Aiming to clear debt of £8,852

helpme_115

Hi All,

Thanks for taking the time to have a nose at my finances. I've always just gone and brought what I've wanted providing i had the cash spare (meaning i spent any savings I had!) then I made the mistake of taking out a 12mth interest free credit card to get the kitchen done, since then i repaid the minimum and accepted credit limit increases and spent them to.

Whilst im not struggling to live on my wage, the debit just isnt going down.

I pay minimum on low interest rate cards and pay as much as i can on the others but i find myself spending it again and usually at limit.

Here is my plan for 2015, my wife does earn approx £200 a month however as this isn't always guaranteed ive left her off the calculation.

I also have a Cashback Credit Card (Barclaycard) which gets paid in full very month so havent included in the below (has £1,000 limit)

Any spare cash will get used to pay off cards (currently gets spent on random crap!)

Have purchased YNAB and so far it looks great and with a mobile app to boot it means my wife doesnt have any excuse for going over budget!




Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 2
Number of cars owned.................... 1

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1947
Partners monthly income after tax....... 0
Benefits................................ 134
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2081

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 448
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 86
Electricity............................. 50 (Dual Fuel)
Gas..................................... 0
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 30
Telephone (land line)................... 0
Mobile phone............................ 60 (for 2 phones)
TV Licence.............................. 12
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 7 (NowTV)
Internet Services....................... 25
Groceries etc. ......................... 200
Clothing................................ 20
Petrol/diesel........................... 70
Road tax................................ 10
Car Insurance........................... 50
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 10
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 53.5
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 19.5
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 10
Contents insurance...................... 10
Life assurance ......................... 27
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 35
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 125
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 50
Childrens 18 year old Fund.............. 10
Household goods......................... 20
Boiler Cover............................ 10
Total monthly expenses.................. 1448


Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 105000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 1000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 106000


Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 91200....(448)......4
Total secured & HP debts...... 91200.....-.........-

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Barclaycard....................1166.82...20........18.9
Natwest Card...................1280.55...20........17.9
Natwest Clear Rate.............4335.18...60........6.9
Ikea (Ends Feb 2014)...........122.5.....61.25.....0
Personal Loan..................1947.76...100.......7.9
Total unsecured debts..........8852.81...261.25....-


Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,081
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 1,448
Available for debt repayments........... 633
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 261.25
Amount left after debt repayments....... 371.75

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 106,000
Total HP & Secured debt................. -91,200
Total Unsecured debt.................... -8,852.81
Net Assets.............................. 5,947.19

Created using the SOA calculator at https://www.stoozing.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using other browser.

NoMore

helpme_115 wrote: »

I also have a Cashback Credit Card (Barclaycard) which gets paid in full very month so havent included in the below (has £1,000 limit)

Why? Its still an expense, unless your also not including the income that covers this you need to include it.

EDIT: Unless you mean you use it to cover bills and other things already included in you budget.

helpme_115

NoMore wrote: »

Why? Its still an expense, unless your also not including the income that covers this you need to include it.

EDIT: Unless you mean you use it to cover bills and other things already included in you budget.

Its purely used for its cashback, all money spent on it is included in the budget, cheers.

FireWyrm

helpme_115 wrote: »

Groceries etc. ......................... 200
Entertainment........................... 225
Emergency fund.......................... 40
Household goods......................... 20
Boiler Cover............................ 10
Lottery................................. 10

There are many things wrong with your budget, but I wanted to point this out to you. You spend £200 on food, yet £225 on 'entertainment'. Worse yet, you spend £225 on entertainment but only only one fifth of that £40 on an emergency fund. In sort, you spend more money on entertainment than you spend on feeding your family and 5 times as much as you spend on ensuring you have an emergency buffer against adversity. If you extrapolate your entertainment budget to 12 months, that is £2700

I dont mean to sound nasty, but you really should re-assess your priorities urgently.

helpme_115

I'll break down the £225 a bit.

£25 rock choir (wife's singing classes)
£10 Google music
£7 netflix

Leaving £183 spare entertainment cash, that's £91.50 each to buy games (we are both into board games), going out places, takeaways, entertain the kids etc. I didn't think it was that much to be honest but would be interested in other peoples budgets and what they do. We did spend over £1000 on just-eat alone this year (extremely shocking I know!!) So maybe a lot of our entertainment money was going on that

As for emergency fund, I've never budgeted for that so didn't know what the going rate was. To be honest £40 was picked to as that was how much I had spare.

To keep it simple I was really trying to budget everything on my wage, maybe I should calculate entertainment fund based on if the wife works

FireWyrm

helpme_115 wrote: »

I'll break down the £225 a bit.

