Cannot afford to pay all our bills, what are the options?

glasgowsaver2011

hollibobs wrote: »

I have to say, cancelling direct debits I find not that good advice...you just cancel them and then the letters start coming in telling you that default payments have been added to accounts...

And saying get rid of mobile phone contracts are not easy... You are tied into a contract and if you can't pay your way out of it then some of the carriers really don't give a monkeys...and some will not even reduce your monthly bill..

I'm not dissing this is just my opinion

Getting rid of the contracts is hard yes.

But they could sell the smart phones (assuming they have smart phones) for say 100 quid each (at least) and replace with £10 quid Nokia "bricks". the ones that text and call and nothing else.

It is usually a good test to see if someone has had their LBM if they are willing to do this......

hohum

glasgowsaver2011 wrote: »

Getting rid of the contracts is hard yes.

But they could sell the smart phones (assuming they have smart phones) for say 100 quid each (at least) and replace with £10 quid Nokia "bricks". the ones that text and call and nothing else.

It is usually a good test to see if someone has had their LBM if they are willing to do this......

and continue spend £40 a month to use a phone that is worth a tenner?

Doesn't make much sense to me. The reason smart phones contracts are expensive is that you are paying the value of the handset in retrospect. So a debt, really. That's why contracts are difficult to get out of.

It depends how long is left on the contract, but I would say in some circumstances you would be smart to hang on until you are out of contract. The value you can realise from selling your phone is often less than the amount you will continue paying on your contract. If you are in contract for a further 12 months and are unable to lower monthly payments, selling your phone seems a bit daft.

No, your childcare is not free.

currently your childcare is costing you what you would earn-so in a minum wage job, approx £1k every 4 weeks.

Or you could work shifts that mirror your partners

And dont forget you and your partner would share the cost of childcare......

However once you are earning minimum wage, you will lose housing benefit and council tax benefit, thus basically entire minimum wage earnings will be eaten up by increased cost of living plus childcare. So you give up care of your child to someone else, to earn a wage that doesn't cover basic cost of living. Ah late capitalism.

Transitioning the shift from non -working to working is really difficult because of the inflexibility of benefit system. In part Universal Credit was supposed to be dealing with this problem but I don't know if it has. If you are on the edge it is very difficult to go from benefits to paid employment (other problem is your benefits stop when you start work, but you might not get paid for another four weeks).

Pretending that the situation is more simple than it is doesn't seem very useful to me.

glasgowsaver2011

hohum wrote: »

and continue spend £40 a month to use a phone that is worth a tenner?

Doesn't make much sense to me. The reason smart phones contracts are expensive is that you are paying the value of the handset in retrospect. So a debt, really. That's why contracts are difficult to get out of.

It depends how long is left on the contract, but I would say in some circumstances you would be smart to hang on until you are out of contract. The value you can realise from selling your phone is often less than the amount you will continue paying on your contract. If you are in contract for a further 12 months and are unable to lower monthly payments, selling your phone seems a bit daft.




.

No Matter what happens, the money on the contract is a debt that needs paid.

If you sell the phone today (as opposed to in 6 months) you will receive a greater return on the handset.

In simple terms if you took a bank loan to buy a car, but could not afford the car, then you could sell the car now and realise the value of the asset.

Or wait until the asset has been paid off? why....

Also, sell the telly - prob worth a good few hundred, can also cancel the tv licence........

BillJones

A_Couple_In_Love wrote: »

Your right, but rather then just correct the OP's problems, we should be encouraging to prevent them in the future as well.

Sadly many on here will jump down your throat if you offer some sensible pointers to people in this way. AGain and again we have people post who are in trouble, and who seem not to have the first clue about where they went wrong, yet anyone who tries to point this out just garners angry responses.

Thank you for at least trying, and try to ignore the tools who think that it's of no use.

