Sorry old chap, the money has run out!

sugarcube84

Sounds like your doing really well, i had a similar problem with my hubby and it wasnt until i wrote down and added up our debts and went through his statement with a highlighter so he could see how much he was spending per day on nipping to the shop/mcdonalds/asda etc that he realised things needed to change, a week on and we have changed the way we look at things, hubby now takes lunches (which he enjoys more!!) and we have cut back on all the non essentials. I also have a baby (18months) we buy his toys from nearly new sales and ask for vouchers for clothes for birthdays/christmas look on ebay for bargains and shop ahead in the sales (summer wardrobe for next year sorted for £10 in Tesco sale) have you not got any friends/relatives with kids a bit older? then you could get outgrown toys/clothes.

Good luck and well done so far!

elaine12022

Hi Tonyack

Seems like you're starting to get things under control and your wife is working with you which is great.

As I think others have pointed out there are priority debts & non priority debts.

I personally avoid large supermarkets as much as possible, I do better financially by using smaller shops. Less temptation! ~Also some local traders will give good deals if you're a regular customer - our butcher has helped us out the last few months with free extras, and the fruit & veg man at the market has given us some good deals too. This obviously depends on your circumstances, where shops are, time etc. When you put your mind to it, it's amazing what you can manage with, although I feel I've overspent this last couple of months (but not created more debt which I guess is the main thing!)

Good luck

GeorgieFTB

tony_ack wrote: »

The missus was really down last weekend but seems to be better now. We know that we can't realistically go on for 5 years without some little treats here and there but we need to make sure we spend only what we can afford, and that we get the best value for our money - this means using vouchers and going for special offers and bargains. In the 'old' days we would grab a Dominos on a Thursday because we fancied it and easily spend £30, rather than waiting for the BOGOF offers on Tuesday.

This is the behaviour we have to change. We're cutting out the 'we can afford to buy it if we want it' mentality, as it simply isn't true, and never has been.

One way I have found to budget, that works for me, if you have some spare capacity in your budget (is that enough cop outs do you think?) is to have a n amount of money for little treats, I take out a £20 note on payday put it in a separate purse and that is my treat money, I can use it on anything without justification. It helped me feel better that I could just buy the silly little choccy bar or magazine and not have to re-work my entire budget... I did go a little OCD at the beginning.

Gx

hp48910

GeorgieFTB wrote: »

I take out a £20 note on payday put it in a separate purse and that is my treat money, I can use it on anything without justification. It helped me feel better that I could just buy the silly little choccy bar or magazine and not have to re-work my entire budget... I did go a little OCD at the beginning.

Gx

That's a really good suggestion. I know exactly what you mean about the OCD when you embark on a change of spending habits!! It's realising the good progress being made without denying yourself absolutley everything. To have a small amount that you have written into the budget for treats is a brilliant way to stop the battles that go on in your head that make you feel you are deviating away from the plan!!

vstheworld

To be blunt, and this is meant helpfully, it's better you make the tough budgeting decisions now than when you're got a trashed credit record and debt-collectors knocking at the door!

Put this another way. If you're getting grief from your partner now, it'll be a lot worse if a grunt turns up when you're out and your partner has to answer the door... or rather, not answer the door, if you have any sense, but you know what I mean.

We had three cars, sold two. Both could have had money spent to add double the money in value but we kept saying that and saying that... eventually we just sold them at as-is value and I've very glad we did, two months ago it saved us missing our mortgage arrears arrangement. Cash is now king and you have to get your head around cash versus "value."

Admittedly we don't have children but it is surprising how little practical difference it made and sitting on the bus is a good time to go through your finances once a day. :-)

vstheworld

hp48910 wrote: »

Are you using the Barclaycard? If not you could close the account and pay it off at the current rate and avoid any more rises

Can you do that? Is that law? I have a friend (yes really ) who has been arguing with them for six months and is getting nothing except more fees and broken promises. If they're not negotiating, might as well just do that for peace of mind?

ms_london

tony_ack wrote: »

The missus was really down last weekend but seems to be better now. We know that we can't realistically go on for 5 years without some little treats here and there but we need to make sure we spend only what we can afford, and that we get the best value for our money - this means using vouchers and going for special offers and bargains. In the 'old' days we would grab a Dominos on a Thursday because we fancied it and easily spend £30, rather than waiting for the BOGOF offers on Tuesday.

This is the behaviour we have to change. We're cutting out the 'we can afford to buy it if we want it' mentality, as it simply isn't true, and never has been.

Hey Tony_ack

You are doing so well already so well done!

I can recommend ristorante pizzas (in the frozen section), they are usually about £2 - so compare £2 spend to what you would on dominoes, even if it was BOGOF. Imagine if you did this twice a month, and how much you would save!! Jamie Oliver has a good recipe for pizza bases, you could have a couple of these frozen in the pizza ready, then just add the toppings - so much cheaper and healthier!

Things like this REALLY do add up, perhaps get your OH to keep a note of how much she is spending, to see £20 a week going on rubbish (coffee's, magazines, or dominoes) should be motivating enough. I once owed £19,000, was very materialistic, managed to pay it off, and have learnt a hell of a lot about myself, now I am not materialistic, and get more joy out of free, or cheap things, than when I used to spend £100's in boots on the latest beauty items!

