Advice Needed!!!!! Too much going out each month!

antcav

right - this will rather a long post but I would like to say first to desperate dad - good on you for admitting where you are!!!!!

I'm 28 and I'm at the stage where I have been completely and utterly useless and have managed to rack up £27k on credit/store cards. In addition I owe my parents £32,500 and I have a mortgage of £86.5k. I live with my parents as we bought together as they were looking to retire to greece but wanted a UK base, and they cleared my outstanding debts at that time. I really don't want to let them know the situation as not only are they skint and can't help, my mum's been diagnosed with lung cancer and I don't want this to worry them any more than they are going through at the moment (btw - the treatment is going really well so we're very positive but still, I don't think they need this on top of everything else). The bills are paid each month without fail and there is no issue with my mortgage so they actually don't have to worry about it.

Now, I am making the minimum payments to all credit/store cards and I have not missed any payments on anything so I am not in that kind of trouble. I also still have my student loan to pay and have an overdraft of £2k.

I do tend to go over the overdraft limit (not helpful I know!) and the credit card limits (again not very clever on my part) but I have disposable (i.e. food, going out, etc) income of approx £150 a month. While this is good, I can't seem to see a way of reducing my debt as although I can live like this, paying off all my credit cards on a minimum payment basis seems like a lifetime of payments. I do occasionally (and i know that this is the cardinal sin!) take cash out on my credit cards but hopefully this should start to become less of a need as my life starts to be more sedate.... my best mate in the world got married at the weekend, very expensive for all involved but now that's over I can concentrate on simply sorting this out!

In total (including my mortgage) I owe £152,000!!!!!!! :eek: (brown trouser moment when i realised that!).

I work in finance (investment management) and have a good job and getting a DMP, IVA or bankruptcy is not a good idea as it can prevent me getting better jobs in the future. But it may be that it is the only option.....

I was looking at getting a £25k unsecured loan but was refused as although my credit score isn't bad as I do pay everything each month, it isn't good because of the level of debt that I have. I have a couple of very expensive store cards as well which are my priority to free up as they're costing me £80 a month in total!

Although this may seem a workable situation, I am at the stage where although I have dental cover at work, you have to pay up front and be reimbursed and I can't afford it! Also, my office are starting to push me to go to Boston for a week and although the travel and accomodation are paid for, I would have to pay for all my meals and drinks (in my industry you tend to take people out as well!) and then get them reimbursed which again I can't do! Basically it's all gone very pete tong and I'm going to put off going to Boston to next year (shouldn't be a problem) but want to be in the situation where I can afford it as this will be good for my career......

So - after all the rambling - any ideas?!?!?!!??! I can do an SOA (well, I'll copy it from my spreadsheet I have and update daily!) if you need it......

Any help is very much appreciated!!!!!!

moozie_2

Hi there and welcome :T

Please post your SOA and we'll try to advise you. It's not possible to give you something to think about without knowing the facts.

The important thing to remember is to not panic. Once you know exactly what you are dealing with, what you can/must do will become clearer.

Look forward to your SOA.

Thefunkygibbons

Clearly, you need to start snowballing to clear the expensive debt first

Post a SOA including loan amounts and interest rates, and we can have a look

What you do not need is any more debt, so you need to get yourself off that habot

antcav

Okay here's the list:

Salary 2,140.00

Credit / Store Cards - haven't got the APRs to hand though!
Debenhams 18.43 - 750
Morgan Stanley 95.00 - 4800
BarclayCard 47.00 - 2000
Next 60.11 - 650
AMEX 112.00 - 3800
MBNA - LFC 161.35 - 6800
Egg 33.73 - 1700
MBNA - Yacht 9.75 - 500
HSBC Mastercard 119.00 - 4000
Capital One 41.93 - 1400
Capital One 23.49 - 800

Bills
Electricity 39.00
Home Insurance 28.00
Water 43.00
Gas 46.00
Ground Rent/Buildings Ins 69.00
Phone 24.00
Council Tax 166.00
TV Licence (M) 11.37

Mortgage etc
Mortgage 575.00
HSBC Life Payment 22.19
Repayment Pro HSBC 32.00
Interest 17.00

Additional
Car Insurance 36.00
Contacts 22.00
Mobile 30.00
Blockbuster 15.00
Student Loan 131.21
Travel 157.50


Additonal Income 200.00

Available to Spend 153.94

moozie_2

antcav wrote:

Okay here's the list:

Salary 2,140.00
Other 200
Total income: 2,340

Credit / Store Cards Interest rates, min pmt, amount owed, credit limit please.
Debenhams 18.43
Morgan Stanley 95.00
BarclayCard 47.00
Next 60.11
AMEX 112.00
MBNA - LFC 161.35
Egg 33.73
MBNA - Yacht 9.75
HSBC Mastercard 119.00
Capital One 41.93
Capital One 23.49
Min pmts total: 721.79

Bills
Electricity 39.00 How big is your place? My one bed place costs £34 pm for both E&G.
Home Insurance 28.00 This is very high. Have you insured exceptionally valuable items such as art?
Water 43.00 This is also high. Are you on a meter? Suspect not, perhaps worth looking at.
Gas 46.00 Ditto to electricity comment.
Ground Rent/Buildings Ins 69.00 Is this prescribed or can you shop around?
Phone 24.00
Council Tax 166.00
TV Licence (M) 11.37
Bills total: 426.37

