How do I get out of my overdraft?

the_cat

I think you need to be a lot firmer with OH! So he is resistant to Sky going (for example) and therefore you HAVE to pay, despite having seperate accounts/finances. Tell him if he wants it that badly, then he can pay for it himself.

I'm sorry to be so blunt but if you are serious about reducing your overdraft then you need to stop allowing him to dictate what you spend YOUR money on. TBH your overdraft sounds like the least of your problems

MrsWassire

Re: Child benefit, how can he say it HAS to go into his account? Assumably you get the child benefit in your name, as is usual? If so, all you need to do is call them and change the bank details to your account! He's taking the pee really, what kind of man would do that? My hubby used to be controlling financially but we had very little and he didn't spend any money himself either, if that makes sense - sounds like your hubby just wants to spend money on himself and not you or your little boy.

DreamerV

Do you get help from tax credits for childcare? Sorry, I've skim read the replies as I was short for time, so you may have mentioned already.

The satellite - is it sky tv? If your OH wants it, and you can't afford it, maybe he can pay for it? But if it is sky, I used to phone up every 3 months and say I'm still struggling to pay for it and don't think it's worth it anymore - and they use to reduce it to between £1 and £3 for the next 3 months. They didn't seem to worry about me doing this often. My dad also had a problem with his after the horrendous gale force winds recently, and Sky said they would charge to come out, at which point he just said cancel it then - and they promptly sent someone out for free, and offered some free channels for a while.

Also, maybe this is bad advice...someone else will know better. But I opened a FirstAccount with FirstDirect this week, and it comes with a £500 overdraft (with first £250 interest free and no fee for that overdraft at least for the first year). Could you use a similar account to pay £250 off your current overdraft, since it's costing you over 19%? Obviously you would need to make sure you are able to pay the £250 back on this overdraft too if they ask for money to renew it after a year. It may be a bad idea, or maybe they do a credit check before giving you the overdraft, I don't really know.

Edit:

Just realised you pay £42.28 between you and your husband for phone line and internet! This is massive. I agree with whoever said that what BT said was not good enough. Are you in contract? If not, I'd jump ship to somewhere that includes both telephone and internet. I pay £23 a month (and I didn't go for the best deal as I didn't want a deal lasting over 1 year in case I was leaving my property) - for that I get landline with evening and weekend calls, and also internet. That would save you personally almost £10 a month. I think for what you are paying at the moment for internet and phone line, you should be able to have TV, phone line, and internet combined.

DreamerV

MrsWassire wrote: »

Re: Child benefit, how can he say it HAS to go into his account? Assumably you get the child benefit in your name, as is usual? If so, all you need to do is call them and change the bank details to your account! He's taking the pee really, what kind of man would do that? My hubby used to be controlling financially but we had very little and he didn't spend any money himself either, if that makes sense - sounds like your hubby just wants to spend money on himself and not you or your little boy.

I very much agree with this, I reckon you need to phone and change this. Or does your child have an account? Could you possibly have the money paid into that if it's allowed? Then you could use the money to buy things for your child.

Edit: Wait, did I just read that most of the travel is him with the train, that he earns more, and he gets the child benefit, yet you pay into his travel, despite you doing hardly any of the actual travelling? That does not seem right at all! If I travelled because of work, and earned a bit more, and my OH was near OD limit, I would pay either all or most of the travel costs. Also, if you pay half the travel bill in order to be fair, then surely to be fair he should pay an equal amount into your OD to bring it down?

Also, I remember before I moved house a couple of years ago, I'd built up credit balances on gas, electricity, and telephone. With the huge amounts you are paying, are you perhaps in credit? If so, could you request that money and use it to pay off the overdraft a little? That is if the cheques would come in your name (or the direct debit comes out your account). Also someone mentioned about them being able to ask for the OD at any time I think. That's right - your overdraft is repayable on demand, when they feel like it. They don't usually do this, however if you are not in black even when you salary comes in, then they are much more likely to worry about your OD and ask for it back. That, couple with it having a higher APR, mean I would focus on that before the card (although keep up minimum payments at least). Can you also transfer the card balance to somewhere cheaper - I don't know anything about that, but someone else probably does on here!

Last edit (promise!): I looked at snowball debt calculator (using the rates 19.9 and 19.3 on your soa as assuming they were correct, rather than the slightly different ones of 19.3 and 18.9 on this thread?). This is how long it would take for you to pay off these 2 debts depending on how much you could put towards them in total each month:

Currently £100: 43 months (3 years, 7 months)

£110: 38 months (3 years, 2 months)

£120: 34 months (2 years, 10 months)

£130: 30 months (2 years, 6 months)

£140: 28 months (2 years, 4 months)

£150: 25 months (2 years, 1 month)

Basically, if you pay £100 approximately at the moment, you can see how big a difference just finding an extra tenner a month would make to how long you are in debt for (5 whole months extra of no debt!). That's an extra £2.31 a week for you to find. Another £10 a month above that, you'd be out of debt 9 months quicker than currently. If you could make enough savings on expenses to pay £155 a month, you'd be out of debt 2 years from now.

