Is it possible and where to start?

hettiecarro

Hi - and welcome.
As BedSB says, the regular SoA will help people give clearer guidance on ways to cut expenditure, but I think you are also after more advice on how to tackle the actual debts, and in what order.
If you look at my signature you will see I was in dire straits at one time, and desperately needed the guidance you are seeking. (not out of the woods yet - but getting there).
I contacted Step Change (were called CCCS at that time). I explained I didn't particularly want to go onto a DMP (Debt Management Plan), but they still helped me. I contacted each of my creditors and told them I was having difficulty keeping to my contractual payment, and asked if they would consider freezing the interest on my accounts. I didn't think I stood a hope in H**** chance - but some of them did. I then sat down and worked out how much I could throw at the debts and started with the ones that still had interest and the highest APR's. I pro-rata'd my debt budget between all of them (there was a tool on here - (similar to the Full and Final offer tool)- but I can't remember exactly where - Maybe Bedsit may know). Put every offer of payment in writing to your creditors and send them recorded delivery requesting their response to your offer. You have to be persistent with them until you get a reply in writing.
THEN my SoA came into play and I have worked hard for 5 years nearly to get these debts down. Don't think because the companies accept smaller payments that you don't need to address your budget - you STILL owe the money - and the sooner you make your cuts the sooner you will clear them - and feel better about things.
I sincerely wish you all the best of luck with this. It is a hard journey - but now I am coming towards the end of mine I can HONESTLY say I couldn't have done it without the support of this forum and my family - so keep posting and and keep talking to your family -
Enjoy your dogs - We all need something to keep us sane

solvencyseeker

It has taken me months (years maybe) to pluck up the courage to post on this and now I wish I had done it much sooner - really appreciate your advice and encouragement.

Son needs motorbike to get to college and his new job (we live a drive away from the nearest town/bus stop) and I don't think there's anything much I can do about council tax and gas/electric at the moment (except switching the heating off which we are doing).

What I can do, and this is the plan so far:
1. Start planning meals weekly starting with what we already have in the house and only buy what is on the list. I remember putting lentils in shepherds pie once and none of them even noticed - lentils will be on the next list!
2. Properly keep a track of our spending - I will finish my spreadsheet today and set up a book for us to write in anything that we spend/keep receipts.
3. Keep selling on EBay - we have lots of unused "stuff" that we don't need
4. Look at the old style board for tips - never heard of stardrops - sounds interesting!

If we do all those things we should have money left over and be able to pay off the Natwest overdraft within the next three months. Then aim to get Nationwide back in credit. I may well also give National Debtline another call to see what we can do about getting the interest frozen - the M&S Credit Card is the worst - £285 minimum payment but £150 of that is interest. I am a bit chicken about calling people to discuss the situation. I need to man up!

I will also try and post a more readable SOA - that one is huge.

Thanks again. Maybe there is hope

[Deleted User]

solvencyseeker wrote: »

Son needs motorbike to get to college and his new job

I don't know what he has atm, but any chance he could swap it for something smaller/less powerful (and perhaps less valuable?), which would be cheaper to insure?

Any chance he could swap to a small car, and then maybe car share?

and I don't think there's anything much I can do about council tax

As I said before, if it's over 10 months, you can swap to 12 months, and save about £33pm.

and gas/electric at the moment (except switching the heating off which we are doing).

Are you sure you are with the cheapest supplier, and on the cheapest tariffs?

Run it by U-Switch to be sure.

solvencyseeker

Thanks Bedsit Bob.

I didn't know it was possible to pay Council Tax over 12 instead of 10 months. I'll investigate that. If we can save £33 there that will be £50 with the cancelled newspapers. Result!

Sons motorbike:
Getting young people mobile is extortionately expensive. Older son runs an old little 1 litre Micra (not in my budget as he covers the costs) and that cost £150 a month to insure when he first passed his test (is cheaper now he's a bit older and has some no claims but still £50 a month). Younger son has not been able to afford driving lessons and the motorbike is a 125 learner legal one - we got it on finance (I know! but it is a low interest rate and once he starts working he can pay for it). For a £99 deposit he got the bike and all the safety gear (helmet, jacket, trousers, gloves), tax paid for two years, breakdown cover etc. Definitely the cheapest way we could find of getting him transport. Very cheap to run too - uses little fuel.

