Getting Desperate

mrs_thrifty_2

Sorry to hear about the hospital parking - isn't there anywhere nearby that you can leave the car and walk to the hospital? I always try this when faced with these fees.

Snaggles

I completely sympathise with the hospital parking charges, ours is even more expensive than yours, £2 for 2 hours or £6 for 5 hours (no that's not a typing error - it really is more expensive to pay for a longer stay :rolleyes:). When I gave birth a couple of weeks ago hubby spent over £20 in parking charges and I was only in overnight! :mad:

southernscouser

Nothing to do with cutbacks but make sure you start a spending diary if you haven't already!

Oh and as for car parking fees this might be of interest to you.

southernscouser

!!!!!!. Sorry, just read they don't offer a discount.

chocolatefish

Re. Pocket money. Like groceries this is one of the major discretionary areas of your SOA i.e. one that you have some real control over and can choose to reduce. Mr CF and I used to fritter a lot of money away on "pocket money" type spending. What I would recommend you do is:

1. Start a spending diary to see where the money goes - magazines, coffees, odd bits of food, make up, shopping, cigarettes, lottery, parking, whatever - you need to track it. You need to know where every penny goes to, not just a black hole marked 'pocket money', If you don't have a clear idea of what it is spent on you can't clearly know whether you can cut back on it.

2. Once you are armed with the above info you can start including these expenses in your SOA. E.g. we usually buy one news magazine a week, so we have an allowance in our SOA for that. I usually go out for coffee twice a week with my colleagues, Mr CF usually goes for beers after work once a week. Both these expenses, which previously would have just been funded from our untracked spending money, are listed and allocated a weekly budget in our SOA. As a 'personal grooming (haircuts and makeup etc)', and as lottery, cigarettes etc would be if we indulged.

3. As a DFW with the above you can make a much more informed choice about whether you want to actually spend that money or not. So if you see that your magazine habit is costing you GBP15 a month, and you never realised it was so much, you might well decide to stop that and put the money to a better use i.e. paying off the debts.

Both you and your OH would likely have to do this for it to work. Maybe when he's feeling better? The big benefit for us has been that we have more choice about where the money goes, a clearer understanding of our personal spending choices (and their consequences). We still have some pocket money that we don't need to account for in detail (not in debt) but it's only about GBP15 a week now between us.

TiredOfDebt_2

You are right southernscouser and chocolatefish we do need to use a spending diary. I have plenty of notebooks hanging around so will start today.

TiredOfDebt_2

I have just come off the phone to sky, have cancelled some of the channels and it is now down from £36 a month to £18 a month. I may reduce it further. Counted up my change and have about £10 so I am going to pay that off one of my debts, not sure which way to go. Do i pay the smallest Debt to clear it off quicker, or do I pay off the one with the highest interest?

slippyhelen

There are millions of us out here, supporting people or protecting people. The one thing your OH could try (and he has to do his share even if he's sick) is if he doesn't give up smoking he could switch to rolling tobacco. it's MUCH cheaper and it's much harder to smoke as much. If he can't roll the cigarettes buy him a little machine £2 from tobacconists. It could reduce your fag bill to £5 and may even make it easier for him to stop. I hope you can find a way to stop kvetching. I know it's hard, but life is more important. BTW I gave up SKY and went to Freeview, you may think you'll miss it but you'll get used to it! It's a tiny sacrifice. I wish you all the luck in the world. Have courage and strength and know it'll be all right with a bit of juggling. Also, have you called your 14% credit cards and either asked for a better rate or a freeze on the interest till you get sorted? All my cards froze my interest after a few phonecalls and a bit of cajoling.

slippyhelen

TiredOfDebt wrote: »

I have just come off the phone to sky, have cancelled some of the channels and it is now down from £36 a month to £18 a month. I may reduce it further. Counted up my change and have about £10 so I am going to pay that off one of my debts, not sure which way to go. Do i pay the smallest Debt to clear it off quicker, or do I pay off the one with the highest interest?

definitely the one with the highest interest

themaccas

Hi well done for addressing your debts you are certainly going through a stressful time at the moment. I agree with the other posters though that your OH will have to share the load and give up the smokes, it needs to be a joint effort.

We changed to freeview plus top up TV (9.99 per month) when we moved into our current house. We couldn't get SKY so it was enforced really. I thought we would really miss it but we don't. SImpsons is on everynight on channel 4 and we get some of the nickelodeon and disney programmes from top up TV. It's well worth it and won't consider going back to SKY even if we could!

When you first start to look at your debts, it seems terrifying and overwhelming but it can be paid off. We have worked really hard - a joint effort over the last year to clear as much as we can and it's continuing. We have ebayed and carbooted our hearts out, worked as much extra shifts as we can manage, cut back (a continuing themefor us!) changed suppliers and we have found we are better off financially and emotionally than ever before.

Good luck, don't lose heart and keep posting.

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