Mrs Messy's debt diary

MrsMessy

Newbie here!
Had that scary lightbulb moment between Christmas and New Year when I had time to get our finances in order for the first time in months.

So, here's the damage:

Egg card @ 16.9% £2531.09
Capital One card @ 19.9% £2192.41
Moneyback Loan @ 5.9% £4700 approx (was 5 year loan; over 4 yrs to go)
First Plus Loan @ 22.8% £1400 approx

Student loans @ 2% or something like that - £5000'ish. However I do not currently earn enough to have to make repayments on my student loans, and anything I have not repaid by the time I am 50 (another 7.5 years!) will be written off :T
I am not planning on paying these back!!!

So the total owed and repayable is £10,823.50:eek:

The current strategy planned is that DH has applied for the M&S card at 3.9% fixed for life of balance, and depending on what credit limit he gets we will transfer as much as possible from the other 2 credit cards and the FirstPlus loan to the M&S one.

Currently we can manage about £300 per month in repayments. The rest of our monthly budget looks like this:

Mortgage (interest & policies) = £341.43
Food/household (supermarket stuff basically) £320.00
Petrol £250.00 (DH commutes 35 miles e/w every day plus my running about)
Car insurance/tax/AA/servicing £128.00
DH's pension £127.06
Council tax £115
Holidays £30
Clothes £30 (for 4 of us)
Phone/gas/electricity/water £192
Charitable giving £124
Insurances (home/caravan) £24.00
Christmas savings £30
Sky & TV licence £32.37
Repayments (as I said above) £300
Childminder £48
DH & I personal spending money £100
Other - includes vet, dog food, gifts, haircuts, dentist, kids' activities £128

Total expenses £2320.65
Income totals £2361.52 from DH's salary, my salary, Child Benefit and Tax Credits.

So, once the M&S credit card result is known, and I can finalise the snowballing thing, we'll go for paying off the highest rate first etc. Hope to find small ways of increasing income too, but what with home-educating the kids, a part-time job and trying to grow my Usborne Books business, time and energy are in short supply!

Oh, I'm sure some people will pick up on the charitable giving thing. There is some scope for reducing that a bit (maybe 40/month) but on the whole I don't feel it's right to stop altogether. We're supporting youngsters in Africa who barely have enough to eat and clothes on their backs, and charities and organisations in this country that are very close to our hearts. As far as I'm concerned, you reap what you sow.

All tips and advice gratefully received!

do_it_today!

Well done for :T for arriving at your lightbulb moment!
as you already mentioned reducing the charity donations would be a good start - when you've finished paying off all that interest you could up the donations again!
changing utility provider - try U-switch there are other posts on here advising on different providers
got any unwanted books or dvd's you want to get rid of try selling them https://www.greenmetropolis.co.uk or amazon.co.uk - really easy - have sold £200 worth since mid december!
could you give up sky or downgrade?
do mystery shopping?
checkout the Old Style board for recipes and moneysaving household ways

good luck :T

do_it_today!

oh I forgot to say - call up your cc and say you are thinking of moving your balances to another cc company and see if they can reduce your rate - my Abbey card was 16% just after clearing it they offered me balance transfer rate of 1.9% for six months :rolleyes:

LookingAhead

Hi there.

I'm all for charitable spending (I sponsor a little boy in India myself and would never stop unless I was out of work) but £124?? Wow that is a LOT....

Is there anyway you could pause these whilst you clear some debt?

CLAPTON

your charitable donation of £124 per month is actually costing you £152 per month as you are borrowing this money at 22.8%.
in other words you're paying 340 per year in interest to borrow this money

now wouldn't it be better to use this money to clear this debt asap and then rather than contributing £124 to charity and £28 to the banks you could then contribute all £152 to charity.

