Where do we start?

Lucy5781

I'd be losing the gym membership....

Any reason why the petrol is so high?

Good Luck
Lxx

xsussax

Petrol is high as partner travels 80 miles a day to get to work. We live in a small town so there's no jobs for what he does.

dancingfairy

Your soa is showing a healthy surplus of £400 a month. First job is to find that and put it to good use. If you don't have that at the end of the month then a spending diary should show you where you are going wrong.
With that £400 a month you should be able to start making some serious inroads.
You need to tackle the highest interest debts first. I'd start with one of the bottom 4 as they are likely to be the highest interest. You might want to go for Moneyway first (I assume they are a payday loan?) as you should be able to get that paid off in a month and then you can pick off some of the others.
There are obviously other areas you could save to really speed things up such as the grocery budget or the gym membership

df

retepetsir

Only £16 a month on entertainment, are you sure?

Also things like £15/month Experian and then Equifax on top, cancel those asap and sign up for Noodle which is free as they're costing you £24 a month at the moment!

Might be possible to reduce your grocery bill from £400.

Also...British Gas Homecare is expensive at £24/month and there may be cheaper options. Do you need it?

That money would be better in an emergency fund.

Your income is good and apparent outgoings give you £400 left per month, so something is obviously not adding up.

Go with the highest APR's first, so as suggested above, Moneyway, would be a good idea.

19lottie82

Areas that jump out at me are

£400 a month, groceries for 2 people. This could be cut down without much effort. Try meal planning and downshifting on a few brands.

£1140 a year on presents and Christmas club? You don't have any kids, so this seems like an awful lot. Reduce this to £300 and just buy token gifts.

Reduce your cable TV and mobile packages as soon as you can, these are pretty high.

Experian and Equifax, you don't need these. Cancel them.

What's the £30 a month for medical?

As someone else has pointed out, you should have a healthy surplus left every month, do you? If not you need to start a spending diary and see where it's all going.

[Deleted User]

The second Capital 1, and the Barclaycard have high APRs, so need killing off sooner, rather than later.

At the current rate you are paying, they are going to take you over a year (13 months to be exact), and cost you £135 in interest.

Putting the extra £400pm toward them, will see them cleared in just 3 months, for £15 in interest.

At that point, you will have an extra £500pm, to put toward the next highest APR debt, which would appear to be the first Capital 1 card.

Once that's cleared, you'll have £550pm, toward the next highest APR, and so on.

They don't call it snowballing for nothing.

asparagus1968

hi,
so since January the overdrafts have increased and the total debt has gone up? Be aware that overdrafts can be recalled at any time, so don't rely on them month in month out.
cancel credit cards and catalogues/next account.
go free view and get rid satellite tv
reduce groceries
cancel Experian and Equifax, sign up to noddle(free) today.
?reduce gym package
cancel park, pay off a debt that's charging interest, and put the money you would pay park into savings account.


lots of things you can change to improve this so good luck:)

xsussax

Thanks everyone. I was going to ask whether you think we should wipe these debts out one by one each month or split our monthly surplus over a couple of debts. Moneyway is a credit agreement for some furniture that I bought from Pay4Later (or something like that). It finishes in 10 months and is 5% interest so I would think the credit cards need focusing on first?

Overdrafts - I bank with Lloyds and to reduce it I have to call them (even though it's easy enough to increase online!). I would like to reduce it by £50 every month. Do you think my bank would let me easy enough without trying to persuade me otherwise?

Kids - We have 8 nieces and nephews and 2 Godchildren so Xmas and B'days are expensive. They also all live away from us so I took into consideration the petrol money we use on travelling to see them.

400pm on food. Think I'm being a little generous but with us both working full-time and me doing a degree / going to the gym etc, time is sometimes precious so we don't really think about what we're putting into our trolley or where we shop...until we get to the till! I know we definitely need to be more savvy with this.

£30 month medical - my contact lenses and my partner's asthma medications.

Mobile phones used to be higher believe it or not and they would be higher still if I didn't get a 30% NHS discount - they're now £22 each for both of us per month. Both ours finish next year so there's not really much I can do about these at the moment.

I'll look into what Sky can offer us in terms of reducing our package and also cancel Netflix.

Experian and Equifax - I'll cancel these as suggested.

Thanks

19lottie82

xsussax wrote: »

Kids - We have 8 nieces and nephews and 2 Godchildren so Xmas and B'days are expensive. They also all live away from us so I took into consideration the petrol money we use on travelling to see them.

That's nice you want to buy expensive presents for all your nieces nephews and godchildren, but the cold reality is, you can't afford it. You're over 15k in debt.

That's 10 kids, stick to £10 each for Christmas and Birthday. Keep an eye out for things in the sales (again no more than £10) and keep them by for the next birthday. That's £200 a year, and that leaves another £100 for £10 gifts for adults, or home baking always goes down a treat.

Just give a brief explanation of your situation to your adult relative, they will understand. I don't think they'd want you buying anyone expensive gifts if they knew how much you were struggling.

19lottie82

xsussax wrote: »

400pm on food. Think I'm being a little generous but with us both working full-time and me doing a degree / going to the gym etc, time is sometimes precious so we don't really think about what we're putting into our trolley or where we shop...until we get to the till! I know we definitely need to be more savvy with this.

Yes, definitely!

Just sit down the day before you do your big shop and work out what you will have for dinner each night and what you need for breakfast / lunches. Stick to the list when you go to the supermarket, and you'll be amazed at how much you'll save!