Gas & Electric
We joined MSE's energy savers club last November and switched to the cheapest deal recommended. It is expensive and we will try to cut this cost. We have switched 3 times in the last 5 years and always end up paying more so I am getting suspicious about the benefits of switching. The current company tell me we have a large defecit (which I suppose we would after the winter) so I don't want to look at switching until after the summer - hopefully then we will have cleared the deficit.

Right, must do some jobs!

Poppops

Hi there

I have four adults in my house, also big eaters with 2 at 6'5", and have recently got my grocery bill down from where yours was to about £320 per month. Almost by accident.

I started doing Weight Watchers and because we all work started meal planning for the first time and it really is a revelation. Also, I can't recommend the Weight Watchers recipes enough. The soups alone are fantastic, filling and wholesome and can cost pennies. The yellow split pea and ham recipe is as nice a soup as I've ever tasted and leaves ham left over for sandwiches the next day. A friend recently did their cauliflower cheese soup for a dinner party and no-one guessed it was a healthy option.

I find online shopping the way to go, avoiding temptation in terms of stuff we don't need, and there is currently £30 off 6 months delivery on all the main voucher sites which is a massive saving if you are shopping every week.

I buy extras at the local pound shop. I don't think any of mine have evn noticed I've changed the way I feed them. They certainly haven't mentioned it!

[Deleted User]

Poppops wrote: »

I buy extras at the local pound shop.

£shops are brilliant for things like cleaning stuff.

1.3L of Washing Up Liquid.

28 regular washes worth, of laundry gel.

20 Brillo type pads.

Mr Muscle kitchen and bathroom sprays.

18 Laminate flooring wipes.

and so on.

solvencyseeker

Thanks for your advice Poppops. Funnily enough I eat very much the WW way (was a member some time ago). I make the soups for my lunches and eat quite differently to the menfolk - we often have different dinners too. I'll see what I can do to get them eating more like I do. I've been doing internet shopping since Jan - I agree really helps to see the cost add up as you go and not have the temptations of store shopping.

There is no pound shop in our nearest town but I'll see if I can find one somewhere not too far. There may be one near the Aldi we go to. I do a lot of laundry - 28 washes for a pound would be a massive saving for me. Even cheaper than Aldi!

Feel this has been a really good weekend spent starting to sort this out. Have now a system in place to record spending properly and OH agreement to use it - let's see if he does!

chevalier

Hi there welcome to the boards. I have taken out the extraneous lines. and have some comments below.

solvencyseeker wrote: »

Hello,


Natwest overdraft £1,000
Nationwide overdraft £2,000
Marks and Spencer Credit Card £11,414
Barclaycard £7,624
Bank Loan £10,340
TOTAL £32,378

On the positive side we are now both in good full time jobs (OH started a new position with the same organisation in January) and at last I think we are in a position to start paying off these debts? (I did the MSE budgeting tool this time last year and ended up contacting the Debt Counselling service who, at that time advised us to open a basic bank account and decide on a DMP - we didn't do that as we knew this job opportunity was coming for OH - though it has taken longer than we realised it would).

We are a family of 4 with 2 dogs. Son 21 lives at home (has mental health issues) but is doing well and has been in full time work since December so is contributing to the budget. Is this the 300 mentioned above?
Son 18 is in full time education and hoping to go to Uni later this year. He has (at last!) got some part time work starting next week. I have been giving him £20 a week (he does jobs to earn it) so am hoping I can stop that when he gets his wages. Make sure this is a realistic amount. Also have you got his students discount sorted for the council tax? Are there any deals he can get with his student card that can help the family?

I think we should tackle the overdrafts first - starting with the Natwest one as they now charge £6 per month plus the interest. I have been selling things on EBay and managed to pay off £300 last month. I tried that snowballing tool but it didn't seem to take the overdrafts into account? The normal advice is to pay off the debt with the highest APR first. So which of those debts above would this be? You may find that the overdraft even with the fee is still less APR month than the other debts. I will take a guess that it is the M&S card that has the highest APR.

