HELP - desperate!

Sea78

:hello:

Welcome to the boards - you've had some good suggestions already. I would also suggest ringing https://www.cccs.co.uk and asking their advice. Do you get Chlid benefit? The food can come down (I was shocked when people said that about my food bill, but since doing a menu plan and cutting back and only choosing branded stuff for things I really want, i've managed to slash it for a family of 4).

Look forward to seeing more from you and well done for posting you SOA! It is scary, isn't it?!

Sea xxxx

GettingThingsDone

i like it when david hellier says he's going to 'look at later' He is mr analysis! and i mean that in a good way...

sanfrancisco

This is not a case of cutting back on mobiles. You need to have some major changes.

Can you increase your income? Are you both working?

Can you sell your house? How much equity (if any) do you have? Did you manage to get your mortgage when you ad a bigger income?

You need to address this now. It is not going away. HOWEVER, once you do address it and make some big decisions your life will be a hundred times better.

allwashedup

Hi everybody, thanks for all the advice so far!

This is a rather late posting! Can't sleep, what a surprise! It really doesn't seem real at the moment.

Firstly, Keren29 and Weller711, tomorrow we are getting onto Uswitch to try and find a cheaper deal for electricity and gas. WE live in an area with very high water bills generally and are already on a meter but think we could all be more economical anyway. We are a family of four and are definitely guilty of uneconomical food shopping too! Have done a meal plan for the week and with a bit of creativity with what we already have in, have just been to Tesco's and done a weekely shop for under £20! woo hoo! I reckon with a bit of work we could do the food shopping for about £35 a week which would be fantastic!
Definitely going on the old style board tomorrow for more tips in that department.

The 02 phone belongs to my daughter and she is going to take out a contract in her name when this one finishes at the end of this month, definitely going with orange so will be able to get the free broadband too hopefully. Going through quidco for the £25 bonus! The 3 phone belongs to my other daughter who is rather irresponsible with her usage of it. Will phone them tomorrow to see about a cheaper tariff. ALso going to get her to take on responsibility for paying it.

I agree with the advice about not paying pensions for a while - no point whilst we have debt. Phoning tomorrow to see about freezing/cancelling payments. Unfortunately, we do need to keep the car - live in an area not well served by public transport, and would probably not get much for it if sold. Will check when insurance is due for renewal and shop around for a quote.

At the moment I am the only one working but wife and daughter have been applying frantically for jobs today so fingers crossed on that front. Definitely phoning CAB tomorrow for some more advice.

I think I've covered everything you've all mentioned but if I've missed anything please let me know. Thank you so much sanfrancisco, getting things done, sea78, jak, davidhellier, weller711, cupid_s, bestthingsinlifearefree,
alwaysonthego, shell_girl and keren29 :T :T :T :T

cookie9

I think most ideas have been mentioned above but also check you are in the correct council tax band.

Drive slowly and fill up when it is cooler to save on petrol. Shop around for best deal on pertol. Don't put things onto standy switch them off.

On your current spending excluding debts you have approx £650 shortfall. By cutting back you can go a long way towards this but your biggest expense is your mortgage. What type of mortgage is this? Can you switch to a better deal?
Have you considered selling and moving to a cheaper area/smaller house? You could then use the equity released to pay off some of your debts.


In addition to cashback sites have you consider mystery shopping and focus groups? Do you have anything you could sell on ebay or on Amazon? (Your daughters could sell their unwanted items to pay for their phone bills!)

Good luck.

shezzy

Just wanted to say hi, myself and my husband are pretty much the same as you regarding incomings and out goings, good luck in your quest!!

shezzy

moanymoany

When we realised there was going to be a shortfall between our mortgage and the endowments (including compensation) We had to do something. The biggest problem was that we had messed up bigtime in having a mortgage not paid until DH was 60! This meant the stretching of the mortgage was not an option.

What we decided to do was to say we would pay the £500 a month extra allowed on our special deal. We knew that with our budget and commitments we couldn't afford it but we decided to do it and live on what was left.

We went through everything with a fine tooth comb, lost mobiles, sky, changed suppliers and started to live VERY frugally - on £20 a week for 2 - mainly on value food. Amazingly, we managed it. Now moneysaving is a way of life and the money we save we save for retirement.

There is a lot to be said for saying 'this is what we are going to do..' and making everything else fit. Certainly we couldn't do it by trying to budget to create the £500!

Good luck, you are certainly in the right place.

poppy10_2

Agreed, the mortgage is the most important factor here - it's more than half your take home pay, you simply can't afford an £800 mortgage on a £1400 income.

Equally, the mobiles will have to go - switching to a new contract is not the answer, you have to go to PAYG so that your daughters can be in control of their spending. Agree on freezing the pension contributions if you can, and aiming to halve your food shopping bill. Elec and Gas do seem very high, glad to hear you're looking to switch.

Good luck! :beer:

tealady

Have you checked your Council tax banding as well. I wouldn't put it top of your list of MSE things to do, its just something to check sometime. Also can you car boot/ebay/amazon/green metropolis anything? Try logging on to pigsback daily and click all squares with a purple border (you get 10p for each I think). You could also check survey sites or try mystery shopping as each pay you for your time. Each on there own may not bring in much but it all helps.

chevalier

Hi there
Well done on posting. As others have said your electric and gas are really high, so here are a few suggestions.
1) leave nothing on stand by. A tv on stand by uses nearly as much electricity as when it is on. Also make sure phone chargers are switched off at the wall. You can get energy saving light bulbs cheap at shops like Aldi and Lidl sometimes. Also some companies do free packs of bulbs, worth enquiring about
2) I am assuming that you don't have the heating on at the moment anyway, but check what the thermostat is set at. If it is more than 20 degrees then turn it down to this. 1 degree turned down saves about £50 a year. Also check your water temperature. If it is scolding coming out of the tap then it is set too high.
3) Water bill. You can ask to pay this over 12 months if you are not already
4) ditto the council tax I think as well.

I am guessing that your children are teenagers so I think that you will have to sit down as a family and really spell out to them that you have to make savings and here is how they can help. Good move that one of them is applying for work (as well as your OH), but at the moment any job is going to get you more money, so quite frankly they can't be too picky. If your other daughter is younger, can she get a Saturday job to pay for her mobile if nothing else?

Someone else suggested that your children could ebay some stuff, but so can you too. Anything that hasn't been used/worn in the last 6 months could be put for sale, either on ebay, or amazon/green metropolis for books. We are also now in car boot season, so that is another possible outlet to make some cash.

best of luck
chev