Hello!! I would really appreciate some help / advice on our ever increasing debts...

walby1993

Just seen your from Bishops Stortford - I am just down the road in sunny Harlow! For the area, £825 a month for a three bed is not bad at all. But great news on the room rent - is she a trolley dolly by any chance?

flashingbellybar

walby1993 wrote: »

Just seen your from Bishops Stortford - I am just down the road in sunny Harlow! For the area, £825 a month for a three bed is not bad at all. But great news on the room rent - is she a trolley dolly by any chance?

Oh sunny Harlow - that's where I work! On the business park. Yes I know we have a complete steal at £825 for a 3 bed house. I went through a phase where I was determined to move us to somewhere cheaper but honestly could barely find anything for less then £800 that wasn't a real dump. Plus they were all tiny flats and we have space and a garden. She's not a trolley dolley actually, just a normal office person! None of the airport staff wanted to live with a couple and a baby!! We were lucky to find her - she has a kitten so I think she struggled to find anyone that would take her.

walby1993

Well, the extra £350 a month will certainly come in handy! Should cover your monthly overspend plus a little extra to maybe make some overpayments on the debt.

Soubrette

flashingbellybar wrote: »

Thank you this is great advice about the list! We have been trying to sell things on ebay but don't really have that much stuff to sell TBH that is actually worth something. Every little helps though I guess.

I like the idea of money saving being fun, we really think of it as a never ending grind and I know OH gets really fed up every time I mention 'saving money'! We are both pretty competitive though, maybe I can get him interested in some sort of competition to make it a bit more fun.

What about the £2 challenge - every two pound coins you have goes into a savings pot - count them all after one year and spend them all on something utterly frivolous

A lodger is really going to help as well.

For myself, I get tremendous satisfaction with the idea that I am reducing the amount of money that big companies are getting and so can spend my money on more of the stuff that I want, as I keep telling my daughters - you can only spend it once!. For example, I assume that I will use the tumble dryer every time to dry clothes, so every time I am able to dry on the line it feels like I'm cheating NPower out of some money :rotfl:

I'm going to make some foraged blackberry jelly today - take that Tesco!!!:cool:

You know what they say about simple minds:o:o:o

DS4215

Try moving your payments so that they go out just after payday - that way you will have the money to pay the big bills (rent, etc) in the bank and you will not have to put over £800 on a credit card to keep the roof over your head...

I get paid on the 28th, and all our bills go out by the 6th so all we have left is food, petrol and spending

walby1993

Definately agree on all the bills going out just after your paid!

Jingbah

flashingbellybar wrote: »

Thank you so much for your replies!

I know that bringing the groceries down is definitely possible, I don't actually know how much we spend, I guess I need to keep a spending diary for a month or something. But realistically yes, it is at least £80 a week, more if you include the alcohol! We shop at Asda (home delivery) and buy mainly own brand stuff. We don't cook from scratch much though, mainly frozen stuff, pasta & sauces etc. Recently we have both been pretty miserable so have been buying those 'takeaway' dinners from tesco's and the like to cheer us up when we haven't got the energy / motivation to cook much. I know it's bad! I don't know where to start with meal planning and stuff though, it is a bit overwhelming.

I know this can be really boring, but planning meals has saved us lots of money! Getting it online helps (I'd only spend a lot more if I went to the supermarket!! - I'm better off getting it delivered, watching the prices of everything and paying for delivery). As PP said the bbcgoodfood website is brilliant, and its where I've got so much of my recipe ideas from. My DH and I often cook 'takeaway recipes' together at a weekend, time spent together, and money saved!

walby1993 - thank you for your suggestion on the drink, I can definitely do that! Although I will be starting from a bottle a night and cutting down from there! :eek:

And on your other points...

Yes OH salary is an average, we haven't been putting extra aside . TBH, this is the first month he has earnt over £1300 this year and prior to that I was on SMP so there was no extra. Just a smaller amount of negative! Hopefully he will be consistently a bit higher now though so I guess we really do need to put some aside :embarasse.

Mobile phones - unfortunately we are tied into Iphone contracts until next year.
You should still be able to reduce your tariff after six months you can go down a level - worth a try?

Clothes - we are going to try not to buy any more this year, that was an average as we both had to buy new work clothes this year (suits). We hardly ever buy casual clothes, just work stuff when ours is worn out. We try and source free/cheap secondhand baby clothes & toys wherever possible.

Childcare - he is at nursery 2 x days a week, at a friends house 2 x days a week and we pay her £25 a day cash. She can't do more days :-( we have no family near us and all of my friends work full time and are childless! I have really struggled to cut any more off this. We do have child tax voucher things that mean £243 of the nursery bill is tax free out of my wages.

The other insurance is private medical - I get it free through work and I have added my son on at around £20 a month. We do get a rebate back every year though of around £100 - £200 I think if it is unused.

Entertainment of £120 basically covers OH gym at £33 a month and our alcohol / "takeaways" - pretty much our 3 x times a week trips to the local co-op for beers and ready meals when we are feeling down. We can't think of any cheaper ways to treat ourselves / cheer up??
Making your own takeaways? They taste better too!! Buy a home brew kit online, make your own beers??!! Not sure if cheaper, but be fun to do together?

OH car - he HAS to have a car for work, it's a requirement of being in car sales - they must have a demo to take people out in for test drives etc. I need a car as I ferry our son around to childcare and also work 12 miles away near no public transport. We are trying to sell our car and get something cheaper tho as it is very expensive to run, costs me roughly £20 every couple of days in petrol even though I only do around 20 miles a day.

Not really much help - only to stress how much you can save with the meal planning. We spend about £65 a week, but that's 2 adults and 2 growing children - and school packed lunches every day!!

GOOD LUCK!!! x

alcee12

hi looking for some advice please i had car loan with same company for 8 years obviously upgrading car but last year i fell into hardship due to lack of work i asked if they could reduce my payments but refused point blank nice and loyal eh,,anyway got behind with 3 payments and they reposessed the car never said they were coming but said they sent me a default letter that was all they had to do anyway they sold the car at a auction and got £4200 i had made payments of £3300 the car was £7500 when i bought it but got a letter to say i still owed £3378 i thought this was interest but they said the interest comes off at first part of loan couldnt believe how hard these people are theve had there money back they are not out of pocket,,,so i agreed to pay £25 a month when a debt coll agency contacted me they refused then another contacted me then another then this morning a 4th who has this debt i am getting sick of different phone calls can anyone help me it would be appreciated

beadgirl87

If you are both competivite, you could join the challenges on here. The NSD is a good one, especially when you have a spending diary. I love it when I have a day with 0 spending, I managed 3 days in a row the other week.
Also the weekly spend challenge, you could both start with the same and see who can keep the lowest spend. Then what isn't spent could be put in a pot to pay off something, or go towards your alchol.

Maybe go for a walk or to a park in the evening every week...you all get outside together, fresh air and a bit of exercise, and free! Take the little one to the swings, things like that.
People say the batch cooking is good, its taken me a while to start this as I am not a good cook, but I have started to think alot more when I go shopping and think of ways I can use items of food.
Good luck, it does take a bit of time to get ther, but keep coming back to the boards, even if you just read threads I find it very motivating

DizzyDizzy

Hey well done on the flat share! Now if you can just shave £150 off the food shopping and entertainment etc, you could have £500 each month to go towards paying off the debts etc! Now that could be a real big incentive!