Where to start?

Ames

Noctula wrote: »

Well, in the end, because it was taking so long, I based the SOA on the last three months, extrapolating spending where necessary into a 12month division. I'm actually completely horrified. :eek: Particularly with the grocery shop!! This includes all food, toiletries, household cleaning stuff, pet food, cat litter etc etc but even so - it's the daily bits an pieces, odd bottle of wine, snacks etc that add on. I honestly didn't know how much we spent, I thought it was around £300

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 1
Number of cars owned.................... 2

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 894
Partners monthly income after tax....... 1800
Benefits................................ 81.2
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2775.2

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 443
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 550
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 145 (for both properties) why are you still paying council tax for the other house? If it has no furniture in it then it's exempt.
Electricity............................. 68 (for both properties) Again, why are you paying for both places? Surely an empty property doesn't need electricity?
Gas..................................... 19
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 44.38 (for both properties)ditto
Telephone (land line)................... 22.02
Mobile phone............................ 90 (mobile phone each, tied by contracts) :eek:try and drop a tariff, and cut it right down as soon as the contracts end.
TV Licence.............................. 0 (We don't have TV)
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 25 (Internet dongle, still 12 months remaining on contract)
Groceries etc. ......................... 546.7 :eek: even £300 would be way over the top, this can be cut right down by batch cooking from scratch. Buy a slow cooker and it'll pay for itself really quickly.
Clothing................................ 115.47 (Can cut this easily, although recently I've had a splurge on ebay for my daughter, plus she needed new shoes) I know you need clothes for your DD, but I'm sure this can be slashed.
Petrol/diesel........................... 243.26
Road tax................................ 20 (for two cars)
Car Insurance........................... 62.75 (for two cars)
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 104.17 (for two cars) Do you really need two cars? How often do you need to use yours, if it's just a day here and there then could you give a lift to your husband on those days and him have the car most of the time? Or could you borrow a parent's car now and then?
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 104.2 (train fare, although this will be stopping)
Childcare/nursery....................... 187.25
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 52 (recently higher than typical due to recent vaccinations, spaying etc)
Buildings insurance..................... 16.04 (for mortgaged property)
Contents insurance...................... 8
Life assurance ......................... 14.95
Other insurance......................... 32.27 what's this for? Also, for all insurances, shop around when they're due and get cashback.
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 20.09
Haircuts................................ 4
Entertainment........................... 152.58 (mostly eating out - can stop most of this) you need to stop this asap
Holiday................................. 60 you can't afford one right now, sorry.
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Unaccounted for (e.g. cash withdrawels). 104.17 (!!!!!!?!! Have no idea where this goes, need to sort this!!) To find out, keep a spending diary, buy a cheap notebook and write down every last penny you spend, it'll be a real eye opener.
Miscellaneous bits...................... 73.51 (Again, needs reducing)
Work (e.g. memberships, equipment)...... 35.83
House maintenance/one offs.............. 124.99
Conservation Organisation Memberships... 9.42 (can cancel these)
Bank Account Fee........................ 12.85 (can change this)you need to do both of these.
Child Trust Fund/Child Savings Account.. 30 you can't afford this now, your daughter needs a home and stability now, a lot more than she needs money in the future.
Total monthly expenses.................. 3540.9


Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 125000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 2000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 127000


Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 115000...(443)......3.5
Total secured & HP debts...... 115000....-.........-

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Overdrafts.....................1500......0.........18
Tesco credit card..............280.......14........19
MBNA credit card...............4500......37........18
Student loan 2.................18500.....0.........1.5
Student loan 1.................5500......115.......1.5
Parental loan 2................36000.....0.........0
Parental loan 1................3000......0.........0
NatWest Credit Card............1250......30........18
HSBC Loan......................17000.....321.......8
Total unsecured debts..........87530.....517.......-


Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,775.2
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 3,540.9
Available for debt repayments........... -765.7
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 517
Amount short for making debt repayments. -1,282.7

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 127,000
Total HP & Secured debt................. -115,000
Total Unsecured debt.................... -87,530
Net Assets.............................. -75,530



I feel I can also answer your questions now Traycee:

1. I feel that the house in Wales a massive issue for you guys that needs addressing. Could you/ would you consider moving back in? Perhaps you have more family support where you are?
We moved to where we currently are because that's where our family is (both sets of parents) and with a baby I needed the support, especially as I'd had to go back to work. My husband can't get a transfer back to where we were living because it's dependent on their being a managers job available in one of the "local" stores (local in Aldi's view being anything up to 60miles/an hours drive although the nearest store to where we were living was 25miles). Additionally, I wouldn't be able to employ myself locally up there because I would have no contacts who would be able to provide clients (although my local authority job down here didn't work out it did allow me to make contacts with people in the field that I needed for my self-employment needs)