Mortgage etc
Mortgage 575.00
HSBC Life Payment 22.19
Repayment Pro HSBC 32.00
Interest 17.00 What is this for?
Mortgage etc total: 646.19

Additional
Car Insurance 36.00 Have you shopped around for this? MY OH gets his for under £300 a year.
Contacts 22.00 I am sure you can get these cheaper online.
Mobile 30.00 Could you get this cheaper, either by negotiating with your provider or changing?
Blockbuster 15.00 Ditch this and get onto the free trials through Quidco if you really use the service.
Student Loan 131.21 Does this come out of your salary? If so, is it deducted at the point of source?
Travel 157.50
Other total: 391.71

Bank charges

Additonal Income 200.00

Available to Spend 153.94

If you can post APRs etc relating to your debts, we can look at how you can tackle those. In the mean time, there are savings that can be made in your SOA. Hang in there

It will be a good idea for you to start a spending diary to see where the 153.94 goes. Probably on things not listed such as food, presents, clothes, toiletries etc etc

Edited to put totals in....

all_hours

Do all 3 of you pay 166 council tax each month? All the household bills seem high if 3 adults are paying the same amounts.

You have travel and car expenses listed - could you get rid of the car?

Get rid of blockbuster and sign up for a free DVD trial - cancel before you have to pay then move on to the next one. Sign up via quidco so that you get some cash back too.

Try and find the APRs and credit limits for the cards.

delboypass

kill the blockbuster for a start - switch to freeview - loads of channels for free and now film4 is free too.

Other than that - SNOWBALL..save as hard as possible and try to overpay 1 of your lowest credit/store card. then use freed up money to do the next card.

also try to switch outstanding debt to lower interest rates to allow you a chance to pay them off.

Also realise when you have 8-10 credit cards that you have problems.... try to get rid of a few to stop this happening in the future.

UK is definately requiring some authority figure on cheap credit before it sinks the UK.

tyllwyd

It is a bit confusing when you say that £154 is 'available to spend', because you haven't accounted for food, any bills related to your car, haircuts & clothes etc - if you take things like that into consideration, how much is actually left for you to put towards credit card repayments above the minimum?

Hello

Hello :hello:

Well done for posting! :T Just a quickie from me - I pay £10 per month for my lenses (monthly disposable) from Specsavers and I have seen threads that suggest they can be cheaper. I think the last one mentioned Asda?

Good luck, it is do-able, some others on here are doing and have done it, so can you.

Hello

antcav

Thanks all for this!!!

I am starting to look around on water rates and the utilities..... my parents and I basically split the bills 50:50 most of the time as my dad spends 75% of the year in greece and mum lives with me so in the winter when he's back, he gives me additional cash payments..... i may have a chat with them for this winter though as with mum's illness he's back a lot more.....

i will dig out the APRs - am sure though that the Debenhams / Next cards are the first to get paid off.......

short term pain for long term gain!!! I somehow seem to live in a bubble whenever I have cash and i go completely mental!!!

i'd rather keep the car, especially as i do need to take my mum to and from the hospital.... she gives me petrol money whenevery it happens and i rely heavily on the car to do weekly shopping etc... but again, it's something that I know may well be the only option is to get rid of it........

when i say available to spend - that's food, going out etc. I don't really need any more clothes as I have more than enough to work with for work. as for haircuts, well my hair's not that good at the moment but looking for cheap options at the moment....

on the contacts - i use daily disposables which suit me down to the ground at the moment..... what are the monthlies like and what happens if they split / get lost etc..... i'll do the internet research thing for cheaper alternatives.....

i haven't had any left over recently as due to weddings, christenings etc, things have been very tight, but this is moving forwards. I am hoping that I may have a token amount of say £20 to over pay, but if I can save on the utilities then that will increase.......

i can't believe i'm in this mess again.... I agree that credit should be limited and I especially think that credit cards for students shouldn't be allowed... I konw that they have a much rougher deal financially than when i was at uni, but they're still coming out with sooo much debt!

KatrinaC_2

antcav wrote:

Credit / Store Cards - haven't got the APRs to hand though!
Debenhams 18.43 - 750
Morgan Stanley 95.00 - 4800
BarclayCard 47.00 - 2000
Next 60.11 - 650
AMEX 112.00 - 3800
MBNA - LFC 161.35 - 6800
Egg 33.73 - 1700
MBNA - Yacht 9.75 - 500
HSBC Mastercard 119.00 - 4000
Capital One 41.93 - 1400
Capital One 23.49 - 800

Hello!

Something I've noticed is that you have a lot of relatively low balances on cards - 750 on the Debenhams card, 650 on Next, 500 on MBNA and 800 on Capital One. Without knowing your limits and APRs it's hard to tell whether there is a better way to arrange your debts - whether there is room to juggle some of the debts onto lower rate balance transfers and the like. Alternatively, it might be worth trying to get a card with a 0% balance transfer offer purposefully for moving the balances about. Getting the best interest rate open to you must be a priority as this allows you to start repayng the capital and not just the interest. A word of warning though - once each card is cleared, you MUST cancel the card by calling the company. If you don't then it will show up as available credit and screw up your chances of getting better cards in the future.

Getting a loan to put all of the debts into one place might be helpful in the future, but only if and when you have a better control over your budgeting. You have a very high income and the fact that a lot of your debts are on cards suggests that it was spending more than you earn rather than a failed business deal or the like which got you into this state. Until you have complete control over the minute details, you are much better off trying to clear your debts as they are.

Kat