SOA - advice please

angiepooos

Hi DFB40, thanks my firned. what are the figures at the bottom of your posts? I'm new here so don't undertand this stuff yet :-)

NeverAgain_2

Losing weight is almost as hard as losing the debt.

You say you have been doing well at the gym, and you both use it regularly.

I think keeping the membership going is a priority - improved health and wellbeing will give you the fight needed to improve your financial situation.

A bottle of wine a night is not doing much for either your health or finances.

The obvious thing would be to stop it, but a more sensible solution might be to reduce consumption.

Perhaps a bottle every other night, or make one last two or three nights, or don't have any early in the week.

DebtfreeBY40_2

The numbers are a challenge on one of the threads to up your income this year, signing up to £11,000 through things like overtime, ebay sales, cash back etc. Didn't know anything about any of this stuff till I came here but let me tell you, no-one gets a present now unless it was reduced to clear or bought through a cashback site! angiepoos, this place is amazing. It really will help out. See if you can immerse yourself in it for a few days. You won't be able to do everything but just picking up a few things will help. For me I've found batch cooking, budgeting, a payment a day, cashback sites and upping my income just the most amazing things that have made a massive difference to our lives in just a few months. All my credit cards are now on 0% deals and I know how much money is in all our accounts. Its a revelation! Enjoy and keep us updated. xx

[Deleted User]

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 Are two cars necessary? If you could manage with only one you could pay down debts by selling one and then save a lot on running costs as well

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1750 Any way to increase this? Or below? Overtime? Second job? (I'm guessing that there's no chance of ectra work at your current place if you are at risk of redundancy? Do you know when you will find out if your job is safe or not? Do you have a guestimate of what your redundancy package will be?)
Partners monthly income after tax....... 3450
Benefits................................ 0 Should you not get child benefit here?
Total monthly income.................... 5200

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 1200
Council tax............................. 175 Is this paid over the usual 10 months? Can you ask your council if you can spread it over 12 months?
Electricity............................. 100 Both this and below are very high - are they acurate? Are you in credit with these companies (that you can claim back?), or are you in arrears (if so, when will they be fully paid back). Check online to see what the cheapest tariff is for your area (Uswitch), and if switching is cheaper, check cashback sites (Onepoll, Quidco, Topcashback etc)
Gas..................................... 120 as above
Water rates............................. 40
Telephone (land line)................... 0 This is included in pay for tv?
Mobile phone............................ 0 you have mentioned that this should be £60? (Is that for both your mobile phones?) As you are stuck in contract, see if they will allow you to drop down a tariff, or two. - when out of contract look at SIM only deals and PAYG options
TV Licence.............................. 0 (12.37)
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 85 You can cut this back, what does it include TV, internet and home phone? Drop to the basic package, or go freeview. You could get home phone and internet for approx £20pm.
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 600 Very high, and could be cut back - drop brands, meal plan, batch cook. Try cheaper supermarkets (Lidl/Aldi), and even if you don't feel ready to cut the wine budget completly, see if you can reduce a bit.
Clothing................................ 50 drop to essentials only and wear what you have for now (Also, e-bay any clothes that you no longer wear)
Petrol/diesel........................... 200 Are all journeys essential?
Road tax................................ 20
Car Insurance........................... 75
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 50
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 28
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 40
Buildings insurance..................... 0
Contents insurance...................... 40
Life assurance ......................... 36
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 100 every month? (£1200/year on gifts? See if you can trim this back)
Haircuts................................ 10
Entertainment........................... 150 (What does this include? Can you get the same or similar for cheaper elsewhere?)
Holiday................................. 50
Emergency fund.......................... 50
Total monthly expenses.................. 3219


Assets
Cash.................................... 0 Where's the holiday and the Emergency fund?
House value (Gross)..................... 210000
Car(s).................................. 5000
Total Assets............................ 215000


Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 165000...(1200).....0
Total secured & HP debts...... 165000....-.........-

Unsecured Debts (Is there any way that you could try and transfer some of the more expensive cards to 0% deals, and/or low life of balance cards?)
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APRI have put these in the order that you should be making overpayments - from the most expensive to the least expensive debt.
egg............................7500......220.......26.9 Pay the minimum on all debts, then overpay all the surplus you have at the end of the month towards this debt (as it's costing you the most in interest). When this debt is gone more on to the next most expensive debt
mastercard.....................5000......140.......26 When egg cleared, continue to pay minimum towards all remaining debts, and over pay any monthly surplus towards this one (including the previous egg minimum payment). When this one is gone, continue to follow this "snowballing" process down the list of your debts.
bank of scotland...............1750......80........24
barclaycard....................5500......180.......24
M&S card.......................7810......220.......23.9
capital 1......................960.......50........23.6
american express...............970.......45........5
halifax loan...................5700......315.......0 is this really 0%?
loan unsecured.................11200.....223.......0 Is this really 0%
halifax card...................8091......200.......NaN 0%? (if so, see if you can transfer some of your more expensive debt here.)
Total unsecured debts..........54481.....1673......-


Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 5,200
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 3,219
Available for debt repayments........... 1,981
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 1,673
Amount left after debt repayments....... 308 Do you actually have this at the end of the month? If so pay towards debt that's costing you the mosy in interest. If you don't have this, keep a spending diary to see where it goes.

