SOA; would anyone be kind enough to take a look?

kazwookie

Hi

You must make your hubby, keep his business expenses away from the house hold expenses, please get advise now from his accountant. Is the yellow pages the best way for him to promote his business, why not have a look at google ads and such like, they may be more cost effective for him.

Good luck

sharronej

Hi guys,

I must admit I've been awake most of the night thinking about this and I think I may have come up with a plan (whether it's good plan or not is another matter ).

Ok, so I'm thinking three bank accounts;

one for the credit cards, loans and mortgage which ds and dh would pay into then set up the dd's and the additional snowballing payment.

the second for purely household expenses which my wages would go into with a standing order to a third account which would have the business insurances, phone, advertising and leases in. It's as broad as long if I want dh to pay his own business expenses it would come off the amount of money he gives me and at least this way I can ensure there are no bank charges or missed payments.

This would leave me just enough cash to pay for food/petrol/tutor and the other bits and pieces.

I would still need to resolve the cashflow for dh's parts etc that he needs to pay for in advance when working on a job. I'm wondering about a prepay cc which we can load with an amount of money? I'm going to go with dh next time we see the Accountant and ask him about a spreadsheet, information is power and at the moment I haven't got any! Once we can build up a picture of the business expenditure it will be so much easier to plan and budget.

The Yellow Pages thing includes Yell.Com as well as the traditional book and some other book as well (Not sure of the details). We probably have no idea whether it pays for itself or not! Something else to look into, although I think we're locked in for a period at the moment - I would imagine it'll be a one yr contract.

I'm usually found lurking and posting on the Food Challenge Board....and I think I may be on there more than usual for the next couple of years....porridge for breakfast, lentil soup for lunch and bubble and squeak for tea :rotfl:

dancingfairy

sharronej - here are my thoughts for you:
1) securing unsecured debt is usually a bad idea - sadly on here there are many, many people who have consolidated once, twice, 3 times or more. It seems to work for very, very few people so be very careful. With unsecured debt there is a lot less your creditors can do whereas if it's secured and you can't pay you could loose your home and I would hate this to happen. You'd do much better to try and get a grip on your income and expenses which is what you are in the process of doing now.
2) At the moment your SOA is showing a surplus so creditors aren't going to freeze interest and charges for you and could lead to them withdrawing credit facilites/closing accounts which may not be the best option.
3) seperating out the business expenses sounds like a good plan.

I know from your last post you seem to have moved away from consolidation/approaching creditors and your post above sounds like a good plan to me.
Good Luck - knowledge is power.
df

moo2moo

Sounds like you've made a few tough decisions. Simplifying your finances into a critical account for DDs and a separate one for everything else makes sense. I'm not entirely sure what you think you'll gain from a pre-paid credit card. Perhaps cold hard cash is the way to go. If you hit the supermarket with £50 in cash then you can only spend £50. It will focus your mind.

As far as the electric goes if you're in credit by £250 ask them for a cheque for that amount. Then go back over the last 2 years worth of bills, work out what the average is per month add 10%, round it up to the nearest fiver and go with that as a monthly direct debit. Then use the £250 to pay a chunk off your debt.

You may also find it helps to keep a spending diary and document everything. Be ruthless. Sub divide your spends into three categories:

Essential
Necessary
Frivalous

This should give you an idea where your surplus disappears each month and how much more than you think you spend you actually spend on things.

sueeve

Well done with the decisions taken. Moo2Moo says you need to be ruthless with your spending diary and I agree. But, and I hate to say it, you also need to be ruthless with your husband. I'm a peacemaker, and just back off if I am not in agreement, but there are times when I have to go against my nature and say NO etc. He is running his own business and making an income, but that does not mean that he is also up to being its finance director. I think it's one of the problems with people who have skills and fancy branching out, because their skill is not in business management. So either he has to hand over all the money to you or work for someone else, as I presume you can't afford to employ someone with the budgeting etc skills.

sharronej

hi, thanks for the help.

moo2moo I don't think I was very clear about the prepaid card - it's not for me but for Dh who buys a lot of the electrical parts he needs to complete the job on the individual car say for example someone rings up because their car won't work, Dh plugs his softwear into the car and it will tell him that it needs for example a new motherboard - he then comes aways, buys the part, completes the job and gets paid once the job is done. This is the stumbling block in my plan - how do we fund this? Obviously, we can't use a normal credit card on a monthly full pay option. At the moment it's just coming out of the bank which is messing me up because I don't generally know when the money is coming out or for how much but Dh does need a cash flow but a lot of what he buys is online so it can't be 'cash'. This is the last stumbling block and perhaps the hardest because it involves DH actually being responsible and facing the fact that the money in his hand isn't his wages. If anyone has any better ideas I'd be happy to hear them? I like your three categories perhaps DH and I should have them tattooed lol

Sueeve I am exactly the same and perhaps this is why I'm shying away from this bit - I don't want to face anymore arguments or bad feeling but I also realise that at the moment I'm the only one facing up to the enormity of the situation and I feel this is partly my fault because I like to solve people's problems for them - which isn't neccesarily a good thing.