2.Seriously your house has been on with an estate agent for 12 months and you haven't even had 1 viewing! When did you last speak to them? Do they know how much you need to sell? What else have they sold in your area and for how much? What suggestions do they have? Have you spoken to other estate agents in the area? If not do it. What do they say. Price what price do they think people would consider a bargin? Could yopu auction it with a reserve? Consider closed bids. Consider taking it off the market for a month and ensure in that time that it is looking the part for sale. House doctor it if required? Get estate agents / friends opions on how it is looking. Once ready relaunch property as new to market, just come on our books, newly available. Hold an open day? I am not an estate agent if there are any reading this do you have any advice?
We had one person show interest when it first went on the market but they weren't able to offer anywhere near the asking price and due to the drop in the houses value since we'd bought it we couldn't afford to accept much less than we were asking. Obviously in hindsight we might have been better off if we had. Who knows? The house itself is a 3 bed semi, new build (3 years old so still within the guarantee). However, there are still unused plots on the estate plus two other completed houses that the builder has on the market (admittedly at a higher price than we're selling). We've been in regular contact with the estate agent. He's advised us to drop the price as we may get interest if we drop to 110,000. However, our outstanding mortgage is £115,000 and because I've not been self employed for the minimum of 2 years that are needed to provide records to our mortgage lender (Nationwide) we're unable to sell in negative equity. The same issue would apply if we tried to sell it at auction. We'd be lucky to get 100,000 for it.

3. Can I ask what line of work you are in? Perhaps we can suggest ways of increasing your income as well.

My income actually varies quite a bit month by month because I'm self employed. Over the summer I can bring in £2000 a month but over the winter it can be as low as £200 a month so I've averaged it. I've only been self employed for about 5 or 6 months and the type of work I do is relatively seasonal (I'm an ecological consultant carrying out protected species surveys - I do work for developers, architects, planning consultants etc looking for plants and animals that are protected by law and helping with mitigation issues. It's actually quite specialised and there's only 2 other people within the county who does the same kind of work).

4. What are you doing about childcare for LO now?
My daughter is in nursery for 2 afternoon's a week and I get two days of help from my mother and mother-in-law (they both work as well though). Obviously when I lost the local-authority job and went self-employed I cut right back on the nursery but still need those two afternoons.

5. How old is you LO now? (Just wondering when LO could get free nursery place!)
She's only just turned two I'm afraid

6. Before you get 2 further cars what are the alternatives?
Is there a bus he could catch?
If you are in rented could you move closer to his place of work or to an alternative location where he could use public transport perhaps a bus if train times aren't compatable?
Where do other colleages live could he car share with anyone?
Nope, nope, and nope Have looked into all of that. There are no buses that run at appropriate times. Currently his shifts are 7am-7pm which helpfully corresponded with the trains but the store times are changing so the train times won't correspond any more. There aren't any buses that run at the appropriate time and even if there were they take over an hour. He works 10-12 hour shifts so adding an hour of travel would mean he'd never see our daughter. Additionally, he also has to be available to cover in other stores so needs transport between them. We are moving to a different house that's more central to the three stores he's most likely to end up in but again public transport isn't available.

7. Need to address this now.

Don't even do this again next month you need this £150 working for you not making the banks a profit.


Agreed. Having looked at the accounts, we're averaging bank charges and interest of £234.41. In fact currently:

• Bank charges and interest = £234.41
• Costs associated with the mortgaged house = 600.64
• Debt repayment = 402.31

*sigh*

I've put my comments in blue above.

YORKSHIRELASS

Hi, dont really have anything useful to add that hasnt been said already, but I would like to send you a bit of support. I too have made big mistakes with my financial decisions in the past. I also stuck my head in the sand and like you thought there was no way out. If you read other peoples stories on here you realise everyone finds a way through, and the most difficult part is always when you first start to try and unravel it all. There are ways you can cut your spending but your situation is very complicated and you are going to have to somehow address the property issue. Hopefully other people will be along with more suggestions.

Noctula

Ames wrote: »

I've put my comments in blue above.

Hi Ames,

In answer to the questions....

why are you still paying council tax for the other house? If it has no furniture in it then it's exempt.

It's only exempt for the first 6 months. It's been empty for 12. We're still paying a reduced rate however (the full rate is nearer £100 - Although the house isn't completely empty but we haven't told the council that)

Again, why are you paying for both places? Surely an empty property doesn't need electricity?