I used to juggle the credit cards so that I paid zero interest but they are now too close to the limits to do that and we are paying interest on those, and only paying the minimum monthly amount. Both are in my name so OH could apply for a new zero interest one but I doubt he would get a high enough credit limit to transfer either of the balances. Again you need the APRs for the debts before you can decide this. If he could get an 0% card for even say the overdrafts that would still be a saving (you would need one that does super balance transfers though to pay money into a bank account)

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Monthly Income Details
Income from Employment (after tax). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,398.30

Benefits (Inc. Child Benefit/Tax Credits & Income Support). . . . . . . . . . . 87.97
Gifts From Family / Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300.00
Monthly Expense Details
In Your Home
Mobile phones . . . . . . . . . . . . 57.00 if this is for 4 phones fair enough, are they all pay as you go? Do you have any hand sets that you could sell?
TV licence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.12
Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Home phone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32.78 Is this a bundle with the internet? If so it is pretty high. Or is there tv in there too?
Cleaning products/CleanerI am assuming cleaning products is in with groceries below?
Household maintenance . . . . . . . . . 20.00
Electricity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96.00 Is this with arrears? If not then I would say this is a bit high. Are all bulbs energy saving. Sockets turned off at the wall when not in use? Can you sneakily charge things at work. Remember chargers draw power even without a phone/computer on the end of them, hence the switch them off at the wall comment.
Gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72.00 Are you walking round your house in just a t shirt and pants/skirt? If so then maybe the central heating is on too high. Turn down and wear more layers. does your hot water scald you when it comes out the tap. Again turn down and save.
Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.20
Council tax . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193.00Does this include student discount?
Overdraft cost. . . . . . . . . . . . . 32.00
Bank account fee . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00 thought there was a 6 pound fee?
Home insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.75is this buildings or contents? If only buildings I would try hard to find some wriggle room for contents too.
Mortgage/Rent. . . . . . . . . . . . . 895.00Ouch is this repayment. Could you go interest only for a few months to get back on track, or have a payment holiday?
Life insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.68
Food and household shopping . . . . . 650.00 This is where some real savings can be made. Have a look on the money saving old style board for loads of cheap but healthy recipes.
Some quick tips would be that lentils and oats are your friend! Eg 1lb of mince makes me enough for 3 meals (though my two children are only 13 and 11), but I do that by adding a handful of lentils and a handful of oats to the spag bol to bulk it out. Make sure you aren't ZOMBIE SHOPPING!!!! This is where you buy the same stuff every week, whether you need it or not, and whether it gets wasted or not. So put a shopping receipt up on the fridge. Anything that is thrown gets circled in red. It is a really good way to see what you are wasting food wise and therefore money wise. Also make sure you take a fridge, freezer and cupboard inventory so that you can meal plan around that and save money that way.

Yellow labels are also your friend. Ie short life stuff that is marked down cheaper. As you can freeze most of this meat it can make huge savings - especially if you have several large eaters in the family.

Ref the rolls ouch, would it be cheaper to make your own bread/rolls? Can you (and I mean someone in the family not necessarily the female lol), bake snacks to go in lunch boxes to save that way?

I spend about half your budget a month on food but we eat healthily. However I cook what I can get cheap not what I fancy....
Drinks for home . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.00
Motoring & Public Transport
Petrol/Diesel . . . . . . . . . . . . 200.00
Parking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Car tax ... . . . . . . . . . . . 28.33
Car insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.83
Car maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . 30.00 do these actually get saved into a different pot? If not it is probably a good habit to start getting into.
Breakdown cover . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00 I personally wouldn't be without this especially in light of the item below
Motorbike Insurance . . . . . . . . . 77.65 OUCH is the person on this bike very young, or is it very big, or are there points. Even for a bike this seems VERY high.
Motorbike finance . . . . . . . . . . . 61.78 How long left on this?
Debt Repayments You need the APRs for each individual card.
Credit card repayments . . . . . . . . 421.00
Personal loan repayments . . . . . . . 372.40 How long left on this and APR too. Can you even over pay on this. Not all loans will allow this.
Savings & Investments
Regular saving . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00 Need to start having something here - otherwise know as an emergency fund. That way when something goes bank you don't have to resort to the credit cards to deal with it.
Family
Pet food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.00
Pocket money. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.00 but this will be ending soon won't it?
Pet insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00 Do you have several thousand pounds in a bank account? If not then you need pet insurance.
Entertainment You really NEVER have a take away pizza, do a 2 for 1 offer at the cinema etc, never buy a game or software for the computer....?
Satellite/Digital TV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Family days out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Cinema/Theatre trips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Books/Music/Films/Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Big days out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Shopping for fun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Pet costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86.67
Hobbies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
IT/Computing (antivirus, etc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.17
DVD rental. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Drinking out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Eating out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00
Clothes, Health & Beauty
Optical bills . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00 So no eye checks at all?
Haircuts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.00
Dentistry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.00
New clothes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.00 You may need to factor something in here, because you may need new work clothes if nothing else.
Education & Courses
University tuition fees. . . . . . . . . 0.00 You don't have to make any contributions to your sons course?
Big One-Offs
Birthdays . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.00
Christmas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.00
Odds & Sods
Newspapers and magazines. . . . . . . 17.00 glad to see this is going.
Coffees/Sandwiches/Snacks . . . . . . . 0.00 not ever?

