owning up ..help

mountainofdebt

bestthingsinlife wrote:

Income

My wage - £2000
OH - £1000
Benefit- £318

Total £3318

Outgoings

mortgage £900
council tax £135
elec £84
gas £87
house ins £31
lifeins £31
TVlience £10
water £38
phone £40
car ins £50
car tax £27
pension £18


loans

if £7500 - £142
northern 5000 - £90
HP 6000 - £144.57

cards

tsb - £14,600
amex - £4600
cahoot - £5000
goldfish - £4200
ohplat - £5000
natwest - £9000
skycard - £3600
barclay - £1000
virgin - £4700
egg - £2300

monthly repayments - no idea ???? about £1200 min payments

1) The phone is quite high for a monthly bill - is this mobiles or landline or a mixture or both.

2) What car(s) do you have - do you (like many of us I guess) just renew your car insurance with your current provider or do you shop around? Could you do with a smaller car?

3) Likewise for the car tax

4) Have you looked at changing suppliers for your gas and electricity - interestingly enough on radio 4's money box this morning there was an item that suggested that gas/electricity prices should start coming down - let's hope so eh?

5) Pension - I know we should be saving for our old age but is this a negotiale item?

How much do you spend, on average, on food shopping, petrol, birthdays etc.

These questions are not meant as a criticism,so please don't get offended its just so that we can have a full picture.

moxie_2

You haven't included food, or things like birthday and Christmas presents or holidays. Your life insurance is expensive, I'm sure you can shop around for something cheaper. Is your car essential? I had to sell mine and although I was devastated at the time, I really don't miss it now and I certainly don't miss all the bills that went with it! Gas and electric look expensive too unless you have a massive house? I don't know anything about mortgages as I have always lived in a housing cooperative, but that looks like a lot of money every month too.

mountainofdebt

piglet6 wrote:

Once you post your SOA, you will be amazed at how the people on this board will help you cut costs and make savings on practically everything. Its amazing how a pair of "fresh eyes" (or 200 pairs of fresh eyes ) can spot ways to make savings on things that didn't even occur to you when you're panicking about things!;)

what only 200 ??

piglet6

It was a conservative estimate for a Saturday afternoon...!!!;)

:rotfl:

angchris

the first thing to do is to look at your outgoings individually and make sure that for each one you are getting the best deal or cheapest or ask yourself do you really need it right now. can you transfer your morgage to a better deal?i went into my morgage lender and said to them ive found a better deal match it or im off! so they matched it for 2 years :j look at uswitch for gas and leccy,maybe drop down to 3rd party car insurance?? use some of the pre dial numbers for the phone like 18185 for eg and try and cook everything from scratch rather than buying expensive ready meals check out the old style boards for inspiration. give the kids packed lunchboxes rather than dinner money,watch every penny!
the next thing is to tackle your debt, list your debts with apr`s and balances and snowball this basically means pay minimum payments on all but 1 credit card with the highest apr and throw every last penny at the largest apr till its gone then start at the next highest apr and so on... with regard to your loans i would just let these run for now but see if you can cancel any payment protection insurance on them.
you are fortunate to have a good wage coming in to the household and although it looks daunting it is doable! ban yourself from buying anything else on your cards or you will be treading water and wont make any inroads into your debts,start shuffling the debts around onto the lower apr cards or try to get 0% balance transfers best of luck.... YOU CAN DO IT!

bestthingsinlife

thank you so much for your help xxx. It may take me a while to get detials of the APRs as most bills I either chuick unopened in the drwaer or worse the bin. I do pay all the CCs by DD from my bank account, so I can go online to get details of the last minimum payments.
The phone is telephone, £10 top up on mobile and internet. The pension is a work one so dont want to stop if possible. The gas and elec are with british gas, in credit with gas but behind with elec hence high payments. The house insurance is buildings and contents, values £180,000 and £40,000. The mortage is £180,000 max equity and is fixed for three years. The cars is for two cars. I havent put petrol food etc because I have just been living off credit and have no real budget as I know I can't afford them anyway. Plus I missed off £80 car parking a month !! Thanks for taking time, I will get proper details together

piglet6

Well done for everything you've posted so far, Bestthingsinlife.:D

You should pop over to the Old Style board for some great ideas on how to bring your food shopping bills down for a family of 6 - they are very savvy on how to get bargains and how to make the most of them once you've got them! That way, even if you are having to buy your food on the credit cards, it will help you spend less on them, which is a plus in the long run.;)

Piglet

Dolly_Smith

your elec and gas look pretty high - we pay about £60 pm for both. Funnily enough I was with npower and got a call from EDF Energy - they asked me how much I was paying and just undercut npower. I was paying nearly £100pm previously

also just swapped house insurance to More Than - they do £400k buildings and £75k contents as standard for £22.91pm (obv depending on yr house, might be even lower)

always worth shopping around for car ins - I've had quotes differing from over £600 to £350 this year and that's inputting exactly the same data in the forms!

mountainofdebt

Is the £80 car parking related to work at all? If it is have you thought about car pooling ?

The other thing is that your buildings & contents are high.....we pay £20 a month with Barclays...when I asked hubby would £500,000 be enough to rebuild the house he actually laughed and asked me how many houses I would want to build....and he does know what he's talking about as well!

Another way I've found to save money is to actually buy only what I need for the week's food (btw do you buy or take lunches to work - that's another easy way of spending money without realising it!) - sometimes its hard when you have an attack of the munchies and there's nothing to munch on but it helps the waistline :rotfl: :rotfl:

freda

OK, take a deep breath for a minute

I havent put petrol food etc because I have just been living off credit and have no real budget as I know I can't afford them anyway. Plus I missed off £80 car parking a month !!

As bizarre as it may seem, the FIRST thing you need to do when you are working out the best way to tackle your debts head on is to work out a REALISTIC SOA. This means forgetting the debts for a minute (woo hoo), and sitting down with the list of items on the SOA, writing in a realistic amount for each.

Only then do you look at how much you have left over, and how it relates to your min payments.

If you have more than £100 left over each month, CCCS may offer to put you on a DMP and split up the £100 fairly between your creditors each month.

The important thing is that before you start, you need to know how much you need to LIVE. Living is more important than debts. Debts can be dealt with. You need to budget for food, clothes, heat, light, mortgage, etc - you can't live without these.

Do you see what I mean?

So, can you do another SOA, including realistic amounts for all of the lines, including food, petrol etc., and then we'll be able to point you towards ways out of your debt situation.

Yes, its scary, reallly really scary. But you are making the first, big step out of debt and towards a positive future for you and your family. You're very brave - take a deep breath and do that SOA again.