Oh goodness I've messed up...advice please!

Foggster

Is the father of your unborn child anywhere in the picture, or the father of the other two children? Couldnt they get the arrears together to help you put this situation back on track? Have you any parents/grandparents who could help you out for the short term, it appears on the face of it that you are needing to get the rent back on track and then have the breathing space to look at the child care and doing more hours.

sarahevie

Just seen your budget - you are spending too much on water ours is £30 a month, family of four.

gas and electric ours is £71 a month, was £53 per month last year but has gone up recently as we have the heating on more cos of health probs with my DD. Plus v cold winter

Food I manage on £160 a month family of four.

You don't need to go out, there's lots of free activities for children. Phone BT seems expensive. Our combined is £30 including landline, mobile, internet.

TV licence is £12 a month so yours seems high.

After mortgage and c/tax we have less a week than you do £150 a week, there's four of us - we manage have a car, holidays, savings.

If I can do it anyone can:D

apples1

apples1 wrote: »

I give up too!

Good luck. I really hope you are able to make the right choices for your young family.

Since typing this I just clicked link to your user name and read a few of your previous posts. You have been in exactly this situation six months ago and asked the same questions and for advice then. You have now increased your costs by £60 per week nursery and a further pregnancy. My heart goes out to your little ones. I soooo hope something clicks soon.

tomitma

I think that you are living in cloud cookoo land.

For a start off, what is the point of applying for a job, when you are pregnant, you will have to take time off to have the baby, where is the father of this expected, baby, why isnt he buying a pushchair, and helping you pay the rent, you don't get pregnant on your own. Where is the father/fathers to the other two children, why isnt he/they helping.

It is utterly ridiculous paying 60 pounds a week just to earn 50, you have put these two children in nursery so that you can work, what are you going to do when the other one is born, is that going into nursery as well.

Its all very well, stating that it will take months for the landlord to evict you, but what you are forgetting is, that if you are evicted for rent arrears, the socialhousing have no obligation to rehouse you, as you have made yourself homeless.

I would get hold of the father/fathers and make them pay there share, towards the children, start taking contraceptives, and accept that you are losing money, not making it, by putting the children in nursery.

Plus listen to the advice that you have been given.

alasia

I'll try and answer some of the questions/comments, apologies if I miss some.

Yes, last year I was living in a property, missed one months' rent whilst I was waiting for housing benefit to go through and then I managed to pay half the rent another time so ended up owing about 6 weeks. It was lucky of me to get this place, which is why I was upset about it happening all over again.

My children all have the same father, not that this is particularly anyone's business but I was on the pill when I got pregnant - these things happen but I am doing a midwifery degree in 2013, this short-term working at home thing is just that; short term as I refuse to sit around on income support doing naff-all all day.

I try to get my food costs down as much as poss, whilst still giving the kids a healthy, home-cooked diet. The last fortnight's food came to just over £80 which included a big pack of nappies for my youngest (not yet ready to be toilet trained), cleaning stuff etc. I can't get it down any lower than that and certainly will not feed them on beans on toast every day, for every meal!! I usually eat small portions or cereal anyway, they need proper diets.

I could make more than £50 a week; on occasion it's well over £100 but it depends on if I work doing my 'other job' which I won't discuss on here - however you have to invoice these people and requests are dealt with once they are 2 weeks old, so for example if I make £90 today, I can invoice them on tues but won't get the cheque posted out to me until 15th March - no good to me at this present time, however hopefully after then I should be able to get a regular wage every week.

Yes, the other baby will be going into nursery at 6 months old, to enable me to continue working. By then, my current youngest will be over 3yrs old and gets the funding for every 3-4 year old, so I won't be paying any more out in fees than I am now.

At the time the rent/nursery fees debacle happened, I had my 3 year old who was missing nursery and kept asking to go - as I'd taken him out of the one he was at just before christmas trying to save money, what was I meant to do; tell him no he wouldn't be going to nursery and see him upset and bored, and missing his friends?

So I weighed up the pros and cons of the situation, as anyone would, and at the time felt that as I would have been able to make up the rent money within 3 weeks of it being due (not like I was planning on taking months and months to do so), I was ok to pay the fees in order to get both children into nursery, preparing my eldest for school (starts in september), occupying them AND allowing me time to work.

However, I only got the tax credits letter yesterday informing me they wouldn't accept my change of circumstances, hopefully I will be able to get through to them tomorrow and either find out that the claim is still going ahead or I can resubmit, and I will be paid the higher amount in a couple of weeks' time.

The father of my children did a random disappearing act for 8 weeks from 4th jan-last week, finally grew a pair and saw the children on thurs, but whether he'll turn up again is anyone's guess - it's all very well and good saying he "should" pay and help out, but I can't force him to, can I.
My mum is disabled and stepdad her carer, so they can't help out with money.

I'll think about trrying for a crisis loan, but then that's more money to repay and I'd rather not go down that route any further.

I WILL need a pushchair I think, I'd rather not have to but I don't drive, so still can't see how I will be able to manage with a single; however that won't be bought until the baby arrives so I can see how my daughter is with walking by then.

TV license/water; they're double payments due to the fact their DD's didn't come out of the bank this month (not a budgeting error!!).


Oh and err...I never said this??

Its all very well, stating that it will take months for the landlord to evict you, but what you are forgetting is, that if you are evicted for rent arrears, the socialhousing have no obligation to rehouse you, as you have made yourself homeless.

As far as I can tell, there's been no actual advice, more "stop being such a silly girl" type comments. I'm all for criticism where it's due, but I'm working to try and improve mine, and my kids' lives If I were dossing around on income support and saying I had no intentions of working, ever, I'd be flamed for that too.