BillJones

Protocol45 wrote: »

Yeah, because thats free. :think:

Picking up litter so I can earn my £xx a fortnight only to hand it over to a childminder (finding one that cheap will be tough enough) is a complete waste. No difference to staying at home and looking after him myself.

As others have pointed out, you could work evenings, nights or weekends, when your partner is able to look after your child. Is there any reason why you are not willing to do this, as it'd fix all of your financial issues pretty much immediately.

BillJones

hohum wrote: »

and continue spend £40 a month to use a phone that is worth a tenner?

Doesn't make much sense to me.

So you think it makes sense to keep the luxury phone, despite needing the money?

That £40 a month is going out irrespective of what handset is now used, it is sunk costs. Using that as an excuse to keep an unnecessarily expensive handset makes no sense at all. Sadly your way of mentally accounting is not rare, and is why so many people end up on here in all sorts of trouble. You are saying, in effect "in for a penny, in for a pound", and rejecting an easy route to freeing up some cash.

Pollycat

BillJones wrote: »

Sadly many on here will jump down your throat if you offer some sensible pointers to people in this way. AGain and again we have people post who are in trouble, and who seem not to have the first clue about where they went wrong, yet anyone who tries to point this out just garners angry responses.

Thank you for at least trying, and try to ignore the tools who think that it's of no use.

I don't know if you've read the posts that led to the comment you've quoted but A_Couple_In_Love had advised the OP not to take any loans out if he couldn't afford it.

Not tremendously useful advice for the situation the OP is in right now, was it?
He's already got loans!

As for 'angry responses', I think you'll see that I've given the OP some useful advice - on his current situation, not what he should have done or should do in the future - not to mention offering support and sympathy.

OP - how are you doing?

double_mummy

get a part time job friday and saturday nights hit your 16 hours your OH can have your son while you are sleeping on saturday and sunday and you can have him through the week
no childcare costs
working tax credits

it will be hard you wont spend much time as a family but you have a way to fix this keep going until all your debts are cleared and you have a nice big emergency fund

neneromanova

I can't understand why you're not looking for an evening job aswell? Bar staff, Stacking shelves, Waiter. It's all extra money and your partner would be home looking after little one so you'd have no childcare to pay for and you could clear your debts no problem

mrsd1984

We have a 12 month old son. I initially wanted to work part time after maternity ended, but basically we were paying our bills each month but didn't have a penny left over so were using credit to pay for anything extra. I am now increasing my hours which means we are able to pay bills, pay debts and be able to put some aside each month.

A few people have mentioned you looking for evening work, but you seem reluctant and mention childcare expenses. If you were to find evening work, it would fit around your wife and you wouldn't need to pay childcare. As well as bar work, how about supermarkets? Working in a supermarket would also mean staff discount so you would be able to reduce your grocery shopping further.

As for grocery shopping, we currently budget £160 a month. Don't get me wrong it can be tight, but we eat 3 meals a day, we vary our meals and have treats. We cook a lot from scratch, which doesn't take much more time than throwing a ready meal in the oven. I made a chilli the other day. Threw all the ingredients into a slow cooker in the morning (mainly value range, but tasted lovely) and then just spent the time in the evening cooking rice.

I personally don't find places like Iceland that cheap. I do my shop in one supermarket(could be cheaper I guess shopping around but we chose to do it this way due to time/petrol) and have it delivered. It costs £3 a month for home delivery. It would cost £3 on one trip to the supermarket in petrol and I find it's easy to add extras that we don't need whilst walking around. I meal plan so only order what we need, we don't throw food away. It may not suit everyone, but it works well for us.

Mobile phone, I have a sim only contract. It is £10 a month instead of the £40 ish I was paying before.

Sky tv can easily go (I don't agree with getting rid of the TV completely, my opinion but freeview would save £50 a month).

I do wish you all the best, but you do need to make changes that you won't like to be able to sort this out. You either need to earn more or spend less. Or both would be fab!