Just calculated my SOA

alemted

Used the personal budget sheet from the National Debtline Website.

Income:
£3007.71

Outgoings:
£2446.61

Left for Creditors:
£561.20 per month

Not a lot to pay off £50000 worth of debts. Looks like about 8-10 year plan.....

I think we will contact payplan to sort this out........

Are we likely to need another bank account as our joint account is with the same bank as 2 loans and 1 credit card?

Breakdown of finances to follow..........

alemted

Married couple with 3 young kids, aged 4, 3 & 3 (lovely twins)!!

Here's the full breakdown:

Income:
My net pay: £1150
OH net pay £1650
Child Tax Credit £44.31
Child Benefit £163.40

TOTAL £3007.71

Outgoings:
Mortgage £766.01
Council Tax £100.00 (paid for this financial year) - until march or april
Water Rates £16.10
Home Ins £44.00 (£15 cheaper than last one)
Life Ins £21.48
Gas £57.00
Electric £75.50 (3 young kids + tumble dryer)!
Housekeeping £500.00
Sky + TV Licence £29.41
H.P Vehicle £182.88 (2 years left)
Travelling Exp £180.00 (2 cars insurance + tax + service + petrol)
School Meals £40.00
Clothing £40.00
BT + 2 mobiles £50.00
Childminding £214.00 (Didn't realise how much until we added it up - highest outgoing after mortgage and housekeeping)!!
Broadband £21.99 (planning to switch to cheaper one soon)
RCN + RNPFN £38.14 (wife is a nurse)
B'days + Xmas £20.00

Total £2446.51


Left for Creditors: £561.20

Some Notes:
Gas & Elec we think is high but when we put our details into uswitch - they all come out higher! We are on B.G dual fuel price cap until 2009.
Childminding is collecting kids from school & nursery and after school club as we both work full time.
We need 2 cars as we both work about 20 miles from home!
Housekeeping is probably conservative - virtually no luxuries included.

Is it all as bad as it looks?

alemted

And here are the creditors and outstanding balances.

Lloyds TSB bank loan (me) £21000
Lloyds TSB bank loan (OH) £13000
Bank of Scotland card £4700
Royal Bank of Scotland Plat. card £7500
Lloyds TSB card £3750
Debenhams card £710.86
Mothercare card £259.46
Studio catalogue £586.86

All paid minimum payment monthly no arrears in december except studio, dunno how we missed that one.

Not going to able to afford to pay them all this month sadly.

Need to contact payplan or CCCS a.s.a.p

Which one is recommended?

EDIT:
checked the D.D list again and found another creditor.....
Clydesdale Financial Services ~£3000 @ £56.00 p/m by D.D

tryhard_2

hi and welcome to mse; you have a good income. with some changes you can throw more at your debts. can you put the apr on the loans/cards? here are my comments

alemted wrote:

Income:
My net pay: £1150
OH net pay £1650
Child Tax Credit £44.31
Child Benefit £163.40 check that you are getting what you are entitled to

TOTAL £3007.71

Outgoings:
Mortgage £766.01
Council Tax £100.00 (paid for this financial year) - until march or april use this in feb/mar to pay towards mothercare cardWater Rates £16.10
Home Ins £44.00 (£15 cheaper than last one)
Life Ins £21.48
Gas £57.00
Electric £75.50 (3 young kids + tumble dryer)! this is high - get some energy saving lightbulbs, switch off any appliance not being used and turn off lights when you leave the room
Housekeeping £500.00 you can easily trim this to 300 pm - check the old style board on this forum for ideas
Sky + TV Licence £29.41
H.P Vehicle £182.88 (2 years left)
Travelling Exp £180.00 (2 cars insurance + tax + service + petrol)
School Meals £40.00
Clothing £40.00
BT + 2 mobiles £50.00
Childminding £214.00 (Didn't realise how much until we added it up - highest outgoing after mortgage and housekeeping)!!
Broadband £21.99 (planning to switch to cheaper one soon)
RCN + RNPFN £38.14 (wife is a nurse)
B'days + Xmas £20.00

Total £2446.51


Left for Creditors: £561.20

Prudent

Housekeeping is on the high side. Mine is £90 per month for one adult, one teenager and two picky cats. Old style is great for helping you to get this down, they are a very welcoming and supportive bunch. If you are both working full time you will be tired. Have a look at the vouchers board they often have codes that you can use to reduce the cost of an online grocery shop, which may be easier with young children.

