Help - need to tell husband about our debt!

icklejulez

Wow!


Is all I can say. I have more than that coming in per month and our outgoings are way less.


£1023 per month on your mortgage? Is that reasonable around where you live? Is there anything you can do to reduce this?


£850 for a childminder is ridiculous. I have 3 children and they have always gone to the best childcare providers. My 3 year old is in full time and I pay £550 and that is one of the expensive providers. If you are not getting the benefit of the 15 hours free you are paying for nothing. Even with a few months left I would consider changing.


Alcohol appears to be an issue here, If it is purely your husband drinking I think he needs to see the budget to realise it is not sustainable.


Food again needs reducing. We are a family of 5 and we spend £300 a month of food, alcohol, toiletries and packed lunches. I also have to ask but do you need a budget for nappies for a 4 year old? Perhaps work on potty training? Meal planning is a must here.


I would certainly consider a DMP before your youngest starts school as your expenditure would reduce. If you can get those debts reduced you will be there.


Days out = walk to the park, bike rides, games, baking, movie nights, pizza making! Mine bake things like scones and then we put them in their packed lunches.

sourcrates

Hi,
This is a really familiar story, lots of couples/people go through life spending like this and it will eventually get to the point where you cant afford the minimum payments on everything, sound like you are at that point right now, well the reality is you simply cant go on like this, stop the spending on cards, cut them up, and throw them away, take stock of exactly how much debt you are in, how much you owe, and to who, stop paying, most important, assess how much you can afford to pay towards your debts per month, after all essential expenses have been paid, take your time, work it out precisely, you will have to default these accounts in order to take control of the situation, you then make your offers of payments to your creditors, if you cant, or don't want to do this yourself, get some help from debtline or another of the free debt charities, you will find that all of them will recommend you stop paying at first, until you can come to an informal arrangement with them, of course you also have the option of an IVA or DRO, depending on your circumstances, you really should discuss your options with someone like debtline, they have a rep on this forum, seems a nice enough guy, maybe give them a call, im sure you will be able to work something out.

vix1977

Hi Icklejulez


our mortgage has been the same for a few years. We are on standard variable rate now as my husband is self employed and we can't seem to get a new mortgage based on our earnings so we are stuck. But to be fair since coming off our fixed rate our mortgage payments have gone down not up!


the childminding costs are pretty good. I know it sounds a lot but our childminder is cheaper than most of the other ones where we live. It does annoy me that we are paying when our child is at nursery but most of the childminders do that too. the £850 was worked out from August 2013 to March 2014 as it would have cost us £1200 for August for the two so she has spread the cost out. I haven't had my next bill but hopefully it will be drastically reduced as she is again going to average it out for the year. if that is reduced then my child benefits will be reduced too as we get help for the childcare element of tax credits so we end up going round in circles.


It is only my husband who drinks I never do (maybe one at Christmas but that is it) although I feel like a drink now with all this on my mind!


My child is only in nappies at night time so we are using 1 nappy a day. We are going to start night training soon.


I will start meal planning though that sounds like a good idea!

vix1977

lynnemcf wrote: »

Are your gas and electricity really that low? I'm very frugal and mine is nearly double!

Hi, yes it is, It will probably go up for a few months to about £90 (for the two) then ends up coming back down for most of the year to £62.

icklejulez

Tax credits only pay up to a certain amount per child, so if you reduced the childcare I am sure that difference in savings would be money in your pocket. You would still be in receipt of tax credits.

Childminders are almost always more expensive than nurseries, is the school he is going to not got a nursery attached he could go in? Might help him settle when he starts too.

Meal planning is great, especially if you become extra frugal in cooking a roast and making it last for a few days. A slow cooker is always good for making cheap meals that last.

As for the alcohol, Id ask your husband to cut down. At least by half. I know he doesn't drink extortionate amounts but it would appear that there is a large amount of your budget spend on a 'want' not a 'need'.

vix1977

Hi Icklejulez


there is no nursery attached to the school. Like I said the childminders bill should be pretty good if she does what she did last year by averaging it out over 12 months. The Tax credits do go down if the childminding costs go down so we will probably be in the same boat as we are now in that they pay most of it but we have to find the rest. Still, shouldn't complain as some people don't even get them!


We are pretty good with making our food last (roast chicken will always do a couple of extra meals) but we don't plan ahead so that is definitely the way forward. We do have a slow cooker and use it for beef stew, will look into what else we can do!


I think I will ask DH to stop altogether as I have stopped smoking as we can't afford it so we should both have to make sacrifices.


Thank you for the tips, it is really helping me think of things to discuss with DH!

MallyGirl

If you have a slow cooker - use it to make really nice stock from the chicken carcass and that can be the basis for yummy risotto or pilaff type meals where the majority is rice, plus whatever you have kicking around in the fridge

Imdaewen

Talking to the other half about it won't be as bad as you think. (Unless you have a secret stash of shoes and handbags).

If you guys are anything like us, and I am the one who looks at the bank account all the time (and he wants an iPad. >.>) Then you need to tell him that the bank account is not healthy. He needs to learn the mindset that your lifestyle needs to change rather than ordering another pint thinking everything is hunky dory. And both of you giving up smoking too! Good on you. Both for money and health benefits.

As for takeouts, I noticed a lot on here and netmums do 'fakeouts'. With the cost of a pizza from the supermarket (Asda do really nice pizzas) but budget wise you are probably looking at Aldis frozen section. If you really want to be frugal I saw a post about how someone turns bread ends into mini pizzas. I find the prices on pizza menus to be shocking, I can't believe how often our neighbours order it!

As for your food shopping - do you plan it?
I love checking out the savvy buy section on mysupermarket and I always check if a Coupon is worth spending.

As for your mobile phones, how long are you locked into a contract for?
If you are coming up to an end try looking at SIM only deals. I have changed from Orange to Giffgaff (run on O2 network), but Tesco Mobile (O2) and Sainsbury (Vodafone) might also be worth a peek. You need to check if your phones are unlocked (put another providers SIM in it), if they are not locked you will need to look into getting it unlocked which you may need to pay a fee to your network provider. It is easy to port your number over too, just expect a day where your phone will be a little out of it.

If you decide to go for Giffgaff check with your friends first, if someone is with GG then get them to send you a free SIM (You both get £5 credit).

Assuming you are currently paying £30 each for mobile, changing to GG will get you 2000 minutes, unlimited text and unlimited data for £20. (33 hrs on a mobile will probably cook your brain)

(Giffgaff to Giffgaff calls are free) and if your usage isn't that high then the £10 goodybag is fair with 500 minutes, unlimited txt and 1GB of (tetherable) data.

vix1977

I definitely don't have a secret stash of shoes and handbags! I don't spend money on me as I know we can't afford it. I do find it very expensive ordering pizza in so will always go for the best deal. Although we do buy from Asda quite often as their pizzas are a bargain. We have also started doing their meal deal for £6.50 which feeds a family four and we sometimes have the side dish free of another night! our Phone contracts are just coming to an end so will definitely look at giffgaff although last time I phoned orange to cancel they gave me a brilliant deal for £10 per month! Obviously it has gone up since then as I needed a new phone!!


thank you so much for your tips, all is helping prepare me for the chat with DH later!

getmore4less

That SOA format does not give the picture needed use this one.

http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

the debt section is the important one min payments and APR