Thought I was.....

Warriorsith

doing well, but don't feel like it. Here's what I've managed to do, I finally have sent my last payment to Dell so once that clears I'll be saving atleast £50 per month if not more as I've managed to end my repayments by 4 months I feel they are a poor company to contact and deal with overall, so and extremely happy that they are no longer on my repayment budget. I too have finally convinced my OH that we no longer need or have ever needed SKY on its FULL PACKAGE paying out near to £45 per month, we mainly watch the movies,living tv and normal tv channels and thats it. I have been nagging for a year to her and we spoke before,she said she'd contact them this weekend to just go down to paying £15 for two packages on Sky, I told her it's no point paying an extra £18 on the movie package as we normally buy atleast two dvds per month and the money saved from paying Sky could go towards that, so thats a 2nd bonus in lower expenses but due to my OH ill health I had to take a loan out with Provident as I needed too, trust me I had too I wouldn't done if I could cause I hate the idea but due to our circumstances, of more outgoings then our income at the time. My OH is now better but in the last 6 weeks has had 2 new jobs, the 1st fell through as the compay over empolyed new staff so my OH was given the boot and at her current job she gets paid monthly so in the last 8 weeks we've relied on my wages and provident we've still got two more weeks before she gets paid, so hopefully a slight burden will go then. I have also splashed out on Martins book and gave my OH it to read, I know we will get some ideas from it.

The only thing now is that I have Cabot chasing me for a debt I had defaulted on and I have no money to repay it as yet, I haven't replied to them yet either. I too know my debt, £6k is not a great one but it's still at debt and made up of two defaulted loans, one provident and two credit card and my OH has debt totalling £10 atleast and I feel she has yet to reach her lightbulb moment.

Our joint SOA is below:

Rent 550
Water 62
Council tax 126
Electric 119 (house is all electric except for a gas cooker)
Gas 8
Phone 64
Sky 43.5 (now going to £15)
Broadband 17.99
Tv licence 11

Total 1001.49

We get Weekly Tax Credits of £170 I think I get paid atleast £420 per fortnight and again am not sure what my partners new wage is. Im not sure what our food outgoings are but I'd say atleast £200 per month and thats for two adults and a 3 year old child. I told her to contact Orange BB to reduce that monthly payment as I hear we could get a better deal.I haven't included our debts as I'm unsure of all her's and mine are stated in my signature but if you can give some tips I'd be grateful.

Thanks for reading this I just needed an outlet, as my OH is already feeling bad due to no wages for the last couple of months and moving jobs and stuff so didn't wish to burden her. But am going to sit down this weekend and ask her what she has and then post it on here, so you'll have to give me a couple of days to get all the info as I'm working the next couple of days but as mentioned if anyone can give some guidance then it's a start.

Dave

Storm

As you managed to get a loan I'm guessing you're credit rating isn't too bad (though it's obviously an enormous apr!) so would you be able to get a 0% or low LOB credit card to transfer at some of the debts onto?

Totting up your income I get £1646.67 per month, but presumably now your OH is working again your Working Tax Credit may reduce? Also, you should be getting Child Tax Credit, here's a link for finding out what you're entitled to:

http://www.taxcredits.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/Qualify/DIQHousehold.aspx

Oh, and child benefit too isn't listed here!

From your SoA you should have around £400 a month left to throw at your debts, but there are some things you haven't included like birthdays/christmas/haircuts/going out etc. A big one that's not here at all is transport - though you may walk or cycle everywhere.

Personally what I'd do is try and pay off the credit cards first as they're fairly small debts but at large aprs, then with your full SoA you can hopefully agree a repayment plan with the loans.

Have you anything you can ebay/amazon/car boot to raise a bit extra initially to throw at these?

Congratulations for clearing the Dell debt anyway - it's wonderful when you can just strike one out completely isn't it?

Storm