We're paying £5 a month for the empty house to cover us as we go up once a month to check on it (didn't stop someone else using a false name and our address to run up several hundred pounds worth of mobile phone and broadband debts though!). The same reason applies for water rates.

[try and drop a tariff, and cut it right down as soon as the contracts end.

It's mostly my husbands tariff (his costs double mine) so I'll chase him up I'll look into mine as well. However, I've still got nearly 18months left on my tariff :S

even £300 would be way over the top, this can be cut right down by batch cooking from scratch. Buy a slow cooker and it'll pay for itself really quickly.

I agree that we can cut down but I'm not sure we could cut much below £300 for a month. The groceries cost includes all cleaning products, all toiletries & cosmetics, food for the three of us, dog food for one dog, cat food and cat litter for 2 cats and food and sawdust for a gerbil. We're veggies as well so we don't make any savings on bulk buying mince etc and a slow cooker wouldn't be much good - we've looked into it before (unless some other veggies can correct me and can suggest some good veggie slow cooker recipes?)

Do you really need two cars? How often do you need to use yours, if it's just a day here and there then could you give a lift to your husband on those days and him have the car most of the time? Or could you borrow a parent's car now and then?

We live in a rural area - the nearest town/shops are quite a distance (10miles) and I need a car for work purposes as well as taking my daughter to nursery/my mums/my mum-in-laws. I use a car 4 or 5 days out of 7. Husbands hours take up most of each of his 5 days (10-12hour days leaving the house some time between 6 and 7am, home some time between 8 and 9pm) and his days off vary weekly.

Other insurance......................... 32.27
what's this for? Also, for all insurances, shop around when they're due and get cashback

9.99 is insurance for my husbands mobile phone (he took it our with the contract) - it's been handy because he's managed to break it 3 times in the last 12months. The remainder is a policy I can't actually identify so I've got to look into that asap. I'm also going to check our contents insurance covers mobile phones so we can cancel that 9.99.

Unaccounted for (e.g. cash withdrawels). 104.17 (!!!!!!?!! Have no idea where this goes, need to sort this!!) [

To find out, keep a spending diary, buy a cheap notebook and write down every last penny you spend, it'll be a real eye opener

Yep, I know. It's something I've tried before and I've never managed to keep it up. In part (but not entirely) because of the 3 separate bank accounts and not always knowing what husband is spending. Admittedly, I've been pretty rubbish as well (understatement of the year! )

Holiday................................. 60 you can't afford one right now, sorry.

Agreed. I based the SOA on all we've spent money spent, breaking up large sums into monthly amounts. We don't actually put any money aside a month for anything - we've been spending without thinking and then forking out lump sums as and when they've been "needed".

Hope that helps

Lottebear

I am sorry if I have missed something, but could the house be rented out in the short term until the market picks up? Even if the rent was less than the mortgage you would be in a better postion.?

determined_new_ms

Hi sorry to hear you're having such a rough time. I wanted to reassure you with committment you can & will get out of this difficult time. With regard to food shopping I think bit by bit you can reduce your shopping bill to £200 a month - I promise it can be done. Spend some time on the os board (do a search on the "frugal living challenge" and there are a load of links I think would be helpful - I fact I'm going to go off and do a search on one which gives a vege monthly meal plan for 4 which comes in at £100) When I started clearing my debt we were spending between 80-100 pw on food, this month I have budgeted for £180 for 3 adults (ds is 18 & a body builder) and both ds & oh are carnivors (I wish I could get a way with a vege diet it's bring it right down). With your oh working at adli's get him to get certain bits there - weekly reduced veg, I find their baby wipes much better quality than asda, sains or tescos & cheaper as weel. For cleaning use star drops for all cleaning tasks I bought a bottle 6 months ago for about £1 & its still going strong (again link on the os board for tips), other than that I buy a box of nettos washing powder for £1.79 which lasts a month, fab con (again nettos and buy when its offer 2 for £1) and bleach and that's it.

I found it:

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/index.html

I hope this helps x

Noctula

Lottebear wrote: »

I am sorry if I have missed something, but could the house be rented out in the short term until the market picks up? Even if the rent was less than the mortgage you would be in a better postion.?

No, I don't think you have missed anything.