MrsMessy

Well some of the money I'm not prepared to stop paying. Some is to a charity connected with the heart defect that my first baby died of; some is to a family in Uganda who have so little it makes us look like millionaires in comparison; and some is to a charity who have powerfully supported us as a family through some difficult times. I feel it's wrong to stop giving them money just because I've been stupid enough to overspend on other things. They shouldn't be penalised by our lack of judgement or organisation, and besides, it helps keep us aware that though we have our struggles, it's nothing compared to some other people.

But I will give serious thought to reducing or eliminating the rest of the payments for a time.

LookingAhead

I understand where you are coming from with the Ugandan thing especially.

I hope you can make savings elsewhere to cover these contributions.

Just as an aside, and by no means meant to offend, but you could perhaps temporarily reduce some of the payments to the two charities (maybe not the family) rather than stop them altogether. Just a thought.

But anyway, whatever you decide, good luck with your quest and don't forget to check out the Old Style Money Saving section of the MSE site as this really helps.

taxi73

Hi and welcome...that's the first step out of the way..well done...I say as above but if you could break your SOA into individual amounts it would help to see if we could save you some money

CLAPTON

if you get the M&S LOB card have you considered how you will transfer the First direct loan to the card as i dont think (not absolutely sure ) that the card will allow a BT from a loan..

MrsMessy

Ok - am currently on the Uswitch site to see what difference can be made there. We're currently paying £131 per month to Powergen for both gas and electricity, partly to pay off a £200 debit that had built up. Can't get into the Powergen website at the moment to see where things stand right now. Water bills are £20 per month. Phone breaks down to £23.44 to Pipex for our broadband connection - not the cheapest but certainly among the most reliable - not sure I could persuade DH to switch! And £18 to the Phone Co-op for calls and line rental. We both have PAYG mobile phones and only put £10 credit on every few months - don't use them a lot!

Car insurance is £50 per month on 2 cars - every year I go through those screenscraper services and try and get the cheapest. Car Tax is £20 per month for 2 cars - we have a bog standard family estate car on normal tax plus a Toyota Prius on which we only pay £30 per year :-) £8 per month for the AA membership. £50 per month put aside for servicing/repair costs.

Home insurance (buildings and contents combined) is £20 per month - I think I got the cheapest one at the time last year (June). Caravan insurance is £4 per month - can't go any lower than that - we're on their minimum premium!

'Other' breaks down to £5 put aside each month in case of vet's bills; £10 per month for dog food; £10 per month for 'household' i.e. whatever arises on the domestic front e.g. bits and pieces from B&Q. £3.50 per month for window cleaning (actually £7 every 2 months - I don't get it done every month). £30 on any activities for the children - I home-educate so actually this isn't really enough, but includes entry fees to historic houses, exhibitions etc. I don't have a HE book budget but I need one! £60 covers haircuts, dental inspections, gifts for family birthdays, membership fees and magazine subscriptions, and a bit of spare left over for general spending.

I've tried really hard to reduce the supermarket spend. Actually I've been overspending by £30-40 per month on average. So to get the supermarket down to £300 per month (plus £20 for milkman) would be an achievement! I have recently set up a monthly menu plan following inspiration from this site and made it as frugal as I can, but certainly I need to inspect my receipts more closely and see where I'm overdoing it!

Have been discussing with DH about getting rid of Sky. As we're not in a Freeview region it's not quite so straightforward as it otherwise would be. That would save us £21 per month, which I'm certainly in favour of!

I'd certainly be interested in the Mystery shopping thing - will investigate that. Need to get on some more paid survey sites too, I think.

MrsMessy

CLAPTON wrote:

if you get the M&S LOB card have you considered how you will transfer the First direct loan to the card as i dont think (not absolutely sure ) that the card will allow a BT from a loan..

Just been discussing that with DH - I think we'll wait and see if the M&S card comes through, then pay off the FirstPlus loan with the Capital One credit card which has over £4000 of credit available on it, and then transfer the Capital One balance to the M&S card, or as much of it as possible. Is that the right thing to do?