How can I start a family in this situation??

mrsmather1

[QUOTE=quantumleap]With all due respect, if you guys want to start a family and clear you're debt surely you can't have a situation whereby one of contributes part of their salary. Every two weeks you're husbands salary needs to go into "the" bank account.

Whilst I appreciate that many couples still have "his" and "her" money, in you're particular situation I think you need to completely combine in order to achieve what you want.[/QUOTE]

Our situation is not one of 'His' money & 'My' money. He pays equally for essentials as do I.

quantumleap

Hi Mrsmather, my apologies, I didn't explain myself correctly. I appreciate he pays equally for the essentials. The point I'm making is,

what is left over from his salary after he has paid for the essentials?
if there is money left over, is this money "his" money or is it available to pay addtional payments to debts or save for a family?

mrsmather1

In all hoensty there isn't much left over to throw at anything! Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea to get a completely joint account for both salaries to go into. However when we tried to do this the last time we couldn't. I had to have my name put onto his existing account. Although this is seen as 'his'.

quantumleap

I'm not having a go at all believe me. It shouldn't be a case of putting you're name to anything, you could just open a joint bank account which is in both you're names.

The only reason I suggest this is because it will help provide the overall picture in terms of the family income as opposed to you're income and you're husbands income.

Whilst I'm not the best to advise on the best ways to get out of debt I do know that you'll do it more quickly if you work together by pooling you're resources.

This will also enable you to decide if you can afford to have a baby at the moment. With a significant debt and a child, one partner can't be in a position, in my opinion, whereby even a small amount of money is not contributed toward the family needs.

I wish you well.

lynzpower

do you really only spend 80 a month on food for both of you? only that takes some doing? Weve been doing 100 a month for 2, but thats getting harder I must say.

wigginsmum

We normally do about £120/month for two for food, and that's being pretty frugal.

bobbadog

wigginsmum wrote:

We normally do about £120/month for two for food, and that's being pretty frugal.

Snap. Try as I might, our shopping always seems to come to £31.50 a week!

jobbingmusician

Maybe the £80 a month is what it costs after hubby pays his own way? I'm really confused about what both people are contributing to this SOA, sorry! Are you doing your accounts slightly separately because you are trying to demonstrate to your husband that you can afford a baby? How does he feel about this - is he keen too?

barnaby-bear

mrsmather1 wrote:

Our situation is not one of 'His' money & 'My' money. He pays equally for essentials as do I.

Well you can't do that if you want to start a family it's gonna be one of you paying in more than half and the other paying in the time at home rahter than cash.

CLAPTON

if you're planning to have a baby then you both should do everything possible to clear as much debt as possible. Probably never again will you be so rich as you are at present (even if you dont fell rich) well at least until the kids leave home and even then its not certain.
how did you build up those debts; have you addressed the issues that lead to the debts in the first palce?
babies themselves dont have to be very expensive at least not initially but the loss of your earning will have a major impact on your ability to live and make debt repayments...even if you intend to return to work you may in practice find that infeasible or only be able to work part time.

you should jointly decide that you will try to put every spare penny toward debt repayments.

its very difficult to look at half an SoA because one can't tell whether things are left out by accident or the OH is paying them.

your SoA says you have £247 left at the end of the month which in principle you could use to made additional dent payment...the question is do you actually have that money available?
if not then you need to find out where that money is going...a spending diary would help, where you write down everything you spend but maybe some of that money is going on; going out, presents, xmas, holidays, car tax, RAC/AA, MOT, servicing , haircuts, takeaways, magazines, hobbies

if you can delay having kids for say a couple of years and you can sweat out a bit more money say even 200 per month between you then
you will have paid off the HP in any case, could pay off the the overdraft in 4 months, could pay off the credit card completely and be left only with the loan.
this in turn will free up the HP payment and the CC payment giving you an extra 200. why not put your debts into the snowball calculator and see how a bit extra payments can make a real difference.

http://www.whatsthecost.co.uk/snowball.aspx