Please help!!!

purpleheather2810

livvie84 wrote: »

Thank you for your advice gonzo. Answers to your questions:

* The £50 is for extra food for my lunches etc - oh does pay for food but he buys staples like meatm bread and store cupboard items etc. I have to help buy fruit & veg and extra milk etc. Some of this, however does go on a few treats, which I am aiming to cut out altogether.

* £19 a month clothes is for myself and my baby - this is an average - actually purchase every few months. And yes he does go through quite a few clothes! He's gone from newborn to 0-3 to 3-6 and he's now almost in 6-9 and he's not even 4 months old! He's a big lad! ;o) - to solve this problem, I have now stopped buying clothes for myself and am going to borrow some baby clothes from my sister.

* The £82 child related expenses is my full child benefit money which goes on milk, nappies, wipes etc which I try to find the cheapest of.

* The £6.00 a month is for my dentist - this does not fall under free medical. There are very few NHS dentists near me.

Good thinking on the clothes - they really don't wear clothes out at this stage as they re growing so fast - some of my dd's clothes have been around several children before they got to me and they are STILL fine! Do try charity shops and freecycle, etc, and just give them a good wash before use. I've had some lovely clothes from there which have really helped me out

gonzo127

just another thought, have you had a ebay attack? basically go around your house and look for things you can sell have a good clear out of all your junk and ebay them, just looking at some of your current debts some of them are 'relitivly' small and you might be able to clear them with a good clear out, or just help you to get 'less' in debt whilst on maternity

Sarsie

Right so the situation we have is you do have some money available for the debts, just not as much money as the debt people want. They want £340.50p, you've got £138. Looking at your expenditure really there isn't a lot you can do with that I don't think, with a newborn some things just do cost. You can do little things to get your income in like this perhaps, but on a larger scale you're pretty stuck, so £138 it is and that's that.

So what I would suggest you do is work out what you can give to each creditor, the snowball calculator will help.

Failing that the old standard way before you had snowball caluculators was you work out what percent of your total debt is with each creditor, then apply that percentage to what you can afford to pay to see how much they should each be getting till you're off maternity leave. My results are below

1 Alliance Overdraft £417 / £21 / 6.37% / £7.75
2 Halifax Overdraft £1,026 / £52 / 15.68% / £21.64
3 La Redoute Catalogue £350 / £18 5.35% / £7.38
4 Next Catalogue £324 / £17 / 4.95% / £6.83
5 Santander Personal Loan £1,567 / £149 / 23.95% / £33.05
6 Santander Cards Credit Card £2,793 / £84 42.69% / £58.91

This is why you shouldn't trust my figures, that only makes 98.99% or £135.57 in total! But anyway I'm not doing it twice so you'll have to redo all the calculations yourselves ok, I'm just giving you the gist of it.

Once you;d worked out what you were going to pay you'd write to them all and show them your SOA and then your breakdown of what you can afford to repay in the interim while on maternity leave.

The trouble with that is your SOA is gonna invite more questions than it answers because of all the things missing from it, so I would just send out the letters saying "income = x, expenditure = y, money free to pay debts = z therefore..." then the breakdown of who's getting what.

livvie84

I sell on Ebay regularly but the money seems to just disappear! It helps me sometimes to pay the minimum, but there are weeks where I don't get any sales. I am starting to run out of things to sell, however, I have just had another rummage and gone through all my shoes and bags and have been really ruthless and am keeping only what I need.

I need to pay my next bill (£58.60) and my la redoute (£34.00) NOW but do not have the funds. What do I do?!

livvie84

Thanks Sarsie - I shall try the snowball calc. x

smartpicture

Have you spoken to your partner about this? It doesn't seem realistic for you to pay £250 a month towards the bills whilst you are on maternity leave, or for one of you to struggle financially alone because of a joint baby. It needs to be a joint attack on your joint financial responsibilities - unless he's able to take the time off work to look after the baby instead.

livvie84

Well to be fair to my partner, this is my debt and my debt only and he can only just afford to pay our mortgage, bills and food etc. But I may ask him if I can give him a little less next month.

purpleheather2810

I know what you mean, but as I said before, maybe together you can shave some money off the mortgage/bills/food so that you CAN contribute less whilst still making sure all the household expenses are met. Even down to spreading council tax over 12 months instead of 9/10. It all helps.

MrsTinks

It may be your debt and your debt only but surely you sat down when you decided to have a child together and looked at your finances? It should have been obvious to him that if you have agreed that you stay home on ML then he has to be the one to bring in the money...
Can you return to work earlier?

livvie84

I am returning to work a month earlier than originally planned but I want to spend this important time with my son. I don't mind been skint for a few months, I just need to be able to pay minimun payments! x