Statement of Affairs

mildredalien

Well, your outgoings are pretty high but so is your income, and you are (theoretically) in credit each month! With such high outgoings but still not having money left over and a large amount of debt, it's really important to get a grip on what exactly you are spending each month. Get your bank statements for the last few months and calculate how much you are withdrawing in cash, and how many non-essentials or 'extras' you are putting on debit cards as well. It's so easy to fall into a lifestyle of spending certain amounts or just not considering what you buy! You'd be amazed how much you can cut back on and not really even notice...

If you can get a handle on your spending and make some cut backs, you could make a massive dent in those debts - and just think, when you are debt free you'll have an extra £1000 a month to spend on whatever you like!!

mildredalien

P.s. Just a thought about the DMP, given that if you keep on budget and make savings on your non essentials (presents, entertainment, insurance, etc.) you could make a big dent in your debts yourselves, if you are able to keep up with minimum payments already you could consider self managing and using snowballing to tackle the debt. That way, you won't incur charges, late payment marks or defaults as you stop making minimum payments and move into the DMP.

pleasedelete

Would a dmp cover the secured overdraft?

How old are your children?

Walaboobah

pleasedelete wrote: »

Would a dmp cover the secured overdraft?

How old are your children?

Hadn't planned to do that

15 and 8

Walaboobah

mildredalien wrote: »

P.s. Just a thought about the DMP, given that if you keep on budget and make savings on your non essentials (presents, entertainment, insurance, etc.) you could make a big dent in your debts yourselves, if you are able to keep up with minimum payments already you could consider self managing and using snowballing to tackle the debt. That way, you won't incur charges, late payment marks or defaults as you stop making minimum payments and move into the DMP.

We've been trying to get a grip on it but are struggling to do so and seem to be getting in deeper, it's not as if we are out every weekend or even every other, we are definitely blowing a hole somewhere though as prior to filling in this SPA my calculations on all the DDs etc going out of the account we would have around £1100 left and that's before the other half's earnings are taken into account.

I need to do some more investigating I think as it's crazy and we should be able to do something about it - starting point is a new safe bank account and start to pay things off maybe without a DMP

slowlyfading

Walaboobah wrote: »

OK, here goes
Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 2
Number of cars owned.................... 2

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 2779.72
Partners monthly income after tax....... 600
Benefits................................ 134.8
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 3514.52

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 462
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 200
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 97
Electricity............................. 20
Gas..................................... 25
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 48
Telephone (land line)................... 20
Mobile phone............................ 46
TV Licence.............................. 12.5
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 82 - get rid of this or reduce the package - freeview is great!
Internet Services....................... 6
Groceries etc. ......................... 400 - ouch! This could be reduced quite a bit - pop over to the Old Style board and get reading!
Clothing................................ 50 - every month?
Petrol/diesel........................... 150
Road tax................................ 35
Car Insurance........................... 70
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 50
Car parking............................. 10
Other travel............................ 10
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 120
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 10
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 20
Contents insurance...................... 14
Life assurance ......................... 110
Other insurance......................... 51
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 120 - every month? That's a lot!
Haircuts................................ 20
Entertainment........................... 150 - this needs to be reduced - there's lots of things you can do for free!
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 2408.5


Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 165000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 8000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 173000


Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 97000....(462)......0.78
Secured Debt.................. 44000....(200)......3.5
Total secured & HP debts...... 141000....-.........-

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Halifax CC.....................11000.....200.......18.7
Barclayloan....................5649......207.......6.9
MBNA CC........................4462......150.......19.9
Barclayloan....................2046......112.......6.9
Halifax OD.....................1400......31........0
Barclays OD....................2700......30........0
Total unsecured debts..........27257.....730.......-


Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 3,514.52
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 2,408.5
Available for debt repayments........... 1,106.02
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 730
Amount left after debt repayments....... 376.02

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 173,000
Total HP & Secured debt................. -141,000
Total Unsecured debt.................... -27,257
Net Assets.............................. 4,743

Created using the SOA calculator at www.stoozing.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using other browser.

Now according to that we have £376.02 left over each month, this isn't true so I suspect our Entertainment budget must be higher than I've put.

Any thoughts?

Made some comments above another thing to do is start a spending diary and write down everything that you spend, down to the last penny! It'll be an eye opener, I'm sure also, you really need to start clearing your MBNA and Halifax CCs - I'm sure they must be costing you a bit in interest right? They're the two to focus on for now

Good luck, you can do this!

Walaboobah

Thanks again for the responses, spoke to a very helpful young lady at CCCS today regarding a DMP, initially they recommended we pay £237 a month off the debt but I felt that was too low, so we did some recalculating of the figures and reduced some of the values entered and it came out at £450 per month, which she said should have me pay the debt off in just under five years so well happy with that.

I have set up a separate bank account, cancelled my DDs to my creditors and informed them what is happening, so now awaiting for CCCS to contact them all and hopefully should get some positive responses.

We could possibly have struggled on for a few more months and the loans would have come down but although I have reduced the MBNA card by approximately £800 in the last 6 months or so, the Halifax minimum payment was only covering the interest.

If the Halifax agree to freeze the interest which I have read some stories that they won't do that and accept the offer it will be good news indeed

It will reduce our payments from c £700 to £463 a month and take the pressure off a tad.

It will actually be nice to look at a bank statement and see it saying £2779 on 25th of each month rather than a couple of pounds and then the overdraft eating up the salary.

If the wife can get a couple of extra kids to mind we could even make further inroads.

The only thing worrying me now is will the creditors accept the reduced payments and being worried about getting behind, particularly with the Halifax which is almost maxed out, oh and the letters that are bound to come when they try to take a payment and find that the DD has been cancelled!

Some nervy few months ahead I suspect!

Walaboobah

I should add that I'm not particularly bothered about the credit rating as I never intend to take out a loan or a credit card again.

I'm done with credit, i'll be saving for everything from now on

blisteringblue

Walaboobah wrote: »

I should add that I'm not particularly bothered about the credit rating as I never intend to take out a loan or a credit card again.

I'm done with credit, i'll be saving for everything from now on

I am surprised you are going down the DMP route with that income.

I have around 15k more unsecured debt than you and our income is pretty much the same. However with an overspend of around £250 on my minimum payments my snowball will have me paying it all off in 42 months ? OK I've only 8 payments left on a big loan which will help the snowball massively but even so have you not tried a snowball calculation?

A DMP is a massive step and OK you are not worried about credit etc, but you could attack this and keep away from the hassles of expecting the next call, defaults etc etc

We've cut most things to the bone, but we've 2 kids at Uni and we still have some leisure activities. Our grocery budget is still generous but the debts are coming down.

Have a go with your figures at http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx you might be surprised at the outcome?

Walaboobah

Fair points blisteringblue, unfortunately we just cannot afford the repayments we are on and I believe had no alternative but to go down this route