Statement of Affairs

RubySewSew

I'm posting my Statement of Affairs to see if anyone can help. I am in dire financial straits. My ex OH wants to reduce his maintenance payments by £235 despite having his own company, a substantial income and living in a 2 income household. I am constantly going over my budget each month, I have bounced items because of poor cash flow and consequent charges and my self employed income is unreliable (the course I teach has been cancelled this month hence I am short by £375).

There are a couple of things I can reduce - Sky payments and mobile phone although I can't get rid of either completely as I need them for work.

I have thought about a consolidation loan but this isn't an option at the moment.


Statement of Affairs

Incoming
Earnings £414
Self employed earnings £375 (based on last year’s self assessment)
Maintenance Payments £640 (proposed reduction to £405)
Tax credits £840
Child benefit £188
Total £2457

Outgoing
Mortgage payment £935
Council Tax £108
Electricity £50
Gas £50
Water £34
Telephone (landline) £20
Mobile Phone £35
TV Licence £12
Sky (broadband & basic TV package) £36
Groceries (food, nappies, household items & cat food) £340
Petrol £60
Road Tax – none saved due next month
Car Insurance £38
Car Maintenance – none saved mot due next month
Childcare – varies between term and holiday but approx £60pm
Other child related expenses £150 (cash slush fund for clubs, pocket money, school trips, chickens, guinea pigs, glasses, swimming, misc costs)
Building & Contents £39
Life insurance £25
Presents – no budget at present
Haircuts £33
School uniforms, shoes, coats, kids clothes – no budget at present
Clothes – no budget at present
Entertainment – no budget at present
Holiday – no budget at present
Household Emergency – no budget at present
Total £2025

Debt repayments
Mortgage £154000 £935
Sainsbury’s Bank Loan £3000 £117
Sainsbury’s Credit Card £5000 £100
Santander Credit Card £5000 £100
Virgin Credit Card £400 £100
Overdraft £2800
Student Loan (deferred) £7500
Total £417

Assets
House £210000 (minus £10k redemption penalty)
Car £1200



Any thoughts, advice, help, anything?

Emmzi

you would be better posting this on debt free wannabee board.

your grocery bill looks very high to me, how many is this for? haircutts look high, I pay £15 to a woman who comes to the house.

if self employment isn't paying, a more stable second job may be the thing...

Deep_In_Debt

As above, post over on the dfw board.

Your sky package looks high - I'm sure you can get a better deal than that. Utilities look high too.

RubySewSew

Should have said - 1 adult, 3 growing children, 2 cats, 2 guinea pigs, 5 chickens. I have tried to get my grocery bill down but to be honest it usually goes over the budgeted amount. One of the boys is vegetarian and I won't compromise on home cooking or fresh fruit and veg. I don't think we're particularly extravagant (my only luxury is branded laundry liquid which i bulk buy when its on special offer). Would value any suggestions to get the cost down or to know what other people with comparative families spend on food?

Sky totally stiffed me when i moved in - I used to pay £20 for the same package at my old house! They reckon its because I'm on a different exchange! My plan is to get free-sat and get broadband cheaper somewhere else.

Haircuts is for me and all 3 boys. We have a mobile hairdresser who comes to the house. It probably works out as a 6 weekly cost rather than monthly.

I haven't been with my utility company (M&S) to work out how it compares yet. I left payments at £100 pm to avoid accruing any debt. I have a 3 bed terraced house. This should go down at least a bit because I am working out of the house more now.

freda

Outgoing
Mortgage payment £935

What is the APR, term of mortgage? Interest only or repayment?

Electricity £50
Gas £50
Seems high for a terraced house. Make sure you try as hard as poss to keep useage down. Don't heat all the rooms, only the ones you sit in in the evening, keep doors shut and use draft excluders. Extra layers of jumpers for all and turn down thermostat. Bulk cook - when the oven is on for one thing, see what else you can cook at the same time (tomorrow's tea, cakes, bread etc). Turn lights and appliances off when not used. Don't tumble dry, get airers up all over the place as much as possible. Don't wash clothes unless they are properly dirty.


Water £34

Are you on a meter?

Telephone (landline) £20
Get 18185 for 5p per call and BT c. £12 pcm to save £50 or so per year.

Mobile Phone £35

Why so high? ARe you paying for kid's phones? PAYG or contract?

Sky (broadband & basic TV package) £36
Are you tied in or can you cancel?

Groceries (food, nappies, household items & cat food) £340
Seems good to me for a family of 4 plus so may animals. Do keep checking this is the correct figure though, keep a log of all supermarket/food shop spends. It can be a big eye opener.


Petrol £60
Road Tax – none saved due next month
You should be saving each month for this. Can you sell bits on ebay to make this year's payment?

