Can someone have a look at my SOA please?

HappyMJ

chazsucks wrote: »

my dad has had bladder cancer for a long time and they ran out of options and he had his bladder removed in the summer, around the same time we moved into his house. as i don't work i help out around the house cleaning tidying etc but i don't actually do any caring for him, i don't dress his wounds or anything like that xx

i know his operation probably isnt a big deal but hes old and his operation depresses him that he'll never be the same again and he also suffers from other things like HBP and bronchitus etc so it all adds up and he is pretty weak

That's the information you need to take to the CAB and see if they think you can claim any help. If you were not there I doubt he could look after himself. You don't need to be "dressing wounds or anything like that" to be a carer.

Get down to CAB and some expert advice.

chazsucks

Hannah_10 wrote: »

Your car insurance is through the roof. £120 a month? Really? Mine's £27.72 and my car had an assets value of £650 (webuyan*ycar offered me £2 for it, that's because they make thier money by not being realistic, in the real world I could sell it for £650 in the paper anyday). For a car to be really valued at £0 then I can't imagine how rough it'd have to be so why on Earth are they charging you for a brand new Mercedez Benz??? I can only imagine someone's only just got off a ban or some other reason to be considered an astronomical risk??? You don't need two cars, with you not working then you could easily drop a car and you give him lifts to work. With a petrol bill of £40 a month between 2 cars he's can't be working far away anyhow. If it's you that the insurers hate not him, then you manage without a car instead you can catch a lot of busses for £40 a week and supermarkets are still open when he gets home! That insurance bill alone accounts for the whole of what you're over your means by and another fifth on top of that.

The childminder at £100 a month is pretty much identical to the amount you're living above your means by too. I suggest asking friends or family to do a child swap. You watch thier children at your house on Tuesday mornings, they watch yours at thier house on Weds morning kinda thing. Ask around, you might be suprised how many of your friends or relatives would go for it, nearly all mums would tell you a morning off here and there saved thier sanity! If you don't have many friends a Mum and Toddler group could turn out to be well worth the £2 a week subs.

You can get LHA/HB if you are renting from family as long as you are not living with them as part of the household. If your local authority are being difficult about this seek advice through the citizens advice bureau (click this http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/index/getadvice.htm).

Try your college for a hardship payment, even distance colleges have hardship schemes. They might be able to lower your fees or pay for books or even (rarely but sometimes) pay some childcare. If you could get five sixths off the education bills you'd be back within your means.

Living over your means is serious. It means you're spiralling into a crisis, instead of what we want to se, which is you making a firm recovery. Even though your debts are really small the living over your means part is a dire situation which has to be turned around. Next year it'll all be different as you will be a full time student, so you might need to do another SOA then, but until then we have 11 months where you're sinking deeper into the mire and that's no life for any of you.

The other side of a SOA to expenditure is income. There aren't many things you can do to earn a few quid with a little baby in tow, but there are some. Some even look good on your CV when it comes to getting nursing/midwifery jobs. Of course there's Avon (we're only looking for £100 a month here to get you guys breaking even) but there are also child or mum&baby specific things. I'm thinking maybe Usbourne books, or there is a real-nappy one my sister used to do. I can't think of the name of it now. You might have a craft skill you could make a few quid out of selling (£5 pitch rent for a car boot stall is typical). Perhaps you're an active lady (or a lady looking to get fitter) and you could start doing some dog walking, no reason you can't walk a dog with a sling on or with your pushchair. Of course there are online paid surveys too, which I tried and hated, but the option exists. There is an up your income board all about this if you look at the main board index.