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 215,000
Total HP & Secured debt................. -165,000
Total Unsecured debt.................... -54,481
Net Assets.............................. -4,481

Hi,

I have made some comments above, hopefully at least some of them will help.

Have you stopped spending on the cards?

There's a snowball calculator at the bottom of the page where you filled in your SOA which will help you prioritise your debt repayments. You should take a look if you haven't already (basically will tell you to prioritise overpayments towards most expensive debt, which I've said above). But make sure that your SOA is acurate first, or the result won't be acurate either.

The only other suggestion I can make is to have a good clear out and have a car boot, sell on e-bay/gumtree/amazon etc.

Good luck - and well done for getting organised, it can be daunting, but once done you'll feel a lot better.

HTH

D9

angiepooos

Yes, or to stick to our original plan which was Friday and Saturday. Sundays are always my worst night without it.

I've just been for a walk with my dogs and realised that the person who said I was guesstimating was right. I pay for my daughter's train fare (she's at college) and books sometimes, even though she has a part time job and pays for her own clothes and her social life. I pay for chiropody, hair colours, dog grooming, vet bills, paint and general upkeep of house, but because this stuff isn't regular every month, I forget about it.

I think I'll spend the day tomorrow with my husband going through our accounts with a fine toothed comb, and get us both keeping daily expenditure diaries. He's just told me hey goes to starbucks for coffee twice a day and buys his lunch rather than take sandwiches as I thought he did, so that's gonna add up. I think that's why the cards won't come down because I spend from my salary thinking I have it, but have not really considered things like birthdays, christmas as the stuff I mentioned above. Also if the car goes wrong, any room I might have made on the credit card fills up again as I have no provision for the unexpected.

angiepooos

D9, thank you! I need to do it again properly. We don't have a penny saved, but I see now that I've missed out a lot of stuff. I can save money on food. If my job turns out to be safe, I will sell my car and pay that off the Halifax. Where I missed interest off it's because I didn't know it. I'll do the whole exercise again properly in the next week. I find you a very encouraging and generous person, thank you for your supporting words. They're chicken soup for the soul.

NeverAgain_2

...He's just told me hey goes to starbucks for coffee twice a day and buys his lunch...

That could be a tenner a day, £50 a week, which is £200-odd a month.

No wonder you are coming up short.

Unearth one or two other things like that and the budget will look a lot better.

I treated myself to a Vanilla Latte at the motorway services the other day - £3.29.

What a waste.

Happily, I can afford the odd one, but I still feel guilty for paying so much.

DebtfreeBY40_2

Can you get OH to do this re his Starbucks habit


http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/protect/demotivator/

I think you just had your LBM realising all the spending you've been ignoring because its a one off. I'm very excited for you. Good luck with the reviews. Look forward to hearing from you soon xx

angiepooos

You're so right NeverAgain. I just never think of these little things and how they add up. People wonder why we don't go on holiday and I say it'#s because I don't want to leave the dogs, but we just can't afford holidays and that's the truth of it.

I'm most heartbroken about how this will impact upon my daughters now. When my youngest daughter leaves her foundation course and goes to uni in september she won't get the financial support from us that I'd hoped to give her. If they get married, we won't be able to contribute to their weddings in any meaningful way. And yet we earn enough that this should never have been an issue. Half our problem has been that people have assumed we're minted and we end up paying for more than our fair share. Without admitting our debt, it would make us look mean. But that's enough of that - from now on I'm telling people we're broke and can't afford fancy presents and nights out.

It's like I haven't seen it clearly until today and it's now suddenly so obvious that we've been sleepwalking our way into more and more debt for 20 years. My husband can't see the problem, but he will do soon.

katsu

Angie,

You've had some fantastic advice and I wish you well.

On a very practical note, if you go to the supermarket and look in the fruit tea section you can get teabags that help you sleep - I've tried Dr Stuart valerian sleep tea (name may not be 100% correct). Try a cup of that at bed time to replace a couple of glasses of wine. DH found it worked on him. They are not the cheapest thing - between £1.50 and £1.90 a box but far healthier for you.