Which first, lose debt or buy family home?

angelavdavis

Hi,

Looking the SOA. here's my suggestions:

1) Start a spending diary so you can track where the £150+ a month is really going - its an eye opener and you should throw as much as possible to debts. This helps you highlight areas where you can cut back.
2) You should be able to reduce the food down to about £150 easily per month - Me and OH eat on this and we also buy beer and wine (admittedly don't have a baby but I wouldn't have thought lit'len would account for so much being so young!). Have a look on old style for ideas. Switch to Lidl/Aldi's if you have one nearby and look out for the vouchers on the shopping boards on here.
3) £160 for diesel! This seems very high - is there any possibility you could cut down or car share to reduce the costs?
The other aspect is whether you have anything you can eBay to get some of the credit cards down? The key is to try to increase the income in some way as you don't have any other areas to cut back on.
The bad news is that you haven't included any extras for MOT, Car Insurance, Tax, servicing, etc.

JaySee_2

Sea78 wrote: »

Hi!

How about childcare or have you got family arrangements?

Sea xx

Hi Sea, we're lucky enough to have family arrangements for childcare, which should help a lot with the expenses

JaySee_2

skint_spice wrote: »

Just a quick one but Asda do toric lenses for about £60 for six months (with solutions) and they are the same brand I used to get from D & A. They might be even cheaper elsewhere.

Hey, thanks for that.. I've been thinking about either stopping wearing contacts altogether or switch to somewhere cheaper - I'll check that one out!

JaySee_2

hypno06 wrote: »

First of all pay that savings chunk off the highest APR credit card. That will leave only £500 or so on that card which will make you feel much better, as well as being the correct way of doing it. No point having savings at 5% when you have debt at 14.9%.

Now head over to the snowball calculator - put your debts in there https://www.whatsthecost.com and get your initial debt free date. This is just a starting point and will act as a great motivator for you to shove some of that "leftover" £157 to the debt too.

Start a spending diary. Log absolutely everything - every penny, that you spend and you will soon find where you can cut back.

Keep posting, and let us know how you are getting on!

Thanks for the reply! Is it not worth keeping a little cash available in case it's needed, like car repairs or insurance etc - or should I still just throw it all at the debt and if need be re-spend on the card? I'd hate spending on the card again, but I can see how that'd make more financial sense, interest wise.

I'm going to go over to whatsthecost.com, I need all the motivation I can get! I'll also get onto a spending diary.. though I might need to start some sort of incentive scheme to keep my wife updating it (joint account!). I've got a strong feeling that a reasonable percentage of it goes on takeaway food at weekends, guilty!

hypno06

The fact that you would hate spending on the card is good news because it means you will really think about whether it is a real emergency or if it is just something that you quite fancy!

If you keep the card open, you always have an emergency fund. But make sure it is just that - for emergencies. In the meantime, get the benefit yourself of the interest saved, and shift the savings over to the card.

I am assuming your loan is with egg? If so, they allow overpayments so snowballing would work well for you.

JaySee_2

angelavdavis wrote: »

Hi,

Looking the SOA. here's my suggestions:

1) Start a spending diary so you can track where the £150+ a month is really going - its an eye opener and you should throw as much as possible to debts. This helps you highlight areas where you can cut back.
2) You should be able to reduce the food down to about £150 easily per month - Me and OH eat on this and we also buy beer and wine (admittedly don't have a baby but I wouldn't have thought lit'len would account for so much being so young!). Have a look on old style for ideas. Switch to Lidl/Aldi's if you have one nearby and look out for the vouchers on the shopping boards on here.
3) £160 for diesel! This seems very high - is there any possibility you could cut down or car share to reduce the costs?
The other aspect is whether you have anything you can eBay to get some of the credit cards down? The key is to try to increase the income in some way as you don't have any other areas to cut back on.
The bad news is that you haven't included any extras for MOT, Car Insurance, Tax, servicing, etc.

Food shopping - I admit this could be less, but we only ever seem to go to extremes. It's definately one to take a look at though. We've recently switched from Sainsburys to Morrisons, and that's started to show savings already.

I'm driving over 2,400 miles a month, imagine what it was before I changed to a diesel! There is the possibility of car sharing though, but at the expense of having the freedom to decide when to start and fininsh work.

Yes you're right! I always forget to include MOT, insurance, tax and servicing when budgeting! Really not a good thing. I usually try to save up and buy the car insurance outright rather than monthly payments with interest, and the rest usually comes out as and when, and I budget around it.

It comes down again as to whether it's best to keep cash aside for these things, or use the cash to reduce the cards and respend on them if absolutely nescessary.. something which I'm unsure about - especially if the vendor might not take credit cards (excluding insurance that is).

thanks for your reply

JaySee_2

Hypno06,

Yes my loan is with Egg.. how did you guess?? I chose the loan because of being able to make overpayments without penalties.. something I hope to take advantage of at some point!

hypno06

JaySee wrote: »

Hypno06,

Yes my loan is with Egg.. how did you guess?? I chose the loan because of being able to make overpayments without penalties.. something I hope to take advantage of at some point!

the 7.66% is a figure that stares at me daily from my own snowball calculator.

(of course I could just pretend that my hypnotic skills have developed into mind-reading but that would just be ridiculous - can you tell I am watching Derren Brown on tv at the mo!!)

JaySee_2

hypno06 wrote: »

Now head over to the snowball calculator - put your debts in there https://www.whatsthecost.com and get your initial debt free date.

Just registered and set it up... thats a great tool! thanks for the link

brainfreeze

hypno06 wrote: »

the 7.66% is a figure that stares at me daily from my own snowball calculator.

(of course I could just pretend that my hypnotic skills have developed into mind-reading but that would just be ridiculous - can you tell I am watching Derren Brown on tv at the mo!!)

Doh.....hypno you have just crushed my vision of you - you know, the one your ID automatically creates for other MSErs:rotfl:

and that bit about staring at you daily from your snowball calculator.....that is sooooooooooo familiar it is scary. Now if you had told me you were going to give me a tarot reading or something similar and said..."you will be looking at snowballs several times a day"..........you would have been so spot on and I would have recommended you to everyone and you would have had paying customers:rotfl:

But now.........the secrets out and I know you can't really do the hypno stuff:eek: