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

sharronej

Next steps - have given Dh all the paperwork with instructions written on as to what he needs to action - mostly just dd mandates but a couple of balance transfer, I'll give him til Friday and then sit him next to me whilst I phone and get him to give consent for the companies to deal with me.

Have found out that we may be elligible for a free bus pass because we live a far distance from the school so I've emailed in about that.

Ds had ninety pounds sat in his school dinners account, so I've cancelled the Standing Order and have figured out that he shouldn't need any more money in there until 7 months!

foxgloves

Sounds like you are absolutely determined & have already had lots of good suggestions from folks on here. I only wanted to add 2 things. First, you really can get energy bills reduced if you stop switching things on out of habit and start to see it as something you're paying for. Our monthly payments went up to 80 for gas & over 70 for electricity and that was it, as far as I was concerned. We got an energy monitor (free from Npower) then stopped leaving lights on (partner!) boiling a full kettle for 1 cup of coffee (me!), leaving stuff on standby, having heating on while sitting in t-shirt, etc, etc. After 6 months, we got a cheque from gas & electricity & our payments reduced. Now a year & a bit later, payments have gone down again to 37 gas & 29 electricity. I read the meters every Sunday night to check we're not creeping up again. It takes a couple of minutes & clearly works for us. 2nd thing is that my dreadful money (mis)management started when I was a student. I was bailed out several times by my Mum and looking back (hindsight is a wonderful thing!), this is one of the reasons why I didn't get a grip on myself much much earlier. If your daughter is conscious of how much budgetting is going on at home & how necessary it is, this can only be helpful long term as it is a huge thing going off to a new city and suddenly being responsible for one's own finances. If I'd learned how to budget at 20 instead of 40, things would be so different! Oh well, we can't all be perfect, we can only try our best. I did find your posts inspiring as it seems you have had a lot to sort out and have really decided to tackle it all head on. Best of luck x

LittleMissAspie

sharronej wrote: »

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 260
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 200
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 137
Electricity............................. 50
Gas..................................... 50
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 14
Telephone (land line)................... 25
Mobile phone............................ 85 (four phones) your children should pay for their own phone if they want one
TV Licence.............................. 13
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 77 wow this seems loads. i would cancel it and just have basic tv licence and basic internet connection. we have virgin internet and line rental for £30 a month (we don't have a tv).
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 325 (I know this are can and will be cut)
Clothing................................ 20 this is reasonable but for the next year you could wear what you already have.
Petrol/diesel........................... 60
Road tax................................ 40
Car Insurance........................... 100 this seems expensive as does your tax. can you change to a car that is cheaper to run?
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 10
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 430 (dd at Uni plus son with Tutor)
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 18
Contents insurance...................... 18
Life assurance ......................... 39
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 75 over £750 per year on presents? :eek: why not just buy presents for your children, £50 each at xmas and birthday will reduce this to £300 a year.
Haircuts................................ 10 on the other hand this seems low, are you sure it's right?
Entertainment........................... 0
Holiday................................. 25 this is also low if you go away as a family but it's not an essential either so i would cut out holidays for a year and then see if you can afford one.
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 2081


Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 20000....(260)......6.99 ouch your rate is very high for such a small LTV. can you remortgage or go on to SVR?
Hire Purchase (HP) debt ...... 6000.....(200)......0
Total secured & HP debts...... 26000.....-.........-

Thus the cost of supporting her is a minimum of £200 for her food, phone and travel home twice a month), a 14 yr old who has a tutor (Tutor £100pcm, mobile £10, scouting and dancing £20, school bus fare £20, school dinners £50 and £20 spending money).

your daughter should be paying for her food, phone and travel from a part time job. or another option is a full time job in holidays only, that's what i did - my loan didn't quite cover my rent so my boyfriend's mum gave me £50 a month and the holiday job covered the rest. your son should be paying for his mobile out of his pocket money. your school dinners are very expensive, a packed lunch will be much cheaper and you can make sure it's healthy too.