£25 rock choir (wife's singing classes)
£10 Google music
£7 netflix

Leaving £183 spare entertainment cash, that's £91.50 each to buy games (we are both into board games), going out places, takeaways, entertain the kids etc. I didn't think it was that much to be honest but would be interested in other peoples budgets and what they do. We did spend over £1000 on just-eat alone this year (extremely shocking I know!!) So maybe a lot of our entertainment money was going on that

As for emergency fund, I've never budgeted for that so didn't know what the going rate was. To be honest £40 was picked to as that was how much I had spare.

To keep it simple I was really trying to budget everything on my wage, maybe I should calculate entertainment fund based on if the wife works

Fine. Reverse those figures. £225 emergency and £40 'entertainment' would be better. As for £1000 eating out per year, that is shocking I'm afraid. Think about it, you spend £2000+ buying basic food and then another £1000 on TOP of that buying takeaways because you cant be arsed to cook (lets be honest here, it's the only reason takeaways exist). It is a serious 'hair on fire' issue and you should address it immediately. If you were a millionaire, I would still say that wasting £1000 a year on takeaways was silly, but at least there would be an excuse, wasting it when you have £8000+ of debt is just barking mad.

Just how many board games do you need to buy? It sounds more like an excuse and those are the one thing you cannot afford right now. Rigorous and absolute honesty are your weapons and anything less is playing around and will end in failure.

Mrtight

When's your mobile contract up? £60 alot. Same with your sky/Virgin... Look at the package from EE. How old the boiler? would think about dropping that cover. And lower the lottery unless you play same numbers week in week out.

You nearly owe 10% of your mortgage... If you blast the debt think about then moving on to you mortgage for motivation!

Mrtight

I use to spend alot on takeaways! I found doing meal plan and shopping list! Then the foods in and you not got to think what to have. Should help with your food shopping bill as well.... Full chicken for Sunday dinner, left over curry Monday and maybe a wrap for work. Sounds boring but you will feel better for it as well.

helpme_115

I dont see why they figures would be reversed, £40 on entertaining us both and the kids for a whole month seems a bit unrealistic (and im likely not to stick to it!), more than happy to reduce it and will take a look at other's SOA's to see how they are budgeting.

£225 into an emergency fund sounds excessive to (unless its just the emergency fund for that month and doesnt roll over), after 1 year there would be £2,700 there incase something goes wrong instead of reducing debt/interest paid. I currently have a Emergency Fund of £1000 so maybe i should take away the budget for it all together (until i have to use the funds of course)

Hi Mrtight. The £60 is for 2 contract phones which are both heavily used (i travel a bit) and thats with 20% for working for a partner of Vodafone's.

For the Virgin... Yup its expensive. The issue I have is that i regularly work from home so need a good stable connection, £50 includes 100mb internet, TiVo and all channels (excluding premium sky sports etc) and phone line (which we dont use). Usually that package costs more but i get a discount as i know people who work there. Looking around i could get UPTO 16mb for £26 a month (including line rental) but would leave me without TV channels so would there for need to splash out more cash on installing TV Arial/Satellite dish for freeview/freesat.

Boiler has stung us a few times and isnt that old so dont want to buy another just yet. the boiler cover includes plumbing/wiring etc which we have had to use recently (drains out side cracked and leaked) so fairly keen to keep that cover.

We did do meal planners and it helped but the same old excuse's come out for not doing it im afraid. I was made redundant last year but was put into a temp role, worked my socks off to show how valuable I was (which paid off as Im now fully employed again!) but did impact stuff at home, we have a 3year old and 1 year old and i wasn't around as much as i would have liked to have been and therefore couldn't help as much as i should have. This resulted in us both becoming lazy with food/money as we were both on the go all the time. We are also both very indecisive with everything, when it comes to "what you want for dinner" the easy answer was a takeaway, we have discussed this and will both try harder (so frustrating when i suggest something for dinner, she says she doesnt fancy it so i ask her then she doesnt know what she wants and it goes on and on... it happened tonight lol)

Things have calmed down a lot now so should have more time to do the things we should have been doing all along

Another thing i need to sort out is taking lunch to work, buying from Spar everyday soon mounts up but again its just a lazy thing where im so tired from working/looking after the kids i get up late and dont have time... Maybe im always tired because i eat crap!

Thanks for all suggestions so far, please keep them coming.

lynz68

On the grand scale of things your debts are not to bad. However I do think your entertainment budget is excessive. Your children are 3 and 1 there are plenty of things you can do with them for free and to be honest at that age all they really want is your time.

You need to be more decisive and both you and your wife need to be singing of the same hymn sheet no good one trying to tackle the debt and the other carry on in the same manner.

Meal planning could probably be key for this. Cut your take aways to once a month you will appreciate it more. Cut the entertainment budget you can't afford it maybe not completely but actually look and see what you spend the money on and find alternatives.

helpme_115

Thanks, Ill knock entertainment down to £125 and see how we get on.