You are doing really well though and it does take a while to un-learn those bad habits, it takes years to acquire these bad habits, so you are not going to change them tomorrow, baby steps.

This is a great site though. xx

ms_london

Another thing to mention is, please call all of your creditors and ask them if they can reduce the APR, or do a balance transfer, or even freeze the interest for a while, explain you in financial difficulty. If you don't ask, you don't get. When I did this, two of my creditors froze the interest for 6 months, and these were credit cards which were quite high. Otherwise one creditor may be willing to do a balance transfer, at a lower rate than your other creditors. It is worth a try! xx

Serida

Don't know if anyone has suggested this before but On-Line grocery shopping is the way to go (IMHO) if you choose the cheapest delivery charge day/evening (£3 I think with Tesco).. There's no temptation to buy things other than what's on your list and no petrol expenses. You can look down the list of things you've bought and see what it comes to before you hit 'Confirm' and if it's too much go back up the list and delete anything that is unnecessary. Admitedly it takes quite a long time to do it for the first few shops but once you have 'Favourites' you can easily do it in half an hour (much less time than it takes to go physically to the supermarket)

turbo.jet

Hi Tony,

Well its taken me a while but I've read through this entire great thread. I'm sure I don't need to remark how very fortunate you are to have received so much free and helpful advice and encouragement.

Well done on your achievements so far too. A few notes I made as I read are as follows -

This advice is probably too late for you as this was a couple of weeks ago, but hopefully useful for others reading this thread. It occurs to me that when you make the difficult decision to sell things like your bike, limited edition guitar and project car, its important that the gains from these sales goes towards making a difference (reduction) to your overall total debt, rather than covering an immediate shortfall in bills. The reason for this is that you aren't addressing the problem by liquidating assets to pay bills. Eventually the assets you have available to sell will run out and you would be left with the same problem. This may seem pretty obvious but it sounds like a real wrench to have to part with these things so I hope it is worth it.

You mentioned you wanted to arrange your bill payment direct debits to all occur just after payday. I have a method I use which has meant I have NEVER not had enough money for bills. I have two current accounts. One of them has no ATM card and is purely for bills (all are direct debit). I know how much my bills are going to be within a pay period and I have an automatic standing order set up on payday to transfer the correct amount from my main current account that my salary goes into (my flatmate does the same).

I don't consider the money in the bills account as being 'mine', and my available budget for things I spend on during the month comes out of what's left (as that is left in the account with the debit card attached). Another way of describing this is that I lump all my bill obligations into one single bill payment (to the 2nd current account) that I make on payday. This was the best thing I ever set up as its allowed me to never have any bad marks on my credit file, which has in turn allowed me to play credit card companies to my own advantage with 0% deals.

I can't recommend car boot sales enough. It was such an eye opener to me that one of the first things I sold was a dirty old holey pair of trainers that were destined for the bin and had accidentally found their way into the 'sale' pile. One man's trash truly was someone else's treasure that day. It was SUCH a good feeling to come home from a relatively fun day (ok might not be THAT fun) with £150 for stuff I was going to throw away.

Regarding your wife's Natwest 0% credit card, I'm glad to hear you are doing this. Using 0% deals is a great way to reduce your outgoings and compound the benefits, as long as its done properly! Your wife needs to understand one of the golden rules of balance transfer cards - NEVER spend on them. I know this isn't as relevant now that cc companies are forced to apply repayments to the expensive debt first, but I think its still the golden rule because the ultimate goal is to get rid of the card/debt. She mustn't think of it as a card for spending. The physical card is irrelevant. Its a loan, and one which will attract high interest if it isn't paid off (or transferred away) when the 0% deal runs out.

I recently got a 0% for 20 month deal from Barclaycard, I only opened the envelope to activate the card because I needed to in order to do the balance transfer, and get the card number to set up the repayment standing order. I then immediately shredded the card. I didn't even open the envelope with the PIN in it before shredding it. I don't know what the security code was, and it wouldn't be very easy for me to even get the card number if I was tempted to spend on it online.

Make sure that Capital One card doesn't get used any more and is paid off too. Your wife may want to use this for petrol now that it has available balance on it. You know you can close the account while it still has a balance and then just keep paying it off until its gone?

Regarding your own Barclaycard with the whopping interest rate, its worth contacting them and seeing if they are willing to offer you a deal. There is a tool somewhere on this site where you put in your details and it does a mock credit check (no footprint on your file though) and tells you providers who are likely to offer you a card and what deals they have (if any) so you can be armed with that information saying "I'm thinking of doing a balance transfer away from Barclaycard, but before I go to the effort I was just wondering if you had any deals available to me". Barclaycard love the balance transfer market and if they suspect you are going to just spend on the card they may try and keep you. Very worth a try. You may save a fortune in interest this way (£18K by the time you are done - ouch hey!).

On the whole I think you 'get it' now - well done. I'm concerned that your wife doesn't. Maybe print off a spreadsheet each month with a graphical illustration of your debt situation and debt-free-date. If you graph the results it can be quite motivating to watch the line going down. (I'm a bit of a spreadhseet nerd). This makes the debt situation visual and not just a concept you can avoid/be blinkered to. I think a bit of tough love might be needed here to make your wife understand the gravity of the situation you are in.

I really do wish you all the very best of luck and ongoing success.