Another small question if you don't mind? I am currently in credit by £250 with the Gas and Electric, they keep trying to put my payment down to £75 pcm but I have put it back up to £100 pcm should I change it down and pay the extra £25 off the credit cards? The only thing that bothers me with this is that last year my payments ended up at £194pcm because they undercharged me.

you'll need some credit for the winter so perhaps keep it at £100 and see how you are doing in the spring. make sure you give them monthly meter readings so they give you accurate bills.

good luck

dancingfairy

Wow - sounds like you've made loads of progress already. Your balances will soon look a lot healthier.
Keep up the good work.
df

sharronej

Foxgloves wow what you've achieved with your Gas and Electric is amazing - definitely something to aim for! I also order my energy montitor for free from Eon but straight after I ordered it I got an email saying 'due to unprecedented demand there will be a three month delay on the delivery' grr that's rather conveniently half way through the most expensive months of the year so I am still unsure whether to buy one or not, I've seen them for about twenty pounds. I also take on board your comments re learning money skills, I have had a think about this and have issued a challenge to my dd over tea. The challenge is to send the balance in her current account over to her savings account (because I know she's spending more than she should) and for her to live on the agreed budget, I've also suggested that if she wants money for over Christmas that she should join the grocery challenge, use the food she has stock piled and then put that money into a money tin to be opened just before she comes home - a nice simple exercise in budgetting! She does know how to budget and how to cook from scratch, she also knows how to make her meals stretch because we've always had a budget and I've always been traditional in the way our family has been raised so she does have the skills, now she can prove it I am determined and the kids are fully on board with me, I've never been called inspirational before though - how lovely, thank you.

Little Miss Aspie Thank you for your time in looking over my SOA. The car insurance and tax are for both mine and dh's vehicles, I'd love a different car but wouldn't have the cash to go and get one and for obvious reasons wouldn't take any finance out for one either so I'm afraid we're a bit stuck at the moment. Dh's is a works van otherwise I'd get rid of mine because I love walking and think it's fabulous for the kids to walk to and from school. Our clothes normally come from car boots or second hand on ebay - it's very, very rare that I get anything new - I still have clothes from eight and nine years ago lol We do try to get our ds some designer clothes - signature pieces I think they're called but they usually come from car boots, ebay or a very good online discount shop and are coupled with clothes from the cheaper shops such as Prim@rk. DD has told me that the charity shops near Uni are full of 'named' clothes, so that might be worth a look, a couple of months ago we got him a Henr1 Lloyd winter coat off a car boot for £7.50! As for the hairdresser, well I'm really lucky there because my closest friend is a hairdresser so dd and I have our hair done 4 or 5 times a year (cut and coloured) and we give her £20 to cover her costs, the rest goes onto ds2 for Barbers fees. We didn't get a holiday last year which is why I wanted to include some kind of saving plan - it will be a family holiday but probably just a long weekend and definitely camping. I put the wrong figure in for the mortgage and having looked properly it's at 4.09% , I don't know if that's good or not but tbh I'm a bit worried about trying for a new one. What's an SVR?

The sky? well my goodness if I was a single parent and in the position to make the decisions we would indeed have freeview or at the very most the basic sky package...that's not my situation though and I am facing a lot of resistance from dh at doing anything with the package :mad: It's very frustrating especially when it's not really watched, just used as background noise because whenever we really look we can't find anything we want to watch!

The thorniest and most difficult cut backs for me are the ones which include the children (albeit grown up children). Christmas has been cut back dramatically over the years to a budget of £150 each (3 children) and I still struggle to stick to this, birthdays are set at £50 and always have been. I then buy for M & F inlaw (£50) my five great nephews and nieces (£10 -£15 each),my neighbour (my life saver on more than one occasion) and the children I look after (nine of them - but I can claim that back). I also have a party on Boxing Day but this year it will be bring a bottle to help cut the cost. We are supporting our dd until she has a job, she is applying and getting interviews but usually loses out because she hasn't had a job before, we are also waiting to hear about a grant for £1000 - if all goes to plan than within six months our financial support should be down to about £50 per month. The school dinners have been dealt with and it turns out that he didn't want to spend twenty minutes queing up for his lunch so was buying bars of chocolate instead - no wonder he had £90 saved up.