Catriona_P

Wow lots of responses since I logged in yesterday! I'll try to answer some questions. On a side note the cheque for baby stuff I sold at our local NCT sale come through last night, a whole £22! Well chuffed

R.e. our BT bill. For landline & internet it's currently £59 a month. It jumped from £17 last summer when we signed up to Broadband (needed as I work from home a day a week and need access to my work emails). It was high as the vast majority of our calls were on it - my mum and sister don't have landlines and it was cheaper to ring them off landline than my PAYG mobile. Then when I got my contract phone in Sept/Oct our numbers of calls dropped as I now ring people on that instead. But the bill cost hasn't dropped. I checked our bill last night and we're £64 in credit - I'm going to ring them this weekend and get it sorted out. Not sure we can switch but this is a ridiculously high price for what we get. We'll be in contract with them for ages yet so not sure if its possible to jump ship? TBH I would have done it sooner but busy life etc and hubby couldn't be bothered.

I'm starting to think along allybee101's lines - wages to go into overdrawn account, and monthly budget into another. Personally I don't like carrying cash, I find I'm MORE inclined to spend it (and find it harder to justify on my budget spreadsheet as its usually spent on non-essentials). Maybe I'm just weird like that?

I know my husband is an !!!! and I need to be stronger, he just makes life very difficult for me if I ever complain or speak up. Never saw myself as one of those mousy women who just puts up with it but I guess that's what I've become! I paid him the month's money for what I owe yesterday - I asked him to break down for me where the figure came from and he shouted at me like I thought he was fleecing me. I will check with the mortgage company about whether or not the money needs to come from an account a wage goes into. As for child benefit, I've been looking at children's accounts the money can go directly to, I told him we can both have access in case we need to get nappies etc, he said fine, so it'll be down to me to sort that out.

I know I probably shouldn't be paying him the amount I do for his travel, Sky etc, but again any questioning always results in a row. Last time we rowed like this we didn't talk properly for a week! I've told him it's not fair, he says it is, we're at a stalemate. What to do now?

DreamerV - I've been told about the First Direct account, unfortunately I don't earn quite 1.5k a month so wouldn't qualify for the free £100 which sucks . I'm also worried about transferring my wages to another account incase Barclays get jittery and call in the full 2.4k of my OD!

Unfortunately we aren't in credit with gas/electricity so that's not an option.

Thanks for the snowball debt calculator, a real mind-opener! :eek:

Thanks for all the responses guys, really appreciated as I have nobody to talk to. With the weather looking nice I'm hoping to spend the weekend playing in the garden with the little one, so at least it should be a cheap one! Although it's my turn for food shopping tomorrow...doh.

rising_from_the_ashes

Catriona_P wrote: »

Personally I don't like carrying cash, I find I'm MORE inclined to spend it (and find it harder to justify on my budget spreadsheet as its usually spent on non-essentials). Maybe I'm just weird like that?

Nope .... you're not alone there either Caroline - I'm terrible with cash ... whether it's in my purse or in a budget envelope ... I just can't be trusted with it at all!:o

I pay everything on the cc (cleared in full each month) and, for me, it's a lot easier to keep track of the spends - and I never put more on it than I can clear in a month.

Re your hubby ..... a really difficult situation and I totally sympathise - on the one hand you want to get things sorted but on the other, if it causes loads of rows etc, then I totally understand why you don't want to keep bringing things up. Keep trying when you can and hopefully you'll be able to reach a compromise.

eamon

I must be missing something but why would reducing your overdraft limit have a adverse impact on your credit record? Oh and I second the idea of changing your current account to a different bank.

DreamerV

eamon wrote: »

I must be missing something but why would reducing your overdraft limit have a adverse impact on your credit record? Oh and I second the idea of changing your current account to a different bank.

From my limited knowledge, I think it's more the credit check each time you ask for a change of overdraft limit (up or down) reflects negatively on your credit record.

DreamerV

Catriona_P wrote: »

DreamerV - I've been told about the First Direct account, unfortunately I don't earn quite 1.5k a month so wouldn't qualify for the free £100 which sucks . I'm also worried about transferring my wages to another account incase Barclays get jittery and call in the full 2.4k of my OD!


Thanks for the snowball debt calculator, a real mind-opener! :eek:

Thanks for all the responses guys, really appreciated as I have nobody to talk to. With the weather looking nice I'm hoping to spend the weekend playing in the garden with the little one, so at least it should be a cheap one! Although it's my turn for food shopping tomorrow...doh.

My OH's an !!! too (with money, with me). Sometimes I want to scream, "grow up!". I'm 15 years younger but you woudn't know it...

With regards to the FirstDirect bonus. I should actually receive this with an income far less than yours. I have a Nationwide account, which I get 1000ish in per month. I will set up a direct debit to pay that into the FirstAccount, Then a direct debit to pay 500 back to Nationwide again a few days later, and another to pay back that 500 into FirstDirect from Nationwide again. It doesn't matter where the money comes from as long as it's not just a transfer from a First Direct account to another First Direct account. You would also need to use their switching service to swap 2 direct debits to the First Account.

Even if you don't want to do that though, you should be able to get a free £250 overdraft I think on the FirstAccount.

It's a shame we can't give a huge amount of advice on cutting down from your SOA, as whatever we suggest, it sounds like the impact would be much reduced unless your hubby also was willing to cut down (as you pay half of his excess spending!).

DreamerV

Oh, also you may want to consider joining somewhere like topcashback, and if you ever order stuff online, clicking on the retailer through there to earn some cashback. If you do want to, and haven't signed up, just pm me (as I have a referral which gets me a tenner eventually, of which I usually give the referee 20% but would be willing to give 50% in this case). They have a few company's on there which you can get cashback from for free trials (£12.12 for a few week film trial, £7 for something else I forget, couple of quid for signing up to some sites even if you don't continue to use them).