Dancing Fairy Thank you for your kind words of support - this board makes a huge difference!

sharronej

Progress Report so far!

I've transferred some of DH's balance onto a much lower (10% lower) APR card of mine and they gave me a 4.9% offer for six months.
Requested the £250 in credit balance back from Eon to pay onto the most expensive card.
Cancelled the milk man because I keep longlife milk in at all times and the milk mans' was being left to go off in the fridge.
Identified a couple of old DD's still going through the account so the search is on for the paper work so we can cancel those.
Insured my boiler and radiator with some of the monthly money I have saved from the milk man.
Included the mortgage into the snowballer calculator and printed off four or five senario's for joint discussion.
Opened the extra bank accounts.
Had an intial conversation with DH and told him there are phone calls to be made.
Have decided on the cash float for DH's business which he can then see he needs to put back or that he can give to me to put into the bank to pay for the part etc.

Not bad for a mornings work - luckily for me the babies had a really long sleep this morning so don't think I'll achieve anything this afternoon except maybe building a wooden block tower :rotfl:

sueeve

An excellent morning's work. Now you are clearer in your mind it will be much easier to get husband on board. Once the pride thing is dealt with he will be glad that you are shouldering the load.

pennypusher

Hi, going back to your SOA can you cut down your Gas or Electricity usage, maybe reduce that a bit. Can you put your mobiles on payg, surely you don't need to spend £20+ per month on mobile phone calls? Scrap the satellite and go freeview. Your daughter is at Uni now maybe it would be better to get her to come home every half term and learn to stand on her own two feet and not give her £200 per month and expect her to come home every two weeks plus visiting her in between.

School dinners are an expensive luxury. Send your child in with a packed lunch.

I've looked at your SOA, there are things you can cut down on but it depends if you want to live your current lifestyle or pay more off your debts. Best of luck with whatever you decide.

I couldn't afford school dinners for my children when they went to school and now my son is at uni I miss him dreadfully but you have to let go and let them grow up. I know how hard it is and I have every sympathy with you.

sharronej

Hi
Sueeve Thanks for the kind words of support - it's so nice to get a pat on the back. Have told DH we need to talk but procrastination is his middle name - he'll be getting a list of jobs tomorrow with no explanations - I'm playing hardball now :rotfl:
Penny pusher,

You are completely right there are indeed places we could cut back on and I'm working on the family We're definitely going to drop the movies from Sky and I've asked DH to check which of the sports channels most of the football is on - I wouldn't mind but he's hardly ever here to watch it! We hardly ever find anything we want to watch but as soon as I mention dropping it it's like an explosion in the house with ALL the channels we couldn't possibly live without! I like the idea of the Freeview and a subscription to an online Bl*ckbuster type thing - might suggest that. We do have the internet with Sky though.


My dd needs our help at the moment because her loans pay her fees and board and that's it - so no food money etc, she is looking for a job and has had a couple of interviews but it's a small University Town that she has gone to (Bangor). We're also waiting to hear if she qualifies for a £1000 grant which will then ease the situation - she knows that the grant will replace some of our money, hopefully halving it by her second term. When she gets a job our money will reduce further so hopefully it won't stay at this level for too much longer. She's been home for her cousin's 21st party, a weekend when she was really ill and her hall mates brought her home and this week she's home for reading week. With the wonders of Skype I'm quite happy to let her learn to stand on her own two feet and she has done better than I thought - I think girls are better at keeping touch than lads :rotfl: I've been better than I thought I would be until the week when she was ill (Serious Asthma) . How does your son manage his finances at Uni?

I think I will talk to my son about half and half with his school lunches, he was struggling to fit it all into his bag last year - books, pe kit, coat and lunch etc but this year it seems to be a better spread and I think he's be happy to take lunches two or three days a week. We pay for school lunches through Standing Orders at the bank so I bet I could cut it from £50 to £20. I must admit though I hadn't even thought about it! The reason we put him on money was because I was buying the lunches in and the 'goodies' were disappearing in a matter of a couple of days for example last night Dh brought in an open packet of 14 chocolate biscuits, now I haven't seen anyone eating them but after tea I thought hmm might have a biscuit.....only the empty wrappers were left!

With the phones we have found this to be the most cost effective way otherwise we get nagged at for more phone credit but I take on board your comments - it's just the way that works best for us.

Thank you for your help


Have now spoken to ds and we're going to reduce school dinners to once or twice a week so instead of £50 pcm will be £12 pcm :j
Have also now ordered an energy usage monitor, if people can see what it's costing they might be more careful with it. I'm a childminder working from home so I probably can't cut back on the Gas through the winter but can probably do something about the electric - not using the dryer as much and there are occasions when the dishwasher can be on two or even three times a day! I'll make an effort to wash the pans and just use the dishwasher once a day or maybe once every two days also making sure all the other appliances are unplugged rather than on standby and checking that everything has been turned off when the family have gone out to school and work.