New and in a mess!

pickle18

unixgirluk wrote:

You mentioned £180 for car insurance yet you've posted £90 and £50? I realise that some households do require two cars but are you getting the best deal on your insurance? Also do you really need 2 cars? I realise as drivers under 25 you will be hit with high insurance but if your partner only drives a low mileage what about the 'pay as you go' car insurance?

Two cars are unfortunetly essential.
£180 is two payments of the £90 policy . The £50 insurance is a new policy - his previous job gave him a company car and free insurance but we have had to buy a cheap runaround and the insurance this time. The milage is pretty high on both cars .

I did do cloth nappies but we hired a workman (months ago when we could afford it!!) and he through my entire nappy bin in the rubbish. The amount of money I needed to spend on two children in different sized reuseable nappies wouldnt be worth it now as they are 3 and 2 . The 3 year old is well en route to being training and doubt the 2 yr old will be far behind .


schine - Your absolutely right there is no reason for us to be in this mess but there is not much I can do about the past few months now which were largely due to falling out of work. All we can do is work hard to rectify the problem now. The gym membership can't go till the end of the contract. I am the partner and I can't stop working as its my only way for me to progress up the ladder, my wages purely pays for nursery so we don't lose nor do we gain but I will be in a good posisition to get myself a good job or complete my degree when the children are at school. Another thing to note is I am on emergency tax at the minute and are due to get that back shortly which will be in the region of £500 + so when my tax is eventually sorted I will be earning an additional £100 a month after nursery fees.

£60 fuel is mainly based on him getting to work - its quite a big commute . The second car is essential as I have a very ill father who I help to care for.

lynzpower

As you are caring for your father, I wonder is he entitled to carers allowance or anything like that for the work you do for him.

Have a look at carers network and other suport services for carers, if a bit of income from that would pay your petrol, it would really help

Uniscots97

Then hopefully someone here will be able to suggest where to get nappies (disposable) cheaply. Make sure you use petrolprices.com to find out where your cheapest petrol is and check your tyre pressures regularly to make sure you get every last mile you can out of your petrol!

We are trying to help you here so please don't think we're being awkward. Your food budget should really be slashed considerably. Let us know how you get on.

pickle18

lynzpower wrote:

As you are caring for your father, I wonder is he entitled to carers allowance or anything like that for the work you do for him.

Have a look at carers network and other suport services for carers, if a bit of income from that would pay your petrol, it would really help

I am not as he is in a nursing home but he just needs ALOT of family contact. He does pay for my mileage though as he is a 60 mile round trip away. As I type this just been asked to go an see him in the morning as he is in a bad way again

Uniscots97

Good luck, hope he's ok. You will get through this but you do need to make some changes. We are here to help.

pickle18

unixgirluk wrote:

Then hopefully someone here will be able to suggest where to get nappies (disposable) cheaply. Make sure you use petrolprices.com to find out where your cheapest petrol is and check your tyre pressures regularly to make sure you get every last mile you can out of your petrol!

We are trying to help you here so please don't think we're being awkward. Your food budget should really be slashed considerably. Let us know how you get on.

Absolutely I thank you all for your posts, sorry if it seems I have thought otherwise - not the case. I have just tried to tackle each suggestion with how manageable it really is for us. I am completely agree as I wrote in my first post on the food bill , which I will be cutting down , its just somethings I can't change like the gym, cars etc but still thanks for the ideas.

I think the massive thing for us is cutting down drastically particularly in the short term to get up to date, as generally the outgoings we have should be fine for our income. Maybe its a possibility to freeze my gym memebership if I get up to date - it will prolong the term but its manageable after we are up to date.

Does anyone know anythig about freezing CC interest? Is it possible and over what length of time? How would I tackle asking them?

I am just glad I finally managed to pull mine and DP's head out of the sand - albeit late , but better late than never. We have had a rough few months and tbh even though today has beena shocker (I finally opened all the post) I feel really keen and able to tackle everything, better than I have felt in a while - i just need to keep it! We don't want to tell family so will find the lack of support difficult, because frankly its embarasing as it shouldn't have got like this or we should of tackled it sooner.

