Shortie SOA... Hoping to go PartTime

Shortie

Hi

I tried an SOA a while back but couldn’t seem to get to grips with it. I’m hoping this is a better attempt…

At the mo, I’m looking at the defined monthly outgoings as I’m trying to shave money off these if possible. I’ve been recommended to post here from this post:

Ultimately I’m trying to see how close I can shave the monthly payments as I want to go part time when Baby 2 is born but not sure if I can truly afford it, or if it’s just a pipe dream….

Thanks all for reading. Please go gently on me as I’m not the most knowledgeable with budgets etc but try my hardest!

Monthly Incomings:

My salary - £2166 (to go down to £1349 if I go PartTime)
Partners contribution - £150 + all childcare costs
Benefits - £70 (Child Benefit)

Total - £2,386

Monthly Outgoings:

Mortgage/Rent - £957
Council Tax - £117
Gas & Electric - £50
TV License - £0 paid annually
Sky £21
Phone - £11 pm, landline, £30 mobile (all inclusive so never above this)
Food - £200 (currently working on this via OS Board)
Car Insurance - £0 paid annually (but as an idea, this years is £320
Petrol - £60
Life Insurance (Joint decreasing cover) = £12
DS Savings - £70 (i.e. CB benefit – sorry, not budging on this one)
Home ins - £40 (recently did this through Quidco and was cheapest home and contents we could find for our area)
Broadband - £0 (currently free through work)
Loan - £100
Train pass to work - £86
Water (not metered) - £30

Total: £1,754

Debt Details

Nationwide Mortgage: I do need to double check these sums…
APR 4.69% fixed until 31st Aug 07
Amount left: 162k
Period of loan left: 20 years

Loan (family loan):
APR 5.9% variable
Amount left: 11,800k
Period of loan left: Until Feb 2022 at current monthly payment and interest rate


Clothing allowance: Not sure I’ve not thought about it before, but uniform for DS and growing clothes. The very occasional item for me as I’m not a shopper at heart.

Holidays: as and when we have spare money. If we don’t have the money, we go nowhere. I have no idea how to quantify this bit either as it’s really hit and miss for us…?

Going Out: Quite simply… we’re pretty boring and don’t go out very often. If we do it tends to be round a friends house, or them to us and we’ll get in a few beers or something

Please let me know if I’ve forgotten to add anything

helping_hubby

I think you should add the monthly payments to your SOA (car insurance and tv license) because you've still got to get the money from somewhere.

Things you might have missed out:
Road Tax
MOT/Service
Emergency car repairs/tyres
Do you have breakdown cover?

So if you go part time, you'd be reduced to approximately £1600 income?

The only obvious thing would be to stop Sky, but that only saves you £21 a month. I guess you can reduce your food bill, are you feeding 2 adults and 1 baby (with 1 more on the way)? We're 2 adults and have cut our bill to £100 a month, but we're living off value products.

Shortie

Hi Helping_Hubby, thanks for the pointers :A

Yes, I should really factor those in... I'll get the price of TV licence and a quote for Car Ins again (monthly payment that is ) tomorrow - fired brain, and still want to create my shopping spread sheet!

I think I'd go down to £1349 (my Dad helped me to work this out yesterday) but I've not yet asked in work as I've not told HR that I'm expecting again yet.

At the mo it's 2 adults and a 4 year old, and yup, we definately have a blue and white stripped theme in our house too :rotfl:

Oh, forgot to mention that we may be entitled to DLA and Carers Allowance (maybe Attendance Allowance too - only hear this existed today) as DS1 is Type 1 Diabetic. I've not included it here as it's a complete unknown at the mo

TheAble

Could your partner do a job of some sort? Covering a mortgage of nearly a grand on your own is a bit much, surely?

Hopefully the house is only in your name!

sammy115

You can go on the Inland Revenue web site and check your net pay figures out. Once you have correct figures you could then check if you are entitled to child tax credit as that is not mentioned on your SOA. Go to https://www.entitledto.co.uk and check it out. I think you might be able to check out the disability living allowance and stuff too.

only a quick calculation but once you have added back in TV Licence, car stuff etc you are looking at a shortfall of nearly £400. Is this going to be possible!

Spendless

Can I query about partners contribution + childcare costs. Do you mean after paying childcare costs, your partner is only left with £150. If you do what is the cost of him working (travel, clothes,lunches etc). Would you be better off if he didn't work or found a job evenings/weekends when you are at hme for kids?

If you mean he only contributes £150 to household budget, what is happening to anything else left of his salary.

Shortie

TheAble wrote: »

Could your partner do a job of some sort? Covering a mortgage of nearly a grand on your own is a bit much, surely?

