concentrate on getting that down. I used to spend around £600/700 on groceries and now have it down to around £350, for 4 adults (2 sportsmen) and one large dog and a picky pescatarian!!! so it can be done, you just have to work at it a bit more and pay a bit of attention to what you are buying. No one in my household has starved or even noticed the changes!!!! I think you've put the yearly figure for the insurance down, so that will make a difference to the figures as well. and give up smoking, you either have to give up smoking or give up saving for your child, no contest!!!


Good luck, it can be done and it will be hard some of the time, but you are still quite young and have the time, take care and look after your family

PDDxxh

psychopathbabble

Ashamed, welcome to the DFW boards. No need to be ashamed as we are all in the same, if not worse, boat here. No-one will judge you and you are lucky enough to have such a wonderfully supportive wife. Other people have given you food for thought regarding your SOA so I won't post anymore as I have nothing to add to their comments, except how old is your child? I'm sure she is too young to care about how much money you spend on her, as long as she is well cared for and loved, that is all that matters, regardless of what label clothing she is wearing or whether she goes on holiday just yet. If you really want to go on holiday in the fairly near future, why not collect offers for local attractions and spend a week seeing and doing things in the area that you wouldn't normally spend time doing? But that is in the future, and not a priority right now.

All the tools are here for you, just make sure you use them to your advantage.

Well done once again and from this moment on think positively!! x

Odette

You realise your putting £100 more into the pockets of a cigarette manufacturer than you are putting into your daughters savings.

Quit now, I did 6 months ago.


(Sorry)

lucielle

Just posting to wish you luck on your journey. We were 61k in debt and now just under 23k. Only a quick glance at your spends, the grocery spends can be trimmed we are a family of 6 and spend £350-£400 per month.
L

MrsTinks

Do you and your wife qualify for child care vouchers? Is that taken into account? If you don't and those figures are all your wife is bringing home... much as it pains me (as this goes against my "views") then it would make sense for her to find something that pays a little pocket money (Avon etc) and quitting work, selling one car and spending her energy on reducing the costs of your household bills... Lots of home made cooking etc and a little self employed work would probably see you better off on it's own...

Moving the ISA (not my area of expertise lol) but could you not tell your parents that there is a better deal at x provider? Or that you are worried and want to make sure that the money is safe and you read about this government guarantee etc and you want to make sure everything is as protected as possible so you're going to move the ISA to somewhere else.

There are plenty of things you can cut down on in your SOA so there is hope And DEFINITELY do not go with a fee charging provider!!!!!!!

Cloudy456

I agree with other people - there is loads you can do to shave hundreds off your spending each month without noticing much difference I bet. Or in the case of giving up smoking it would be a positive difference! Facing up to it is the hardest part, now you just need to have the strength of mind to make some real changes. £500 on groceries for a small family is crazy money, I really think you could make that £200, plus the £200 from not smoking and you're well away before even starting to look at the smaller things! Best of luck, do stay on here as this site is AMAZING and will make all the difference to your journey.

Ashamed_2

Thanks very much for your comments and advice. I really didn't expect such a huge response.

To answer the questions:

patchwork_cat wrote: »

You say that your groceries are high because you live in London, do Tesco's not charge teh same for a loaf of bread in London and Liverpool?

Our groceries are high because we don't makea shopping list and just throw things into the trolley. Myself and wife have started to make some changes now. Shopping list - only buy what's on it and plan evening meals for the week. I think this will avoid take aways and also stop us finding out of date food which gets thrown away. I mentioned city food prices are very high. I was refering to eating at lunch time. i.e. Pret, pub lunch, coffee, etc etc.

Odette wrote: »

You realise your putting £100 more into the pockets of a cigarette manufacturer than you are putting into your daughters savings.

This really hits home. I'm going to try my best to stop smoking. Hopefully the wife will also give it her best shot also.

MrsTine wrote: »

Do you and your wife qualify for child care vouchers? Is that taken into account? If you don't and those figures are all your wife is bringing home... much as it pains me (as this goes against my "views") then it would make sense for her to find something that pays a little pocket money (Avon etc) and quitting work, selling one car and spending her energy on reducing the costs of your household bills... Lots of home made cooking etc and a little self employed work would probably see you better off on it's own...

Moving the ISA (not my area of expertise lol) but could you not tell your parents that there is a better deal at x provider? Or that you are worried and want to make sure that the money is safe and you read about this government guarantee etc and you want to make sure everything is as protected as possible so you're going to move the ISA to somewhere else.

There are plenty of things you can cut down on in your SOA so there is hope And DEFINITELY do not go with a fee charging provider!!!!!!!