We have looked into renting out the house and we do have permission from the lender but we don't have the money to get the boiler etc checked in advance, the rental price is about £100 less a month than the mortgage plus taking off tax leaves very little to go towards the mortgage. Then there's the extra cost of buildings insurance if you're renting out a property. Additionally, the house is a 4 hour drive away so if anything were to go wrong for the tenants (burst pipe, dead boiler, all that sort of stuff) we'd be trying to sort it out from a distance without knowing whether the plumber etc was any good (and there's that added cost) - or alternatively, we use an agent to manage the property which would cost us 10-20% a month in management fees again resulting in even less to go towards the mortgage!

We really have looked at everything. My father-in-law suggested we move back up there as the most practical solution (assuming husband can get a transfer) but (for various reasons) my mental health couldn't cope with that.

Noctula

determined_new_ms wrote: »

Hi sorry to hear you're having such a rough time. I wanted to reassure you with committment you can & will get out of this difficult time. With regard to food shopping I think bit by bit you can reduce your shopping bill to £200 a month - I promise it can be done. Spend some time on the os board (do a search on the "frugal living challenge" and there are a load of links I think would be helpful - I fact I'm going to go off and do a search on one which gives a vege monthly meal plan for 4 which comes in at £100) When I started clearing my debt we were spending between 80-100 pw on food, this month I have budgeted for £180 for 3 adults (ds is 18 & a body builder) and both ds & oh are carnivors (I wish I could get a way with a vege diet it's bring it right down). With your oh working at adli's get him to get certain bits there - weekly reduced veg, I find their baby wipes much better quality than asda, sains or tescos & cheaper as weel. For cleaning use star drops for all cleaning tasks I bought a bottle 6 months ago for about £1 & its still going strong (again link on the os board for tips), other than that I buy a box of nettos washing powder for £1.79 which lasts a month, fab con (again nettos and buy when its offer 2 for £1) and bleach and that's it.

I found it:

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/index.html

I hope this helps x

Thank you

We do pretty much all of our weekly shop in Aldi and if that's all we bought for the week we'd be fine - need to sort that side of things out.

Verbatim

Grim for you. You sound pretty resourceful and I guess you'll be able to make some changes which will start to make inroads.

The only thing I could suggest would be for your husband to get a motorbike or scooter rather than a car. Not ideal with a hard winter coming but if he could cope it would be a lot cheaper. Is there any other work you could do as well as your species ID stuff?

Renting out your house would reduce your deficit each month. You would need to get the safety checks done and perhaps have a plumber sorted "in case" and get bank, employer and previous Landlord references for tenants.

dancingfairy

O.K so 250 from groceries, 50 from clothes, 100 train fare, 120 entertainment, 60 holiday, 180 miscellaneous/unaccounted for, housemaintenance 70, bank account fee 12.50, child trust fund 30, and that's without cancelling the conservatin subscription, or cutting the work related fees at all - altogether that frees up about 860 by my recoking - o.k it will require a huge change in lifestyle but there is plenty there to ge working on. This should be enough to stabilise the situation and stop you getting more into debt although it may not free up much to be able to make any debt repayments.
It might be worth looking into going bankrupt to be honest to get a clean slate - that's not to say that you can't turn this around by cutting everything to the bone and renting your other house out etc and pay it all back bit by bit as it has been done but bankruptcy is obviously looking like the most sensible option.
Good Luck
df

Noctula

Verbatim wrote: »

Grim for you. You sound pretty resourceful and I guess you'll be able to make some changes which will start to make inroads.

The only thing I could suggest would be for your husband to get a motorbike or scooter rather than a car. Not ideal with a hard winter coming but if he could cope it would be a lot cheaper. Is there any other work you could do as well as your species ID stuff?
.

We did look into the motorbike/scooter thing Unfortunately in the short term my husband would be limited to a 50cc moped thing because of the type of licence he holds (and on L plates) - and about half of his 30mile journey to work is on duel carriageway so he wouldn't legally be able to drive the route!

dancingfairy wrote: »

O.K so 250 from groceries, 50 from clothes, 100 train fare, 120 entertainment, 60 holiday, 180 miscellaneous/unaccounted for, housemaintenance 70, bank account fee 12.50, child trust fund 30, and that's without cancelling the conservatin subscription, or cutting the work related fees at all - altogether that frees up about 860 by my recoking - o.k it will require a huge change in lifestyle but there is plenty there to ge working on. This should be enough to stabilise the situation and stop you getting more into debt although it may not free up much to be able to make any debt repayments.
It might be worth looking into going bankrupt to be honest to get a clean slate - that's not to say that you can't turn this around by cutting everything to the bone and renting your other house out etc and pay it all back bit by bit as it has been done but bankruptcy is obviously looking like the most sensible option.
Good Luck
df

Yup, that's pretty much how we figured