My SoA....please help!

Benson112

Millionare wrote:

Hi, lets see, problem you may have in transferring your debt to cheaper deals if you say your credit history not very good due to missed payments. Have you tried 0% balances transfer on cc?

you need a car with young kids but Car insurance is very expensive, Any reasons? have you shopped around? how much your car worth?

Sky plus - you paying quite abit for sky. i would like to have all the bells and whistles but do you really watch tv that much to account for £46 of your hard earned cash every month plus tv licence just wasting away?

Mobile, do you use all your minutes. text per month or are they being wasted?(both phones) etc. This does not include ringing for the sake of using up your minutes/texts each month.
also do you need a new phone each year? find the most expensive free upgrade and sell the new upgrades on ebay. i do this and make £200 a year which is basically my line paid for and thats 1 new phone.

Tariffs are alot better nowadays than they used to be.

you could try a consolidation loan to put your debts in one place but it is a must that you CANCEL ALL YOUR CARDS. trust me you'll end up using them if you dont and end up further in debt.

Yeah i struggle to get new cards mate specially with that limit! They only just upped that to what it is now by sending me a letter "Hey we have just doubled your deb, i mean credit limit". Sooo we wasted it all!!

Insurance is myself (as a driver of 5 years, no no-claims bonus, crash and stolen car on my file) and my OH as a named driver (driving for 1 year, no NCB yet). Its the cheapest of the cheap policies. It gives us nowt lol. Its full comp on a pug 206 1.1 worth £2700. The car is up for sale (well will be 100% officially once the log book comes through, DVLA messed it up). We have a pug 106 1.5d to move to now worth £1000 so that should cut some more costs. Im with Tescos insruance which offers a "value" insurance now....basically strips all the benfits off your policy for a saving lol. I have to be fully comp as i crash alot lol.

Sky plus....no, the answer is no i dont need it BUT....we have young children therefore have to watch CBeebees all day everyday. Sky plus lets me still watch the stuff i want. And yeah to be honest, having the sky probably saves us more money as we get bored really quickly. If we didnt have sky id be out wasting money a hell of alot more!! I stay in Friday and Saturday nights now too (which used to be un-heard of), i have boycotted the pub compeltely so i need my TV lol. I was spending over £150 a month in the pub...since ive had sky i bet ive spent a tenner in there. So in some ways its expensive, but in others it saves me cash.

Mobile....well. I do alot of messing about with my phones. I do similar to you and do make spare cash which pays for my contract. I do alot of complaining also (which if you have a contract is always worth doing) i get my line rental free most months of the year lol but i still have to count this cost "incase" its needed. Cant remember the last time i paid the full £60 for a month of phone usage. And yes....we batter off our minutes and texys with 2 weeks lol. Weve got the most suitable contract we will ever find (just a shame we cant up the texts and mins a bit)...were on tmobile mix it - which they have now canned because they cant be making money off it lol - we get 200 anytime mins and 500 texts p/m for £30. You can only use it when you have free minutes...if you run out you can top up like a PAYG but you can never run up a bill....i used to pull in £350 a month mobile bills!!

Ive looked into consolidating....and it seems initially beneficial. I spoke to that Freedom finance a while back because i say a dodgy carol vorderman style advert. They basically did loads of credit checks on me and come back with a quote (so they are like brokers). They could get my my £10000 i was after, great me thinks....until i read the small print and would have been paying back £33500!!!!! Are there any that are not complete rip offs that would deal with bad credit eejits like myself?

Benson112

unixgirluk wrote:

I think the OP probably has a shared equity house in conjunction with a housing association. For some its the only way to get onto the property ladder but it means not only do you pay a mortgage on the bit you own you pay rent on the bit you don't. Looks like a 75/25 split on the house to me. 25% still being owned by the housing association.

Spot on, its shared ownership. But 50/50 split.

justmarried06

Hi there - just wanted to say well done for looking for the advice but the suggestions people are coming back with are valid and you don't seem to be very receptive to them. I agree with most things that have been said, particularly the Sky - Freesat still gives the CBeebies option for a one off fee - and the car insurance is exceptionally high even with your claims history and an inexperienced driver on it, check out the Shopbots to do price comparisons. You can also play with the excess levels - thie higher you take the more your premium is reduced.

to be honest, if you're not prepared to make further cutbacks then the next option will be to contact either CCCS or Payplan - both free organisations who will help you get onto a debt management plan.

Good luck

JM

Uniscots97

Remember and get any new insurance through Quidco etc at least you'll get some money back! Upto 10% with some companies so that would be something to go towards your debt.