If we can squeeze you £100 a month you are no longer sinking, we need £163 to be doing Ok, lets say £200 a month to be paying Nan back too. £200 a month is £50 a week (or £46.03 depending what kind of month you meant). Can you set yourself a challenge of either cutting £50 a week out of your expenses or earning it? It's such a small difference between sink or swim, I really think you could do it.

heya we phoned up tons of car insurance companies when i passed my test and it was the cheapest we could find.. i don't know why.

one car is my dads and the other car is mine. my OH doesn't use a car he gets the bus to work and back until usually at the end of the month i drop him because we run out of money.

my dad needs his car for certain things such as hospital appointments etc and i need mine too. i didn't have a car for a while and we kept needing to go places at the same time.

the petrol is just mine my dad has his own petrol for his car which isn't included in my money

the child swap idea is actually a pretty good idea! only one of my friends has a child, well she her baby is due next month but I guess I could try and think of something

thank you for your advice it's been really really helpful!

i think the childcare option is probably the easiest option at the moment, i have been to play groups etc maybe i could see if any of the other mums there wanted to so a swap hmm.

i used to do crafty things when i had spare time and a little money for supplies but didn't know i was allowed to sell them at car boots??

thank you again, extremely helpful xx

Hannah_10

Reading your comments since I opened the box to reply a lot of what you have said negates what I've said. So for example, you don't have 2 cars, you have 1.

Your SOA is well out Honey. Can you do another one please? This time leave your Dads car out, put the money you owe the local authoity and your overdraft in, go to Parkers for a real valuation on that car (click here) and so on.

What we really need to see is what you, your baby and your fella manage on jointly. It helps that we understand you rent from Dad but there's a lot of confusion here over what your real situation is. Can we have a second go please? We're asking because we want to help. We do need accurate numbers for that.

Don't worry about the first SOA being wonky, everyones first SOA is wonky (mine included).

chazsucks

Hannah_10 wrote: »

Reading your comments since I opened the box to reply a lot of what you have said negates what I've said. So for example, you don't have 2 cars, you have 1.

Your SOA is well out Honey. Can you do another one please? This time leave your Dads car out, put the money you owe the local authoity and your overdraft in, go to Parkers for a real valuation on that car (click here) and so on.

What we really need to see is what you, your baby and your fella manage on jointly. It helps that we understand you rent from Dad but there's a lot of confusion here over what your real situation is. Can we have a second go please? We're asking because we want to help. We do need accurate numbers for that.

Don't worry about the first SOA being wonky, everyones first SOA is wonky (mine included).

sorry i'm so new to this! thank you for the support

as for my overdraft on my bank account.. i don't actually have an overdraft it's an 'unarranged overdraft' although i don't really understand it and i keep getting charged for it

i will have another go now xx

chesky369

Never done it myself but what about mystery shopping? I think there might be a board about it on here. Also, it's not much but on-line surveys do pay a little, sometimes in things like vuchers - Valued Opinions, YouGuv, Global test market, etc.

chazsucks

ok i have redone my SOA i hope it makes more sense now?

Hannah_10

Ooh I've done mystery shopping, I loved it. Yes you can take the baby too, in fact some jobs (like baby shops for example) they absolutly require you to be able to take a baby! The rewards are small to be honest. £5 a job maybe, and the jobs aren't frequent, but that's a fiver on top of a free lunch for example, or a free night in a hotel (nice treat for you and fella eh) or a fiver when you were gonna be walking past that baby shop, or going to that supermarket anyhow. You also have to pay out and then get reimbursed, so keep a notebook with what you did in it as the expenses refunds aren't always accurate!

Hannah_10

You forgot your other debts Hon, pop everything down, unarranged overdraft is still a debt

liney

I thought everyone earning up to 58k got £38 per month Child Tax Credit?

chazsucks

i'm not sure how much it is at the mo, i'm going out at 4 so i'll take my card and check it out and add it in then!

liney we are going to get CTC we were recieving them before but forgot to renew due to my stupidity, so now waiting for them to restart again. tax credits said i owed them £1000 as they had overpaid us but i sorted it out on the phone the other day so we don't owe them back any money but i need to wait until they start again which i think will be next month?

should i have waited til we start recieving them again before doing an SOA? xx