Thanks again everyone - I really do appreciate the replies - off to press your buttons ... the thanks ones!

dudleyboy

Hi there, just thought i'd stop by and say welcome. The advice you've received so far has been excellent.

Looking at your figures, even after the gym, nursery fees, car insurances and £450+ food allowance have been paid, you still appear to have about £1,000 spending money left each month. are you sure you haven't left anything out of your SOA?

also, just being nosey here, but what do you do for a living? Money wise, I could do with a piece of that action!

Welcome aboard!

david_hellier

Hi and welcome. You seem fairly wealthy and I'm not sure where the problem lies, but it's probably overspending, the usual enemy! You just need to monitor your disposable income closer and service your most important debts first, mortgage, council tax, utilities. If you neglect these, you become destitute.

According to my figures you have £386.55 per week to spend on food, clothes, going out etc. Personally I think this is too much, so you will need to increase your mortgage payments after a review. In the meantime I suggest you write this amount in a little note book on a Monday and keep a note of what you spend on a daily basis, including cash withdrawals. Try to have some over at the end of the week and use this to pay towards your most important debts (the mortgage). Sit down once a week with your partner to go through the book.

I note no mention of other car costs, tax, mot, etc and I note no gas, tv or water. I've included tvl anyway.

Good luck the figures are as follows:

income weekly monthly
self 3000.00
partner 150.00
cb 69.00
ctc 50.00





total 0.00 3269.00 divide by 4.33
£754.39

£754.39 total weekly income

spend weekly monthly
rent/mortgage 816.00
council tax 145.00
elec 19.00
gas 30.00
water 0.00
secured loans 0.00
TV licence 11.99
fines 0.00
mbna 60.00
egg 60.00
gym 42.00
nursery 150.00
fuel 60.00
car ins 90.00
car ins 50.00
house ins 40.00
life 10.00
bb 10.00












total 0.00 1593.99 divide by 4.33
£367.84

£367.84 total weekly spend

Start= income - spend = £386.55 per week

lynzpower

the other thing iVE just noticed is that 40 for the tv licence, thats quarterly not monthly.

I suggest you use Martins budget planner excel spreadsheet at the top of the page, to put everything in, then you will know exactly where you are up to

pickle18

dudleyboy wrote:

Hi there, just thought i'd stop by and say welcome. The advice you've received so far has been excellent.

Looking at your figures, even after the gym, nursery fees, car insurances and £450+ food allowance have been paid, you still appear to have about £1,000 spending money left each month. are you sure you haven't left anything out of your SOA?

also, just being nosey here, but what do you do for a living? Money wise, I could do with a piece of that action!

Welcome aboard!

He is a waste transfer site manage/plant operator. He works long hours but he is just particularly skilled at what he does, infact he is in negotiation currently for a new job at a better wage , though we have to seriously consider many factors first .
Thanks for your reply

David - The problem lies in him leaving his last job as he was working 17 hr days 7 days a week and not sorting out another job for 4 weeks. Then it seems we got overexcited with the new money, extremly silly.
Yes I did forget to put TV license in and the water rates were not paid monthly , they were paid in larger amounts but we are now left with a debt of £220 to take us to march. Next year we will certainly opt for monthly.
I have budgetted for tax and MOT as it generally comes out of our disposable income, is this a bad idea? He can do all MOT repairs himself so they are never very much , usually the price of a scrap yard part! Infact his whole work car is a scrap yard part! Oh I have forgot mobile phone which is £50, he is now on a contract which has cut his pay and go costs down - he uses this alot for work and we have decided to cut the home phone of outoing calls all together as we don't need them.
I shall def do the little book idea, this is another problem for us - as alot of his income is cash at the end of the week so say he was nipping to the shop for bread he'd take a £20 note and inevitably buy more than just bread. So which much more carefully monitoring using the book we would clearly be able to see our obvious mistakes

Once we a straight we are going to load all our money into clearing the CC debts due to the high rate of interest obviously we can't get a 0% interest rate card as our credit rating is in tatters. Then we wil tackle the mortgage, making overpayments as you can imagine the interest amount over the 25 yr mortgage on such a high mortgage is shocking.


Thanks everyo0ne