I'm looking at this as a work in progress - if I change too much, too quickly I could fail. I'm going to be a little sneaky with the tv and start asking to listen to music instead in the hope that we get out of the habit of it being on all the time! I find it harder to take anything off the kids so I'll have to think on that one for a while.

Dancing fairy Thank you for your support, I'm also asking the parents I work for if they can change their payment dates to the first of the month in order that I can have all the DD's go out when my wages have cleared, I think this will make it clearer to see where that elusive couple of hundred pounds disappear to each month. I think having a start and end to the month financially will be a good idea.

pennypusher

Hi, well done you are thinking about the cost of everything. You can always make sandwiches and cakes etc for your son's lunches to save money. My son gets the grants and loans for uni. He makes his own sandwiches/rolls for lunch or cooks a snack if he's in his accommodation. He also cooks his evening meal. He has worked out how much money he has for the term and divided it up to pay for everything. He knows if he cooks from scratch and prepares his own food he has more to spend on socialising. He also realises that because I don't have much money he will have to pay back his loans and everything else he borrows.

For the Christmas presents why don't you aim for £100 for each of your children for their main present and then buy the extra bits and pieces with the £50 for them (hopefully keeping it to £150 and not going over), at least that's what I try, the theory is good - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

For your great nephews and nieces maybe you need to think a little differently and if you see a bargain that will suit one of them buy it and not necessarily what you originally thought you were going to buy. Perhaps look out for half price bargains or aim to spend up to £10, they probably won't notice the difference. Have you tried making a home made hamper for mother and father in law - lots of people on here have said that can be a cheap option - lots of scope for getting things on offer whilst making a super hamper that they will love and you can personalise with things you know they particularly like. Hope these ideas help. Last year I'm sure I saw a thread on here for cheap presents for parents, family etc with great ideas you might like to look for that. Another idea for the in laws was a calendar with photos of the kids for each month (I'm sure they'd love it with old and current photos of your family).

sharronej

Hi Pennypusher,

I'm wondering if we've missed something with financing at Uni because dd's tuition fees went directly to the Uni and even with the cheaper halls there was a deficit between the Loan and the cost of the accomodation - it was only three hundred pounds but by that point dd was penniless. Anyway we're on track with a plan and after she's completed this challenge if she still doesn't have a job then we'll talk about reducing her support then, there is a Mr T close by to her so it could even be that we don't send her as much cash but organise her shopping through the online service - I don;t know I'll have to give it more thought but she was starting to get panicky last night thinking that she was causing us a problem and she wasn't the one who got us into this mess so she has been reasurred that we will always be there to support her - the sky and other bits the DH is reluctant to lose would go through the window before I'd let her down.

For Christmas I have been a little bit crafty - ds1 want driving lesson vouchers so I can buy them in January thus easing the bottle neck. DD wants GHD's and they are on sale at the moment so I'm going to try and get them this month, Ds2 hasn't mentioned anything but I suspect it will be clothes so I'll buy him a token present and then take him out for the day in the sales. I've used my MrT vouchers on two magazine subscriptions for M&F in law and I'll have a look at the 3 for 2 offers for all the other children. I've already told M&F in law that it will be a more frugal year this year. Last year I bought a fancy Muffin stand so I'll bake Chocolate and Christmas Muffins for the party and we'll have a family moment decorating them, I'm also trying to buy the ingredients for the hot food I'm going to serve out of my normal budger - so fingers crossed not a penny more in debt :A

I too had seen the photo calenders - they look fantastic!

Thanks again everyone for helping me so much.