I am asking for help

Little_Miss_Uni-Debt

Hi,

Just wanted to agree that your outgoings seem reasonable so it really is a battle to increase both of your incomes to find extra to clear the debts.

If you haven't already I'd get a separate current account away from your overdraft to enable you to start managing a current account that always operates in credit. That's what I did and it really helped.

Treat your overdraft as a separate debt.

If you could get interest frozen on a DMP, that's when you'd start to see balances coming down. With interest the way it is, you're doing very well to make all the payments but just treading water.

theoretica

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet cutting down on the presents budget (spend time not money) as a possibility. A hard one just before Christmas with children, but which of your childhood Christmas presents do you remember today - often they weren't the costly ones.

Have you also shopped around to check the life assurance is the best possible deal?

choppy34

Your debts and income are similar to mine, can I suggest looking into snowballing before you think about DMP?

eBay is a good idea especially at this time of year, I made £100 on party dresses worn once

Good luck

pennypusher

Hi, can you get a 0% interest credit card and transfer any debts on to it? Have you tried to get a new mortgage recently - can you get it any cheaper.

I would suggest you examine your use of gas and electricity and see if you can cut it down ie turn the heating down 1degree or have it on for less time. Boil less in the kettle, turn off everything not in use and don't leave anything on standby. See if you can get an energy monitor to show what you use. Check out reducing energy usage through Google there are some great ideas online.

You could ask the council to allow you to pay over 12 months instead of 10 - some allow it.

Is there any way your wife can earn some more money.

Always go on the comparison sites to check out the cheapest utilities and insurances etc.

You could get rid of Sky. For Christmas go on the other sites on the Forum dedicated to Christmas and see what presents you can make/get a lot cheaper than usual.

For haircuts there are some salons who are looking for models to practice on or even local colleges do this, you could check them out.

With your SOA you don't really have enough money to cover all your expenses - you have only allowed £20 per month for clothes which is miniscule for a family of 4 also nothing for emergencies. I think things will get worse unless you can generate more income or cut down on your outgoings. Go PAYG as soon as possible with your mobiles.

Can you car share or reduce your car journeys to cut down on your petrol usage.

Hope you can find some of these ideas useful. Good luck.

kj*daisy

Can you get to work without your car? If you can, get rid. We went down to one car and its saved so much money.

foxgloves

We had a hard look at our budget about 18 mths ago when I took redundancy as we reduced to one income when we'd always had two. Some things I now do now that I'm in charge of the household economy (oooh, the power!) is regular decluttering & selling on ebay....we've made over £200 this year just selling clothes we no longer wear, I grow more veggies as I'm here in the day to put the time into it, ditto cooking everything from scratch, batch cooking for freezer, budgetting hard, making presents, etc. Also I do surveys - Ugov is very slow for the money to mount up tho' did get £50 this year, but Toluna has been quicker & could be useful as they pay you with points you can then exchange for different vouchers. I started doing these in Feb & by Christmas, I will have had £90 in Debenhams vouchers which are useful to help clothes budget/buying gifts, etc. We also use an M&S credit card for all our petrol. It's paid off at the end of every month to avoid interest but we get M&S vouchers for anything we spend on it so those help with clothes buying. Also do the same with John Lewis card now. Use it just for food shopping which is heavily budgetted for anyway, it's always paid off at the end of the month but the points stack up & a couple of times a year, they pay out vouchers. I've just used mine to buy my nephew's Christmas present. None of these things put large sums of money into your budget, but every little helps. One major decision we had was to go down to one car. We now share the remaining one. Obviously my partner is going out to work & that has to take priority but he's very fair & if there's a day where he is at his work base & can take public transport, he does that (the bus season ticket works out cheaper than petrol for getting him there for the same amount of journeys) so that I can have the car now & again. Although we've been debt free for a couple of years now (after a lifetime of being terrible money-wasters), I still sometimes find it helpful to do a spending journal. I always think I'll remember the little bits & bobs I've spend money on, but when my purse is empty, I find I've completely forgotten them. I don't know if any of this will be useful, but best of luck with everything anyway.

geoffky

I am a keen gardener and have it full of vegetables and stuff that will last into next year...
I have just cut a cabbage from the garden and the taste difference is amazing....
Good for the exercise and mental well being..Give it a go as it is worth the effort..Unless you live in a flat of course...

[Deleted User]

There's not a lot of saving to be made, but:-

£800 pa for 2 mobiles is high. Go PAYG ASAP (£20 pm for 2) and, in the meantime, see if you can lower the tariffs.

Dump the Satellite/Cable TV (£138 pa) and go Freeview.

Halve the spend (currently £500 pa) on presents.

That's, potentially, another £940 pa, towards the 21.9% loan.

BTW. Is the 0% card on the absolute minimum payment and at the limit?

[Deleted User]

DepressedDad wrote: »

We have a fare few DVDs / Games which we play and we tend to do free things such as Museums, walks, parks etc.

So do you really watch much/any live TV?

Verbatim

Hi there,
Do you have a spare room? If you could take a lodger the extra money would be considerable and it's tax free up to around £5500 ish pa. (You'd need to check the exact amount). If that seems too daunting you could consider taking a foreign student if there's a language school near you. They are typically young, 20s I mean, although there are also schemes for children in the summer mostly. The joy with foreign students is that they stay for between 1 week to 3 months usually and you can choose when you want a break. I did this when we were paying down debt for over a year and will do it again when my husband retires to help with house maintenance costs,
The other spare room option is having a Mon night to Fri morning lodger, ie someone who works in your area but has home and family too far away to commute daily.
many people feel it would be too intrusive, and we thought it would be too, but we have happy memories and some amusing ones too and are still in touch with our "favourite" student 6 years on.