Ihave no idea what we qualify for if I'm honest. We get £70 - £80 a month but that's it. My wife was out of work for 2.5 years whilst we had our daughter. It was driving her mad, she suffered allot being on her own. The big problem is that I dragged her over to my house in east london from south west london. She has no friends around her and her family all live overseas. Our daughter loves the nursery, she gets to play with other children and has come on so well since she's been there. We have thought about the wife leaving work and taking our daughter out of nursery, but she is doing so well there that I think it would be for the best that she continues to attand nursery until she starts pre school.

I guess I could try to get my parents to move the Isa into a different bank, what have I got to loose?.

You need the APRs on those debts urgently

Added to the first post now. Below for reference.
Barclaycard - £243.22 (Balance £10,306.73 APR 21.6%)
HSBC - £129.18 (Balance £5,800 APR 20.76%)
Santander - £110.17 (Balance £5,000 APR 10.56%)
Halifax - £103.74 (Balance £10,400 APR 3.96%)

Gas - £65 can you shop around?
Electric - £85 as above
Sky £45 I feel your pain as a bloke, but you need to cut this
Phone - £55 why so high
Food - £500you can reduce this I think, the old style moneysaving board is good for food ideas
Cigarettes - £200At least cut down, or can you see you GP explain your situation, could you get nicorette on prescription? I don't know
Travel to work - £150How far do you commute? Could you cycle?
2 x mobile phones - £80PAYG?
House insurance - £125 shop around
Parking - £50At work?
Car Insurance - £80 when is it up for renewl?

I will use the suggested cash back sites to get a better deal on Electric and Gas.
£45 for sky is the minimum package for channels, broadband, talk plan. Our daughter loves the Nick Jnr. Wife phoned them tonight to see how we could decrese it. We will look into it.
£55 for phone. The wife has all her family overseas and not one of the countries that you can get cheap calls to. We do use a cheap rate number but it still cost 10p a minutes. We are going to monitor how much we use the phone and make cuts.
Food - we will aim for £350 a month max. Shopping list and food planning.
Cigarettes - We have to quit. We have to.
Travel - I travel 16 miles by train and tube Cycling would take me 2.5 hours or so. I'd never see my family. I get a yearly ticket which is interest free and deducted from my wages every month. Cheapest I'm going to get.
Mobiles - Iphone and Sony ericsons new one. Just renewed the contact for both recently.
House insurance - yes this is monthly and covers appliances labour and parts.
Parking - £50 to park at work for the wife. Car is more expensive than train but my wife needs to take or pick up our daughter from nursery.
Car ins - Just renewed both on Admiral multi car. Cheapest I could find on the cmparrision sites (used 4 different ones to get the best deal). Wife only been driving for a year.

Can you sell any any assets, for example is one car worth a few pounds.

Have you spoken to CCCS?

Looking at above you could make some cutbacks which could bring you about even. I'd consider telling your parents and I know you swore never to take the £100 from your child's savings, but if it means you lot getting on your feet quicker and learning from this then I'd seriously consider it.

Both our cars are 10 years old. We currently need two cars as the wife will take our daughter to nursery and then stright on to work. I come home and have to take the other car to pick up our daughter. I have other assets, I've started clearing out the shed and I'm in the 2nd week of ebaying. Made £300 so far after postage costs, still lots more clutter to sell. I'm trying to scrape as manny pennies together to make the pounds.

I'm not aware of CCCS. Can you enlighten me?

I will have to discuss our daughter account with the wife. It has about £3000 in it at present. I suppose we could always make the money back up once we are debt free.

Mortgage/Rent - £1319 - repayment or interest only?
Electric - £85 - this is very high - do you have the basic like money saving light bulbs, turn the water temperature down to 60 degrees etc
Phone - £55 - particularly given that you have mobiles, this is very high
Nursery - £820 - massive, how many hours does OH work?
Evening course - £200 (Wife's course to get a better job) - how long does this last?

Mortgage is repayment fixed interest rate for another 5 years.
I would say 50% of the house is money saving bulbs, I will look at changing the others. Water is about 60degress already. How much difference does turning the tv's off by the plug etc make ?
phone is high due to the cost of phoning overseas to the family (skype or messenger not always an option)
The wife works 8.5 hours a day but comutes for 1 hour a day. I work 8 hours a day but comute for 2 hours a day. Our daughter is in nursery 5 days a week 8am - 6pm.
Course length is 36 weeks, £50 a week. 34 weeks still remaining.

how old is your child?

2 years and 7 months.

Moneytroubles_2

Hiya, just wanted to welcome you to the board and say well done for posting, I remember how daunting that first message can be! stick at it and you'll soon start to see the shimmer of light at the end of the tunnel xxxx