And I'm not making excuses, if I were; would my post title have been "I've messed up". I made the wrong choice, and am trying to establish how to fix it; if I take the children back out of nursery again...I can't work at all so will have to claim income support, leavign me with less money than I have now. The children will be bored at home, the only park in this town is being redone so is closed, therefore keeping them occupied will cost me money. How is this going to help my situation??

Would offering to repay £10-£20 a week off the arrears (plus the usual full rent every month) be acceptable to the letting agent, do you think? Or is this a bit of an insult?

The trouble is, last time I was in a similar situation was when my prev landlord wanted to sell up, and the homelessness team at the council said the only 'mum and children' hostel was in birmingham, about 2 hours from here. With my son starting school in september and having possible autism I'd rather avoid messing him around more than I have already. But as I said before, the only way I could save up a deposit for a new place by july is by not paying the rent here; it's a catch22 situation IMO.

Doozergirl

No advice? There has been advice, and I went to effort of trying to provide it but it's not good enough for you because you prefer going round in circles and justifying why it's so crap for you and it's everyone else's fault but yours and how we're not clever enough to realise it.

What you got was advice that -rent is always the most important bill to be paid and that you must hold it sacred in future, talk to your landlord, find the rent money anyhow you can or if that is genuinely impossible (which it won't be) that you could speak to Shelter about being made homeless. A crisis loan was another suggestion. It wouldn't be more debt, it would be the same debt, transferred to someone who was actually happy to lend you the money not the landlord who will kick you out for doing it! Also you were advised to use the debt free wannabe board and the oldstyle moneysaving boards to help you save more money to get the debt paid back. You can post a full state of affairs on the DFW board and the people on there, who are more qualified than the people on here because they have first had, immediate experience, will help you.

Do you still get grants for stuff for babies when you're on little or no income? If so, and there's nowhere else to save the money then that has to go to the landlord. Having a brand new pram is not a human right.

So actually, all you've been looking for is tea and sympathy. I think you're in cloud cuckoo land - how do you succeed in fooling yourself and making so many excuses for yourself? It doesn't matter how it happened, it's totally irrelevant. I wasn't judging you at all until I realised that you seem to think that you making yourself homeless is somehow someone else's problem. And now I'm judging you even more when you think that getting yourself pregnant to a waster again was an accident. If you didn't have sex with a waster in the first place, it wouldn't matter whether the pill worked or not would it? How are you going to manage the demands of a midwifery course as a single mum with three kids when you can't seem to get the rent money from the council to meet the landlord? You might want to make things better, but it's pretty dim to sacrifice one of the good things instead of just waiting until you had the money to pay those nursery fees and then wait for it to come back to you in the form of TCs. I can't understand why you're even doing this when you're pregnant either, you may as well wait until after baby is settled - how can you possibly commit to an employer now?

BitterAndTwisted

alasia wrote: »

I try to get my food costs down as much as poss, whilst still giving the kids a healthy, home-cooked diet. The last fortnight's food came to just over £80 which included a big pack of nappies for my youngest (not yet ready to be toilet trained), cleaning stuff etc. I can't get it down any lower than that and certainly will not feed them on beans on toast every day, for every meal!! I usually eat small portions or cereal anyway, they need proper diets.

I'm sure you're trying but with a bit of planning and application you should be able to halve that food-bill. Have a look at the cheap-family-recipes-.org website for advice and recipes to do this. If they say you can feed a family of four on £100 a month then you should be able to do it with only thee on you, considering that two of those are tinies as well.

Really, if anyone in your family can go on baked-beans for one meal a day for a bit it should be you. If you check out your local supermarket for their marked-down goods aka "whoopsies" and cook from scratch cutting your shopping-bill should be quite easy.

Pop along to the Old-Style part of the forum to pick up absolutely mountains of fairly straightforward and thrify ways to cut right down on your housekeeping. For example, you could make about six-month's worth of laundry detergent for two quid of outlay on the ingredients. I know because I've done it, and it's just as good as anything bought from the shops.




I WILL need a pushchair I think, I'd rather not have to but I don't drive, so still can't see how I will be able to manage with a single; however that won't be bought until the baby arrives so I can see how my daughter is with walking by then.

I agree, you will need a pushchair and one of the easiest ways to acquire one without paying full price is to scour places like Freecycle, ebay, your local charity-shops or the NCT. Crikey, even a wanted ad up in your local supermarket might locate one for you. Beggars can't be choosers and a new one is altogether too lavish right now.

Whatever you need or think you need should be a lower priory than keeping the roof over the heads of your children. I'd turn off the hot-water, turn down the heating and get rid of the telly first

sarahevie

sell something to buy a pushchair then - my spare one cost £40 from an nct sale.It's not fashionable old style mothercare, it does a job.

Now everytime we buy something we sell something. Means more space. If you buy secondhand (as we do) you can usually get very similar price when you sell it on.

I think you need to clear those arrears, asap. £10 a week won't cut it. It would be worth approaching them as you never know, they might not want a void, court costs to evict, may feel sorry for you. Better than doing nothing.

I don't care that the kids were doing your head in and missed their friends. Mine regularly miss playdates - it's called budgeting.

kjfc100

I have a three month old baby and we don't have a pushchair, we have a sling. He loves it, it's good for his emotional and mental development and I can go about my day while he sleeps in it.

There are many different types, but ours is a Moby and only cost £36. I guess you could get them for a fraction of that cost second hand.

Tupperware_Queen

a friend of mine is expecting twins, with no job and hubby just laid off...she got a twin pushchair from ebay for £30