HELP: SOA indicated a shortfall but I can't see how? Must be why we're in debt!!!

mrsb83_2

Just repeating that £500 on groceries, even if it includes all household shopping, is easily reduced. Also £80 a month for presents could be trimmed, although I don't find it as scandalous as some here!

You have £0 for entertainment. Is that accurate? You never spend anything?

wanna-be-mortgage-free_2

Hello Catsense :wave:

Welcome to the boards. I'm so sorry you are going through such a difficult time. I'm sure if you make some small changes they would make a big difference to you in terms of your outgoings. You could always give utility / media / phone companies a call to make sure you are on the best deal or ask for a discount. Considering your family circumstances I'm sure they could help you.

I'm sure you are finding it tough with a young child and husband who is ill so trying to sit down to plan meals is probably difficult. If you are relying on convenience food, maybe going to a different shop would help such as Lidl etc.

I do hope things improve for you soon.

Take care.

DCFC79

Barbeduk wrote: »

Could I just query the £9 for brown bin? Is that to get it cleaned? If so, stop it! You might as well put the £9 in the bin!!

Seems a bit much to clean a brown bin, could do it yourself.

beanielou

Can only echo £500 pm for food is massive and needs to reduce.
Switch to Aldi & your savings will be amazing.

catsense13

Wow! Thanks everyone - I wasn't really expecting a response tbh, thought I was doing quite well cutting costs! Shows how naive I am about our money probs. I'll try and answer your queries and can anyone direct me to this 'old board - grocery challenge'? Sound like something I def need to do!

The brown bin is not for cleaning. We have to pay to have our compostable waste removed (unless we take it to the dump ourselves).

My one mob is on contract £10/month with vodafone but I seem to go over it a bit but only to about £15-17 on the odd occasion.

The gifts I'm surprised that people think is a lot. On our parents we spend £20 each coz they've all helped us out such a lot and our brothers/sisters/aunts/uncles and cousins are mostly £10 each for a birthday pressie and an xmas pressie. If I'm honest, I more often than not spend more coz £10 seems a bit stingy and anything for a tenner is usually rubbish!

Childcare is £3/hour for one day a week (£28/day) and my mum has him for free two days. I need to look into the childcare voucher scheme.

Interesting that tax credits were mentioned as we did get £10 a week but that stopped about 3 months ago. My husband does get overtime occasionally so I assumed his P60 put us over the tax credit threshold. We've never had a letter to explain the cancellation though.

All the credit cards are 0%. The virgin one was just a couple of weeks ago as we were £2k overdrawn with santander joint account so I transferred £2,300 from the card (all I can borrow and 0% for 20 months) to clear that as the charges were huge. My husbands account is still overdrawn by £600 (santander £10/month charge) and my account is still £1000 overdrawn (nationwide £13/month charge). Also Barclaycard is £800 0% until feb 2013. I was hoping to borrow enough to pay all the overdrafts off, transfer the credit card on to just one card and concentrate on paying off that credit card interest free and changing whenever the special rate finished but I'm not able to request a credit review until I have had the account for 6 months so at xmas I am hoping to request more credit to pay off our remaining overdrafts and wiith regards to the £800 barclaycard which rate finishes feb next year, I'd like to pay off (£110/month) by then. Unfortunately, while we have overdrafts, I am unable to close those accounts and change banks until the balance is paid off :-(

Can anyone recommend some good survey sites? I'm with TopCash back but haven't had an opportunity to use it yet. Will def need to sell some old baby stuff.

Phew, that sounds complicated! Hope it makes sense...

Entertainment - we don't really go anywhere and if we do we normally go with our parents so they tend to treat us.

Clothes - this is normally included in our grocery shop. Most of my clothes are hand me downs from friends. My hubby rarely buys clothes - certainly hasn't since I was pregnant (nearly 3 years ago) and I buy our son's clothes from AsdA or tesco...

THE £200 pound in savings is all we have left after having to replace our car in Sept last month. we had an N reg audi but had to scrap it and bought a diesel bmw 320D as it was recommended as an economical vehicle. I suppose you could class some of our diesel as entertainment as we quite often go walking and for picnic's as they are free (except travel costs, lol).

Although I try to we have not been able to save for heating oil, car tax or mot so we will need to find this money sometime. Would like to buy the oil now when its cheapest...

elec is not in arrears. We do have a meter thingy but it needs wiring in. Might have to get someone in to do it for me...

Water is on a meter

thanks for your help :-)

jackieb

Could you buy a compost bin to save having to pay 9 pounds a month?

GjrBartlett

Barbeduk wrote: »

Do consider the survey sites. I've just got into doing them regularly and it's amazing how quickly the money builds up.

Good luck!

My apologies to the OP for going slightly off-track...

Looking to getting in to doing surveys, Could I ask what sites you use & roughly what you can make per month?