Total monthly income . . . . . . . . 3,786.27

Total monthly expenses . . . . 3,589.35

So the bonus here is that currently you have a paper surplus each month of just under 200 pounds. Yeah. But do you really, or does this evaporate? If yes, then you all need to do spending diaries to see where this money is going to. You also need to discuss with your son at uni, what he is going to contribute too.

good luck
chev

solvencyseeker

Hi Chev - thanks for taking the time to go through this, and for condensing my SOA. Really helpful as there are some things I have not made clear:

Our home is rented and the home insurance is contents only, landlord responsible for building. It's an old farm workers cottage, part of a terrace of cottages, but exposed to the elements and made of flint and muck (seriously). The windows are sliding sash and the doors original (i.e. no double glazing here). The bedrooms are in the eves (up against the roof) . It's a bit like trying to keep warm in a colander in the winter (and it's boiling hot inside in the summer!). That said, we have the heating on for 1 hour in the morning and 2 in the late afternoon. In the evening we light a fire in the living room (coal and logs are included in my £150 a week household budget - I think it might be looking so high as we lump other things in with that) and we all have hot water bottles and extra blankets.

This winter we finally got the landlord to put thermostats on the radiators and we bought door curtains (eBay and out of my £150 household budget again). I was hoping the cost would go down as a result but as we have recently changed company we'll have to see how it pans out.

The rent might seem high (it does to us) but it is very reasonable for this area and cheaper than in town. I think it will probably go up next year when there is a review due. Long term we'd like to move somewhere cheaper but we are waiting to see what happens with the sons (particularly son 1 who would like to live independently but needs to stay well enough and save up of course!). The £300 a month is from him. He works 4 long days (Thursday to Sunday), walks the dogs the other days, cooks and does jobs for us. He is a star.

Younger son has not left home yet - he is in final year of sixth form. I'm hoping he will get lots of hours with his new job over the summer and be able to help out and save up a bit too ready for Uni. He will need to manage on his student loan and any work he can get (pub where he got the job is a big chain so hoping he can transfer when he moves out). I don't think we can get Council tax discount for him living at home - but he has got a student card and I will investigate the benefits!

I've lumped the £6 fee in with the overdraft costs and the home phone is an internet bundle. We invested in a freeview box to stop paying the monthly TV cost. We get breakdown cover in with the vehicle insurance - our car and sons motorbike - found it was cheaper that way.

I am currently not putting anything aside for christmas, birthdays etc. We stopped paying anything that wasn't absolutly essential when OH was unemployed (dark days) and that included pet insurance. They are getting on now with existing health conditions but it does worry me not having insurance.

I am reasonably intelligent and numerate (honestly) but seem to go into a blind panic when I start looking at the state of our finances. I know the logical long term solution is to focus on paying off the one with the highest APR first but there is something about being overdrawn that is really soul destroying. I had not thought OH about getting a card to pay these off - that might be a good solution if we can get a card that allows transfer to the bank.

APR for loan is 14.9% and it has 34 months to run.
M&S Credit Card APR is 18.9%
Barclaycard - we are paying 18.9% for some of the balance, some is 0% until July, the remainder 0% until September this year.

I am working on that food budget! Do make flapjacks and cakes for lunchbox fillers. Am thinking value pasta salad might be a good cheap alternative to the bread rolls....

Thanks again. OH is wanting to get on the laptop now. Hope he's looking at what he can sell or save!!

**sparkles**

Hi there

Just a quick suggestion regarding your pet costs....

I have a gsd with epilespsy, his meds were costing £26 per month however I've managed to reduce this to £11 by getting them online. My vet charges me £13 for a 3 month prescription (rediculous just for a signature but hay ho) I then fax this to the company who distribute the meds a few days later. Might be worth looking into. I'm happy to pm you the website I use if you like.

Secondly is the pet food - do u feed let food or raw? I have two large male gsds - on a raw diet they cost me £40 per month (I was £70 on processed food for them)The bulk of this I get from an abbitoir and chicken factory

Worth looking into going raw if you have an abittoir near you (not for those who are easily squeamish tho :-)

Hope this is of some use

Xx