My SOA - Thank you for your help

spacekadett_uk

HI all

Thank you for all your kind words here is my SOA and i hope i have included every thing for you if anything missing just ask


Monthly Incomings:

My salary - £880
Partners salary - £0
Benefits - £334 This is only temparary as we are still awaiting a response from Housing benefit and child tax credit needs to be confirmed

Total - £1214

Monthly Outgoings:

Rent - £425
Council Tax - £117
Gas - £19
Electric - £40
TV License - £12.50
Phone - £86 (this includes BT and moblies)
Food - £300
Car Insurance - £31
Petrol - £40
Broadband - £18.50
Water - £36
House Insurance - £9
Egg loan - £71.29
LLoyds TSB loan - £27.60
Mastercard £130
Ovrdraft fee's - £20.52

Total: £1383.41

Egg Loan - £10500 this is approximate as we are currently unable to get thru to them to confirm this amount. Unsure of term end date as have already told them unable to pay full monthly amount and we have made arrangments to pay £71.29

Lloyds TSB loan - £4348.37 apr 6.4% unsure of term end date as have already told them unable to pay full monthly amount and we have made arrangments to pay £27.60

Master Card - £3655 (limt £5400) currently paying just over the minmum payment

Overdrafts - £1750 limit which we are contanctly at the max of.


Addittional notes

Both housing benefit and child and working tax credit still need to confirm our monthly payments as i have just changed jobs to a stightly lower paid job to to a job which i can earn more with overtime and working unsocial hours but as i am still a newbie i am currently unable to do this.

Also we can not reduce our heating bill by turning down the thermasate as we do not have central heating and we use coal or engery efficent heaters for heating but now it is warm weather we don't heat the house at all.

Spacekadett_uk

Biffa

Just a quick question - how many children do you have? Your food bill of £300 is very high - take a look at the old style moneysaving board for some ideas on how to cut this down. If your partner is at home, you should be able to do lots of home baking etc and home made meals, which taste better than pre-packaged cr*p and you can freeze them if you make in bulk. You should be able to reduce this by quite a bit.

Hopefully your rent and council tax will both come down a bit when you're HB claim has been sorted.

Do you have any bank charges you can claim back?

Also, keep a spending diary for a few weeks if you haven't already done so. Keep a note of every PENNY that you spend, and over the course of a couple of weeks you'll be able to see where it's going. Do you buy a lunch at work or take a packed lunhc with you? Are the kids on school dinners? Do you get a newspaper every day/magazines/fags? It soon adds up.

Can you get a better deal on your mobiles?

Hope this helps a bit, I'm sure the more wiser ones amongst us will be on with some more suggestions....

cookie9

spacekadett_uk wrote: »

HI all

Monthly Incomings:

My salary - £880
Partners salary - £0
Benefits - £334 This is only temparary as we are still awaiting a response from Housing benefit and child tax credit needs to be confirmed

Total - £1214

Monthly Outgoings:

Rent - £425
Council Tax - £117
Gas - £19
Electric - £40 - seems slightly high. Have you compared with other suppliers. Make sure you don't leave things on standby, switch off lights etc.
TV License - £12.50
Phone - £86 (this includes BT and moblies) - again check you are with the best provider. Are you on contract or PAYG?
Food - £300 again this looks high. Menu plan and use up store cupboard and freezer food.
Car Insurance - £31
Petrol - £40 - can you walk sometimes instead of taking the car?
Broadband - £18.50 - do you also use this for your phone?
Water - £36
House Insurance - £9
Egg loan - £71.29
LLoyds TSB loan - £27.60
Mastercard £130
Ovrdraft fee's - £20.52

Total: £1383.41


Spacekadett_uk

Make sure you use money off coupons and sign up for pigsback and quidco. Your phones are expensive - do you need the mobiles or just like to have them? Look at a combined phone/broadband package as you could get your broadband and all calls for the same amount you are currently paying for broadband alone. Can you ebay anything?
Check your APRs and start to pay off the highest one first.

Burlesque_Babe

Food is high, why not pop over the Old Style Board and sign up tothe Supermarket Challenge. Takes a few months, but you could knock loads of this even if you have 2 or 3 children.

spacekadett_uk

Hi all
We only have one child but she's under 2 years old so still in nappies but she is wearing the best and the cheapest ones we could find (tesco pull ups in a mulit pack £7 for 42 nappies) and these are included in our food shopping and we buy about 3 packs a month not to mention wet wipes.

Thanks for all the suggestions on cooking from scratch my wife does this already and she also takes out smaller portions from our meals for our daughter and freezes these for her. And i have a pack lunch everyday. Petrol is high as we live in the country and for me to get to work on the bus would cost around £60 a month but i would still have to drive some days and i work shifts and the buses here stop at 6 at night and don't run on a sunday.

We've looked into phone and broadband and when we did this we found we were spending more. As for Moblies my wifes is up for renewal soon so we will re look at that and get the best deal as for mine i'm tied in for another 6 or so months.

Our electric is high as we are on a pre payment meter coz we are paying back money we owe n power about £3 a week.

But if you have anymore suggestions we will look at them and hopefuly be able to save some money.

Spacekadett_uk

spacekadett_uk

Sorry just to add we don't smoke or have any newspapers or magazines even stopped drinking booze coz we couldn't afford it.....

Spacekadett_uk

okra

I agree that the food bill is high. We are a family of five and our household shopping bill is £40 per week, which includes all food, drink and cleaning products/binbags/etc. We eat well, we eat meat and fresh fruit and vegetables every day.

Even adding the cost of nappies onto that, you could still comfortably shave £100 from your food shopping bill.

Storm

With your insurances, utilities, mobiles, broadband etc - have a read through Martin's articles on getting the cheapest deals, and where possible go through a cashback site like quidco or pigsback - obviously you won't be able to switch electric until you've paid off the arrears, but start having a look around.

Depending on whether you're planning on having more children, it may be worth you ebaying the old baby stuff to raise some cash quickly to throw some extra at the credit card & overdraft (you'll have to check your loan agreements to see if you can overpay on these)

Alliance & Leicester have an offer where you can get an overdraft to match your current one at 0% for a year - and cashback for switching by getting a referral - you do need to be in credit for at least a day though in the previous month, but if you don't normally do this then it may be worth seeing if a friend/family member could loan you some money for 2 days to do this.

To reduce the food shopping, try doing a store cupboard challenge on the OS board - list everything you already have in, and they'll come up with a myriad of different meal options for you that uses just what you've got already.

moanymoany

At two both of my children were out of nappies. I understand that it is not fashionable to potty train until 'ready' now, but when only thick terry nappies were available the incentive was greater!

In the warm weather, put a potty where the child is playing and let it run about with no pants. It will soon get the idea and I would be surprised if it took longer than a week for daytime no nappies and few accidents. This means only night time would have to be covered.:j

Look at the old style and frugal threads. Meal planning is especially effective for saving money. When the mobile phone contracts run out replace them with PAYG, stop using them so much. Check out the cheap dialling code phone systems for your land line, I use 1899 and save a lot of money.

The best way to save money on shopping is to say - 'we have £50 this week to buy everything' - meal plan, take only that much cash with you.

Most people on these forums have had to face similar problems, and have had to make changes they didn't want to make. However, they made them and are either now DF or DFW and well on their way to financial freedom. It is worth biting the bullet and getting on with it.;)

angelavdavis

Hi spacekadett,

Have you logged onto www.entitledto.co.uk to see if you are entitled to more benefits? I would have assumed with your low household income that you would be entitled to tax credits.

spacekadett_uk

Thank you suggesting this site. We have found that we are already claiming everything that we are eligable for.