good news but bad news. bit of a ramble, sorry.

helen_vasey

the good news is that my hubby has got another job, he just wants out of his current job and in 4 weeks' time he will be. the not so good news is that we will be £200 a month down, although the new job has paid overtime (at the min. he does around 7 hours a week unpaid, as managers are salaried). we dont really want to rely on overtime as it isn't guaranteed. anyway, we had planned to chuck £100 extra per month at one of our cc's for the whole of next year, so that's out of the window, all our cc's(3) are on life of bal. tf's at less than 6%. also his pension, we really don't want to go the next 12 months with him not paying in anything but his co.pension will either be frozen or transferred ( haven't decided yet), there is a company scheme at his new place but I don't know what the contributions are , I am presuming 6%. or does he reopen his private scheme with eagle star and just pay the minimum, £50 a month? (I think) we are also in the middle of setting up our own business, so the £1500 savings that we had , has gone into the set up. we have got ourselves a sainsbury's card with 10 month's interest free to get the first stock in. probably about £2k. if push comes to shove I could get a job with more hours, but I could really do without that as I should really be at home while the business hopefully takes off. On the plus side, he will have weekends off (unheard of, I know!) so we can do a lot more shows and festivals with our stall.:T if I post our debts, maybe someone will suggest a way of making them cheaper, without prolonging them. ok. egg loan: £208 , has 2 years left. nat west card:£100 a month , balance of £4000. capital one card:£4500 /£150 a month. it's a bit scary to see them in print, but we were £22k in debt this time last year. thanks, helen. btw, our mortgage is fixed for another 4 years with portman at 4.5%. £450 a month inc. insurances. (saved £200 thanks to quidco).

chevalier

Not sure if you have done a full Statement of Affairs somewhere else, but if not then perhaps we can help you make further savings, if we know you income and outgoings (there is a sticky about this by southerscouser at the top of this page).
chev

helen_vasey

I actually think that our outgoings are as low as they can be, I have used all the tricks so helpfully given on here to save at least £100 a month. now that our daughter (bloody students!) has a saturday job, that will also be about £20 a week that I don't have to shell out, she should also get minimum ema next year too, (we would have been over the limit), also, we save about £130 a month in an isa, but I use that for things like christmas and car bills. I think that it's just the shock of physically having less cash coming in for a while that has got to me, we have been used to our income going up quite a lot over the past 3 years, but if the business does well, who knows?

tyllwyd

About your pensions - if you try the pensions board here they should be able to give you some advice about the best thing to do.