Hopefully the house is only in your name!

Hi Able

I didn't specify that did I, oops..

DH does work full time too, but earns much less than I do. He has plans to change this (he's in the process of joining the Police) and they have told him he has to lose a certain amount of weight first. He's passed the fitness and interviews already so it's literally just the weight and he'll be told when he can start training.. But, I'm not counting on this increase until it happens (notcounting ou chickens and all that)

Hmm... no the house is joint. When we first bought 5 years ago we earnt the same and everything was split fairly. If anything did happen between us, I'm the kind of person who'd want to play totally fair anyway (especially as I know I could afford to rent on my own etc). And hey, he puts up my moods so probably deserves the credit! :rotfl:

But in all seriousness, if it came to that, he pays all the childcare costs, so if I was funny about the house, he'd be funny about our son. But fingers crossed something like that never happens :cool:

Shortie

Spendless wrote: »

Can I query about partners contribution + childcare costs. Do you mean after paying childcare costs, your partner is only left with £150. If you do what is the cost of him working (travel, clothes,lunches etc). Would you be better off if he didn't work or found a job evenings/weekends when you are at hme for kids?

If you mean he only contributes £150 to household budget, what is happening to anything else left of his salary.

Hi, sorry no... DH earns about £1000 pm (before any overtime). The £150 is payment into the joint account. Childcare costs can vary, but are about £320 pm (maybe a bit extra for a longer month). He also pays just over £100 for petrol to get to work (he couldn't do Public Transport any cheaper as he's work is akward to get to), plus car insurance, phone.... He should have money spare at the end of the month but doesn't seem to. We're going to start him up a budgetting Spread Sheet like I have to get him into the swing of looking out for where his money goes, but I'm not pushing him hard on this as I don't want it to backfire. He has started taking lunch to work though.

Sorry after all that waffle, the £150 is the money he can currently put into the joint accounts comfortably. I'm not pushing on this, because if we needed more money now, I have much more spare at the end of the month than he does. We're working to change this though.

If I can't work out how to afford to go Part Time, I'll be ploughing the spare cash into our Debts instead

calleyw

Shortie wrote: »

Oh, forgot to mention that we may be entitled to DLA and Carers Allowance (maybe Attendance Allowance too - only hear this existed today) as DS1 is Type 1 Diabetic. I've not included it here as it's a complete unknown at the mo

Attendance Allowance (AA) is a tax-free benefit for people aged 65 or over who need help with personal care because they are physically or mentally disabled.

You can claim Carer's Allowance if you are aged 16 or over and spend at least 35 hours a week caring for a person getting Attendance Allowance, or Disability Living Allowance. You can't claim Carer's Allowance if you are in full-time education with 21 hours or more a week of supervised study or earn more than £87 a week after certain deductions have been made (such as Income Tax).

For DLA Your child must need a lot more help or supervision than other children of the same age.

You may get Disability Living Allowance if:

* you have a physical or mental disability, or both
* your disability is severe enough for you to need help caring for yourself or you have walking difficulties, or both
* you are under 65 when you claim

So not sure you are going to get any of those. But check on the benefits board.

I also find this strange that as a couple with children all your money is not going in to one pot. And none of this this is mine and that is yours type stuff.

With out the financial support of your husband you are not going to be able to go part time. He is inolved as it effects both of your standard of living.

All the best what ever you choose to do.

Yours


Calley

Shortie

calleyw wrote: »

I also find this strange that as a couple with children all your money is not going in to one pot. And none of this this is mine and that is yours type stuff.

Thanks for the advice on the allowances and I'll pop over to the Benefits Board in a bit.

Not quite sure how to read the above bit of your post, but we do have joint accounts that we have Standing Orders going into each month. That doesn't mean though that every penny has to go into a share account... I didn't mention the joint accounts as it the same money, just moved somewhere else

We've never been the type of people to say this is mine and not yours That's why the mortgage is still in joint ownership even though I pay the amount each month

Spendless

Shortie wrote: »

Not quite sure how to read the above bit of your post, but we do have joint accounts that we have Standing Orders going into each month. That doesn't mean though that every penny has to go into a share account... I didn't mention the joint accounts as it the same money, just moved somewhere else

We've never been the type of people to say this is mine and not yours That's why the mortgage is still in joint ownership even though I pay the amount each month

I think calley is meaning the same as me. Your original post reads as though your OH contributes £150 to the bills and pays the childcare bills and a couple of other minor things and the bulk of the rest is coming from your wages. Meanwhile your OH is keeping/spending a great deal of his income to himself.

You aren't going to be able to fulfill your dream to go part-time unless more of the joint household income is contributed to the joint household bills.