Car Insurance £38
Seems high, do you shop around?

Car Maintenance – none saved mot due next month
As above, you need a savings fund for car costs. We end up saving c. £75 pcm to cover it all. Work out cost of service, MOT, approx parts, insurance, tax etc, divide by 12 and set up a standing order to a savings account.

Childcare – varies between term and holiday but approx £60pm

Other child related expenses £150 (cash slush fund for clubs, pocket money, school trips, chickens, guinea pigs, glasses, swimming, misc costs)

Sounds brutal, but are you planning to replace the guinea pigs and hens when they go? They aren't cheap to run and you can't afford £1800 per year on the kid's stuff.

Presents – no budget at present
You need to be saivng through the year, again, work out a budget per person, double it (xmas and birthday). Then work out how many people you buy for. Then multiply by 12. Then add on about £5 extra per person foor wrpaping paper, cards etc. Fall over in shock and re adjust who you are going to buyu present for and how much you are going to spend. Re calculate and save this much to a savings pot by direct debit each month.

Haircuts £33

Are any of the children boys? Could you trim it yourself?

School uniforms, shoes, coats, kids clothes – no budget at present
Clothes – no budget at present
Entertainment – no budget at present
Holiday – no budget at present
Household Emergency – no budget at present


All these things with no budget - you MUST be saving for these or your debt will just rack up and up. You don't budget for clothes and the boiler breakign but you budget for guinea pigs? Theres something up with the logic there, in the nicest way possible.

Do a new SOA and work out what you SHOULD be budgetting for each thing.

It may add up to more than your income, in which case you need to sit down with it and prioritise. Clothes or chickens? Presents or holidays? You really have to be brutal and prepared to cut out things that mean something to you, I'm afraid.


Run out of time now, but hopefully if you post on the debt free wannabe board too you'll get loads more ideas.

hot.chick

toreduce your food and cleaning spends, head on over to the old style board, LOADS on food budgeting, meal planning, etc...

they are bound to point you in the direction of this site http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/index.html DEFO worth a look, home cooked healthy meals - for 4 - £100.... maybe not EXACTLY to your taste, but maybe full of ideas to help you reduce your budget loads

msb5262

Everyone seems to be focused exclusively on the outgoings - can we ask the OP why her ex is intending to reduce the child support so dramatically? Surely that is going to cause real problems, yet most decent exes maintain child support at a level which doesn't adversely affect the children. I think the OP should look carefully at her outgoings but should also see if the threatened reduction in child support really has to happen.
MsB

LindseyandMatthew

thanks hot.chik just had a look at that website it looks great

MrsTinks

I've moved your thread to the DFW board - these are the guys and gals who specialise in SOAs and where you can cut back
As for Sky - they are entirely right in that some exchanges have been unbundled and others have not - that doesn't mean other suppliers haven't unbundled that exchange just that Sky or their suppliers haven't
Look at http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker to see who has got LLU in the exchange to give you an idea.
LLU is the cheapest broadband, datastream and IPstream more expensive as it's all BTWholesale owned so providers have to rent all or part of the equipment at the exchange and so on...

Love them or hate them but Tiscali/Talktalk now has one of the largest if not THE largest LLU footprint (still growing) so worth seeing what price they can do for you.

isy1011

Your mortgage is high. Do you need such an expensive house?

Why are you paying £33 for hair a month and yet no budget for school uniforms, coats? - that possibly shows me that you are trying to keep up appearances here.

You need Sky and expensive mobile for work? So you claim back tax on expenses then for this or not? BT Vision cheaper and much cheaper mobile contracts.

Sorry if its blunt but you have to reprioritise now.

Eager_Elephant

Hi Ruby

I think you need to redo the SOA, follow this link and it tells you the calculator to use, where you have put that you don't have a budget you need to work out what you spent last year and put in a monthly amount otherwise you are kidding yourself that you can manage.

Also your debts are very exact, could you re-check the balances and the APR's.

At first glance even without the other bits mentioned above you are in financial difficulty. I think you are going to need to look at a Debt Management Plan either with one of the free/not-for profit companies but I don't think you have enough excess income so you really need to look at offering token payments for a few months until you can work out what you are doing.

I think the amount you spend on groceries is fine for who you are feeding but of course you can get it lower but when you present a financial statement to your creditors you should use the higher figure as that is still less than they allow for a family of your size.

First step might be opening a new bank account without an overdraft so you are living only on what you have coming in, and hopefully this will stop payments bouncing etc as you will have cancelled the DD's etc to your creditors.

I think you should speak to your ex-husband about the maintenance and tell him you are thinking of selling the house or whatever you are going to do as this will impact on him if it is a joint mortgage.

EE