Thanks

Gareth.

flippin36

Ok, if you feel you have to spend so much on pressies then you have to factor the cost in elsewhere. At least you are aware of what you spend, if someone had asked me a few years ago I wouldn't have a clue on what I was spending on presents. One thing I have started doing is buying presents in the sale (I got loads of things in the Boots 75% sale in January) so it looks like I'm being generous, but shop for the whole year. Keep you eyes peeled all the time for a good buy even if the birthday is months away and have a present cupboard stash - this stops panic present buying where we overspend.

Phone - I have got into the habit of texting balance every few days to keep a track on how I'm doing.

Survey sites I recommend are Mysurvey and Valuedopinions. Give them a go as you could put the vouchers towards your huge present budget . Great you have a topcashback account, we use it to jiggle our credit cards around. Don't let it lure you into spending more than necessary though.

Edit: You pay someone to compost your stuff? :eek: We got a good deal on a compost bin from the council and they delivered it free. Or I see them coming up on freecycle a lot.

edgex

catsense13 wrote: »

Wow! Thanks everyone - I wasn't really expecting a response tbh, thought I was doing quite well cutting costs! Shows how naive I am about our money probs. I'll try and answer your queries and can anyone direct me to this 'old board - grocery challenge'? Sound like something I def need to do!

The brown bin is not for cleaning. We have to pay to have our compostable waste removed (unless we take it to the dump ourselves). 1

My one mob is on contract £10/month with vodafone but I seem to go over it a bit but only to about £15-17 on the odd occasion.
2

The gifts I'm surprised that people think is a lot. On our parents we spend £20 each coz they've all helped us out such a lot and our brothers/sisters/aunts/uncles and cousins are mostly £10 each for a birthday pressie and an xmas pressie. If I'm honest, I more often than not spend more coz £10 seems a bit stingy and anything for a tenner is usually rubbish! 3

Childcare is £3/hour for one day a week (£28/day) and my mum has him for free two days. I need to look into the childcare voucher scheme.

Interesting that tax credits were mentioned as we did get £10 a week but that stopped about 3 months ago. My husband does get overtime occasionally so I assumed his P60 put us over the tax credit threshold. We've never had a letter to explain the cancellation though.

All the credit cards are 0%. The virgin one was just a couple of weeks ago as we were £2k overdrawn with santander joint account so I transferred £2,300 from the card (all I can borrow and 0% for 20 months) to clear that as the charges were huge. My husbands account is still overdrawn by £600 (santander £10/month charge) and my account is still £1000 overdrawn (nationwide £13/month charge). Also Barclaycard is £800 0% until feb 2013. I was hoping to borrow enough to pay all the overdrafts off, transfer the credit card on to just one card and concentrate on paying off that credit card interest free and changing whenever the special rate finished but I'm not able to request a credit review until I have had the account for 6 months so at xmas I am hoping to request more credit to pay off our remaining overdrafts and wiith regards to the £800 barclaycard which rate finishes feb next year, I'd like to pay off (£110/month) by then. Unfortunately, while we have overdrafts, I am unable to close those accounts and change banks until the balance is paid off :-(

Can anyone recommend some good survey sites? I'm with TopCash back but haven't had an opportunity to use it yet. Will def need to sell some old baby stuff.

Phew, that sounds complicated! Hope it makes sense...

Entertainment - we don't really go anywhere and if we do we normally go with our parents so they tend to treat us.

Clothes - this is normally included in our grocery shop. Most of my clothes are hand me downs from friends. My hubby rarely buys clothes - certainly hasn't since I was pregnant (nearly 3 years ago) and I buy our son's clothes from AsdA or tesco...

THE £200 pound in savings is all we have left after having to replace our car in Sept last month. we had an N reg audi but had to scrap it and bought a diesel bmw 320D as it was recommended as an economical vehicle. I suppose you could class some of our diesel as entertainment as we quite often go walking and for picnic's as they are free (except travel costs, lol).

Although I try to we have not been able to save for heating oil, car tax or mot so we will need to find this money sometime. Would like to buy the oil now when its cheapest...

elec is not in arrears. We do have a meter thingy but it needs wiring in. Might have to get someone in to do it for me...

Water is on a meter

thanks for your help :-)

is the house insulated & double-glazed?
have you turned down the thermostat?


1) stop it! either compost it yourself, or find someone locally that will collect it for nothing

2) stop going over then

3) attitude problem!
simply halving the amount spent gives you £500 a year towards paying off debt

katsu

Pressies - charity shops and sales are your friends. Seriously. I spend around £200 on around 20 people including parents. I shop all year round and if I get an interesting looking new condition book for £1 in a CS for cousin Bill, then that is what he gets. I don't top it up to a particular amount. I am always adding to my pressie stash with cheap books, toiletry gift sets etc (as the other person said the boots sale is fab for all your girls in the family).

Or talk to family about cutting back on pressie spending. Or start making gifts like hampers, jam, chocs etc.

If you think £10 pressies are rubbish then I think you are spending your £10 in the wrong places or at the wrong times.

We used to spend a fortune in the high street in November and December so I understand what you mean, but seriously, our pressies don't look cheap and I would never go back.

Surveys - mysurvey and VO are good, as someone else said. Maybe start doing surveys for amazon vouchers for some of your christmas and birthday gifts?