Not Sure what to do

DebtHater

buzzykye wrote: »

i have registered with a car share website but have no matches at the moment. Do you know what the initial outlay would be for avon?
i think a few friends/ family would buy it!

Have you tried mystery shopping? I use it to top up my monthly earnings, on a good month you can easily reach £100+.
Mostly flexible times and dates, so you can fit it around work.

And if you're lucky, you can pick up a restaurant job so you and your husband can eat out for free. Sounds like you need a night out!

The thread can be found here, check out page 1 for all the info on how to get started: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3076534

With regards to your debt repayments, it might help to phone and speak to the lenders. Tell them you are having problems, they may freeze the debt for you (so you dont accrue any more interest, but you wont be able to spend more) and set up a fixed monthly payment that you might find a bit easier to pay each month.

Your debts wont go away, but using the previous mentioned debt charities will make life a little bit more comfortable for you.

DebtHater

Dharma_Bunny wrote: »

With regards ditching the car and using public transport, have you actually checked what your local transport authority offers?
I could buy a pass to use all buses, trams and trains in all of South Yorkshire for £83.70 a month for instance. My OH sold our only car and pays petrol money in a car share, saving us a fortune.
It's hard to go without it when you're used to it, but there are often ways around needing a car. Internet shopping for instance.

Good suggestion - in Kent, Stagecoach let you travel all over Kent and East Sussex for £19 per week. It might take a bit longer to get to work, but its great value!

Triggles

A number of things to consider regarding the vehicles:
- do you both work fulltime/5 days per week?
- who is more likely to be transporting the children to things or to childcare/school runs/etc
- what would be the costs for each of you if you were to use public transport? and which would provide you with the best savings? what works best with your schedules?

The things is, getting rid of one car not only lowers your petrol bill each month, it lowers your car insurance, MOT, road tax, vehicle maintenance costs. We have one car. I don't work, but I do all the school runs, medical appointments, and basic taxi service :rotfl: so the car is mainly at my disposal. We live close enough for DH to cycle to work.

I would definitely look into getting a roadside service that is more economical. I think we pay approximately £40 per year for ours, and you can get a good deal online through quidco with some cashback as well!

Call your mobile phone company and ask them if you can go down one tariff. Also find out when would be the soonest that you can exit the contract with no charge, so you know when you can change. It pays to look around. But also note that if you have service for TV/BB/phone with certain companies, you can get good deals on their mobiles as well. DH & I each have a mobile through Virgin (as we have TV/BB/phone through them) and it's £10 per month each, with unlimited free calls to Virgin mobiles, plus 250 free texts. Most of the people we talk to on our mobiles are on Virgin as well, so it's nice and inexpensive as calls to them are free. And we don't feel that £20 per month on mobiles is bad, as it is essential for us to have mobiles with us due to medical conditions that a couple of our children have.

Even though you only buy clothing when the children need it, you STILL buy clothing. So it needs to be in your budget. Just figure out how much you would expect to spend over the course of a year, and divide it by 12. That includes school clothing, shoes, jackets, hats/gloves/scarves, wellies, underclothing, socks... all of it. When you stop and think about it, it can add up, so it needs to be budgeted for.

Contents insurance (and life insurance as well IMO) is something that also should be budgeted for. God knows a devastating fire or something like that is bad enough, but to be left with practically nothing and no means to replace it would be horrific. Just a point, you can get decent life insurance for a fiver each for you and your DH, so worth checking into. (as well as making sure you have wills - but that's my own personal push - everyone with children should have them, IMO)

I know the Barclay plans are nice in that they are all neatly attached to your account. And I am guilty of having the £5 per month one, but that was mainly because it covers my mobile, anything electrical for an additional one year, my drivers license and passport (expensive to replace!) and such on it. I basically sat down and figured out how much it would cost to replace one or two of those items, and since the £60 per year was less than that, it was worth it to me. But the higher levels are a bit more dubious, as most of the services can be obtained cheaper elsewhere.

Check your council tax and see if it's over 10 or 12 months. If over 10, either see if it can be changed to over 12 months, or commit yourself to putting that full amount of £240 over those 2 free months into savings for emergency needs - such as washer breaking down or something like that.

You can probably, with some careful shopping and meal planning, drop your grocery shopping to about £200 per month. By dropping down a level in branding, you can usually save a fair bit. Try checking out basics/value brands - we buy mostly basics brands at Sainsburys as most of them are actually quite good. And look at other supermarkets for regular bargains as well - we buy our bread, milk, and loo roll at Farm Foods as it is much cheaper there. We save approximately £25 per month just on that alone! You can also get fruit/veg relatively cheap at Aldi's. Obviously you have to gauge what shops are close to you and can offer good deals without driving a long distance out of your way.

Not sure what the £40 other child expenses are, so can't offer any suggestions on that.

Presents - be realistic - if you're really only using £10 per month, fine, but this would include birthdays, mothers day, fathers day, christmas, as well as birthday presents for other family members and friends (like birthday parties for school friends). Keep in mind that things like tesco points, boots points, and nectar points are great for saving throughout the year and using just before christmas to pay for presents and food.

Haircuts - DH cuts his own with a trimmer. They are inexpensive to buy and economical to use. If your DH and son are willing, it's certainly easier to work with - and no appointments to be made or anything! make sure you budget for haircuts for yourself if you're getting them, even if it's only 3-4 per year.

Entertainment - if you are spending any money on entertainment, you need to budget for it. Days out for the kids, an evening out in the pub, a DVD purchase. These all come out of our entertainment budget. Although takeaways come out of our grocery budget, as that way we're careful about how much we spend (the last Monday of each month is our "fish and chips takeaway night" for under a tenner LOL).

Whooops... sorry so long! I am curious on the APRs on your catalogue and provident - I find it hard to believe they are zero percent as they are usually horrendous. Are they really zero or were you just not sure when you filled out the form?

lkm4804

Hi There,

With regard to selling Avon (I am a Sales Leader but I'm not here to recruit you)! Besides - I live in Lancashire so I'm too far away.

The Initial Outlay (wrong choice of word there) is £15 but this is taken out of your commission split 50/50 over the first two catalogues. The Catalogues are provided to you for the first 2 campaigns (there are 18 in a year) from the Sales Leader/Area Sales Manager who signs you up.

You should be provided full training by the SL/ASM.
You will also be allowed territory if you so desire it.

You need to earn £78 to qualify for commission (initially 20%)
You need to earn over £148 in sales to qualify for the higher rate of 25% commission.

If you want further advice I am happy to assist - if you do decide to become a Sales Representatives then just 'google' it and see other reviews etc.

I have been a Sales Rep nearly 3 years now and recently qualified as a Sales Leader. I love Avon - love meeting all the wonderful people. It has improved my confidence and happiness.

You do need organisational skills mind.

All the best.

Lou x