Are school dinners essential? Again I know the pressure of working full time are a factor. I am a teacher and think school dinners are poor value for money.

I am on the aol silver package for broadband and pay £9.99 per month.

alemted

Thanks, gonna start turning everything off instead of leaving TV's, dvd's, PS2, sky, etc., on standby all night.

We are considering cutting sky out altogether - we pay £18 p/m basic + 3 mixes, mainly for the kids channels, but we have a freeview TV and a digital ariel.

Here's the apr's I could find:

Lloyds TSB loan me - apr 7.6%
Lloyds TSB loan OH - apr 9.5%
Lloyds TSB card - apr 14%
R.B.O.S - apr ??? - no details on statement - guess about 17.9%
B.O.S preference account card - apr ??? no details on statement guess about 25%
Mothercare card - apr 25.8%
Debenhams Card - apr 29.9%
Studio catalogue - apr 31.2% !!!

tryhard_2

if you can transfer credit from your mothercare/debenhams and studio catalogue to a lower APR card you will save more money as interest will be lot lesser. you have a lot of credit between you so i suggest getting your credit files and seeing your credit score. if it is good apply for a 0% card and then you will save even more
HTH

tryhard_2

this might be useful http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

alemted

Prudent wrote:

Housekeeping is on the high side. Mine is £90 per month for one adult, one teenager and two picky cats. Old style is great for helping you to get this down, they are a very welcoming and supportive bunch. If you are both working full time you will be tired. Have a look at the vouchers board they often have codes that you can use to reduce the cost of an online grocery shop, which may be easier with young children.

Thanks for that, we are going to be trying to cut our weekly food spending down, BOGOF, 3 for 2's, etc. £40 per month of our budget is for the puppy food alone!

Prudent wrote:

Are school dinners essential? Again I know the pressure of working full time are a factor. I am a teacher and think school dinners are poor value for money.

Sorry, it's for meals at work not school meals - I copied it from the budget sheet and left out the school/work bit. £10 per week's not bad for a big fella like me! Seriously though, i'll be taking more packed lunches as time permits.

Prudent wrote:

I am on the aol silver package for broadband and pay £9.99 per month.

Just finished shopping around for broadband and found ukonline at 9.99 per month over 12 months, still speccing others and will check out AOL. I don't need the massive download capacity at home anymore as we now have fast internet at work and I work in the IT dept.

alemted

tryhard wrote:

if you can transfer credit from your mothercare/debenhams and studio catalogue to a lower APR card you will save more money as interest will be lot lesser. you have a lot of credit between you so i suggest getting your credit files and seeing your credit score. if it is good apply for a 0% card and then you will save even more
HTH

Unfortunately our credit rating is not very good due to our recent credit spending as debts mounted we got more credit to pay for other bills, now we can't get anymore credit - been turned down for everything recently.

magentadreamer

Your first debt to hit would be the studio Cards catalogue - I'd use the money saved from your council tax to sling at that. I'd also ask come april if you could perhaps pay the bill in 12 monthly instalements -my council allows that.

Are you manageing to keep up with the loan repayments? you didn't say how much each debt was costing you out of the £561 you have left over.

Housekeeping - this could be really cut back, have you tried shopping at the likes of Lidl/Aldi/Netto/Farm foods etc -as others have said check out the OS board.

Electric - your electric is costing you £1050 a year - ditch that tumble drier.

RPFN - this is a savings/insurance type thing isn't it? Could this perhaps be put into a paid up status or even find out how much you might get for it if your wife cashed it in.

School meals - I'll admit my daughter has these out of convience but a packed lunch might save you some more money.