Living In Overdraft, Spending More Than Im Earning But Desprately Want To Change!

DaddyWhitts

I am a 22 year old with a girlfriend and a 9 month old baby.

We dont live together as we cant afford to because our money just seems to disappear.

I work full time on minimum wage and after reading posts on this site i can see that i seriously need to stop spending but im still not completely sure how.

I also have 3 overdrafts that i have slowly found my self in, all of which add up to £1400 (which doesnt sound as bad as some people have but i keep getting deeper and deeper into it all the time as i have no money just over half way through nearly every month so it could get consideribly larger if i dont do something about it now)

i think our main out goings are food shopping and taxi fairs.

We are exchanging taxi's for busses which will help alot but as for food shopping i think it comes down to knowing how to make 1 big shop last a month.

does anyone have any tips or advice on this or anything else that might help us have money left over to save and get our own place?

thanks very much in advance.

kezzygirl

hello,post an soa and the lovely knowledgable people can help!go to the sticky at the top of the page...link to soa is there

davidjwest

Living together is usually more cost effective than living separately - or is one or both of you with parents etc?

As the above poster says, post an SOA - you can find the template here - http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Hannah_10

We need to see a SOA.

I'm concerned that you live separately but your money situation is joint. Is this perhaps another way of saying "she takes whatever she wants from my account"? Because baby or no baby, if you're living separately you have to draw the line somewhere, the transfer of cash can't be unchecked or you end up in problems. After all how do you budget when you don't know what amount you're budgetting FOR?

This is going to make your SOA a little more complicated. After all who's income are we counting, yours, hers, both? Whose expenses are we looking at? As you are the person going into debt here, in your own solo name, I would like to see a SOA that is just about you and your living expenses (with what you end up paying towards baby listed as "other child related expenses").

I know how tough it is bringing a baby up on low income (I was a teenage single Mum), so if she feels she might get something out of us having a look at her SOA we will gladly have a go. We can even do it in the same thread we look at yours in. But what we mustn't do is blur the line so far no one knows where they stand at all because it's that kind of blurriness that leads to an ever increasing overdraft and a one way ticket to crisisville.

To find out about how to do a SOA read this topic >> https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/107280 (it's very easy).