As for your Sky I had the same 'discussion' with a friend of mine till their youngest introduced a tube of glue to the Sky Plus box and they had to be without it for 4 days. In the end they gave it up as they found that the kids after initially moaning would go play games and be quite tired and ready for bed (where as before they weren't tired after just watching the tv and it was a fight to get them to bed) and they (the parents) used the free DVD offers I told them about from here. They haven't looked back. They still have freeview (picked up for nothing from Freecycle) which shows childrens channels (don't remember which ones) so the kids are happy with that.

scootw1

Benson112 wrote:

You need new phones because the majority of modern phones die after about 6 months. Weve already been putting up with broken phones for 6 months.

I totally understand that cut backs are required and believe me they have been significantly made. What is left was the choice of every luxury we had, we decided to keep one or two an it had helped.

The OH isnt working because she was on maternity leave (not from a company just from work in general lol and paid by the governement). She is currently looking and should have a job for xmas period lined up shortly.

I understand the difference between a need and a want. I dont particularly need a house, a car even a bed but i still have them. Cars, sky and mobiles are a "comon all garden" accessory nowerdays. I wont allow my OH out without her mobile so that she can contact me if she needs me. Im a worry wart! lol. PAYG not an option....contracts and car stay!! Sky i will change as best i can depending on contract situation.

Still looking for any advise on what to do with the current debt! I know that isnt structured as best it can be!!

I think the key word here is "accessory". you say Sky is essential so the kids can watch Cbeebies all the time. You get that on freeview and even if you bought two boxes, one for them and one for you, thats only 50 quid and just one payment so thats a lot less than Sky.

as for mobiles, you say yours is for work so fair enough get a good deal (T-Mobile actually do one for £25 for about 750 mins. I would have thought that would be enough) and your girlfriend could have a T-Mobile PAYG for £30 or less one-off payment and just top up now and again if you are using it just to get in touch with her.

Uniscots97

You could also try reducing your food bill too.

Benson112

Millionare wrote:

Unfortunalty Benson, Lynzpower is spot on. Your missing stuff on your SOA thats not been accounted for which means your going to be more in red then what is in you SOA currently.

Regarding phones your paying over £700 a year on a mobiles also your buying the wrong phones if there breaking in 6 months, theres nothing wrong with modern phones unless you got a slider or flip? ignore these, one drop and they break.

get a candybar style phone, ive had mine 3 years and ive dropped it so many times yet it refuses to die and works perfect. i even smashed it off a wall once, still works perfect. nokia 6230i

ive got a contract and my missus has payg, she only uses it to ring me 5 fiver a month if that and 25 quid for me and i use it for work as well.


Also over £650 for your tv per year including licence. very expensive

This is true i know. I know im being a little bit awkward over this and dont seem to want to help myself but honestly, if i had done a SoA 6 months ago to what i have now you would undestand what i mean.

I used to own a 206 Gti, had huge TV, a computer, loads of stuff on finance that i have got rid of. Ive lost all my little luxuries and now drive a 1.1 POS (work that bit out for yourself lol)

justmarried06

This is true i know. I know im being a little bit awkward over this and dont seem to want to help myself but honestly, if i had done a SoA 6 months ago to what i have now you would undestand what i mean.

I used to own a 206 Gti, had huge TV, a computer, loads of stuff on finance that i have got rid of. Ive lost all my little luxuries and now drive a 1.1 POS (work that bit out for yourself lol)

But if you really want to bring your debt free date forward so your kids aren't 6 and 8 then there are further cut backs you need to make.

JM

Benson112

Ok ok so maybe the cut backs i have made arent enough! Lol you lot would have been slating me a few months back haha.

Ok...i see the point about the mobiles ill look into that as its one i can get out of! Sky, i cant get out of. Im in a contract so can only lower the tarif. Just to clear up...sky plus wasnt for the kids, its for me!! so i can recored stuff whilst they watch c-bleeding-beebies! haha. After the contract is up freeview is deffo on its way. Ill also speak to sky to see if i can cancel the sky plus bit as im sure i pay £10 a month for that!

The food bill was a guess to be honest. We dont tend to do the shopping very often and when we do were not very good at it! We eat loads and loads of takeaways! Im going to start a diarly of what we spend (after xmas though as its not a typical month is it!). We need to learn how to shop properly! haha

justmarried06

The food bill was a guess to be honest. We dont tend to do the shopping very often and when we do were not very good at it! We eat loads and loads of takeaways!

Hmmmm - what was your debt free date again?!

The old style boards are phenomenal for helping reduce food bills, I'm feeding myself and hubby plus cat for about £100 a month at the moment and to be honest that could probably come down further if I didn't work quite so far away from home (I'm a commuter) and so have to do Tesco at random hours rather than be able to hit them when some of their stock is starting to be reduced.

Try Martin's new book 'Thrifty Ways for Modern Days' - its got loads of budgeting tips in it as well as some recipes and tips on shopping.....

JM