Soa

andyfromotley

theoretica wrote: »

Right - so your budget looks like above with an extra entry of £427 on crap? So write that in, and see how it looks. For many people having a budget with extra money left over at the end is asking for trouble. Rejig your budget so that this Amount left after debt repayments....... 427 is a nice round zero. Perhaps £250 to debt overpayment, £150 to savings and £27 on crap? Or however you would rather divide it up. And then put most of the money into savings/overpayments at the start of the month so you need to draw it out and really notice it if you overspend rather than just making savings out of what happens to be left if you haven't spent it all.

Thats what Ynab does, the whole ethos of it is that you give every single pound a job to do. Once you have done this if you overspend in one category you have to move it from another, its amazing how reluctant you are to do this, so it discourages frittering money away!!

Red-Squirrel_2

If your husband definitely wants to keep Sky, at least get the bill down, nobody needs to be paying £55 for it! Can you switch to Virgin or BT for a year on an introductory offer then switch back to Sky on an offer and keep doing that to get new customer prices? Or you could call to cancel and see what the retentions team can offer to keep you. If they don't go low enough, call their bluff and actually cancel, then they'll start throwing offers at you to get you back!

Your utilities are obviously really high, shop around for better tariffs and work on getting your usage down too. Lights off when not needed, nothing left on standby, minimal heating etc.

I'm another who recommends YNAB too, it starts to make a difference within just a few days, definitely worth the free trial at least.

Good luck!

rising_from_the_ashes

BargainButtons wrote: »

I have also counted our Internet Service with our cable TV.

mmmm sorry but you can get the internet for a lot less than that and Sky/Cable isn't an essential - could you downgrade / cancel & find something else - Netflix, Amazon etc

BargainButtons wrote: »

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 3
Number of cars owned................... 2
Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1300
Partners monthly income after tax....... 1414
Benefits................................ 190
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2904
Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 599
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 59
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 134
Electricity............................. 60Yup do a check and see if you can find cheaper deal for G&E
Gas..................................... 57
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 67very high
Telephone (land line)................... 15
Mobile phone............................ 18
TV Licence.............................. 12
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 55as above
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 400
Clothing................................ 50
Petrol/diesel........................... 100
Road tax................................ 25
Car Insurance........................... 50
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 50is this enough for both cars? incl servicing, maintenance, mots etc?
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0 with 3?????
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 10
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 6
Contents insurance...................... 9
Life assurance ......................... 30
Other insurance......................... 7
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 80high - try to cut
Haircuts................................ 15
Entertainment........................... 50
Holiday................................. 50
Emergency fund.......................... 50
swim membership......................... 10
Kids Savings............................ 45
Total monthly expenses.................. 2113

Assets
Cash.................................... 2130
House value (Gross)..................... 190000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 9000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 201130

Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 100000...(599)......2.5
Secured Debt.................. 8991.....(59).......4.5
Total secured & HP debts...... 108991....-.........-
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Loan...........................11061.....299.......3.6
Credit Card....................4073......40........0
Credit Card....................240.......25........16.9
Loan from parents..............500.......0.........0
Total unsecured debts..........15874.....364.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,904
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 2,113
Available for debt repayments........... 791
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 364
Amount left after debt repayments....... 427
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 201,130
Total HP & Secured debt................. -108,991
Total Unsecured debt.................... -15,874
Net Assets.............................. 76,265
Created using the SOA calculator at www.stoozing.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using other browser.[/LEFT]

On the whole it looks OK - few things can be trimmed if you want & you really want to shift the debt by a certain date (you can have things like cable etc back when it's gone!)

If you never have money left, it probably means you're spending more than you think on groceries / odds & sods - keep a spending diary for a month ..... a real eye opener usually!

andyfromotley

Of course it may be even worse than it looks,

How did you accumulate over £15k of debt? If it was by paying for stuff like hols, christmas and other 'emergencies on your card then you are seriously overspending and need to take pretty dramatic action. Is this debt still increasing??

Just food for thought.

enthusiasticsaver

McKneff wrote: »

£67 for metered water seems to be an awful lot of money


You have either got a leak or you need to re educate your family on the use of water,
Something in the cistern, don't run water while brushing teeth, boil only the water you need etc. etc.

Depends on where the OP lives. Our monthly water bill for 2 people is £60 on a water metre so £67 for a family of 5 looks quite reasonable to me. We live in the south west and a large proportion of the water bill goes on maintaining the beaches! Highest water rates in the whole country.

BargainButtons

Thanks McKneff and concrete kid, I'll look into the water usage. I thought it was probably average but perhaps not! Our children are very young so don't always switch taps off properly when they've washed their hands so that's probably wasting a bit.

BargainButtons

theoretica wrote: »

Right - so your budget looks like above with an extra entry of £427 on crap? So write that in, and see how it looks. For many people having a budget with extra money left over at the end is asking for trouble. Rejig your budget so that this Amount left after debt repayments....... 427 is a nice round zero. Perhaps £250 to debt overpayment, £150 to savings and £27 on crap? Or however you would rather divide it up. And then put most of the money into savings/overpayments at the start of the month so you need to draw it out and really notice it if you overspend rather than just making savings out of what happens to be left if you haven't spent it all.

Thanks - that's exactly what i did this morning. It suddenly dawned on me that I need to allocate every pound to a category else I'll never have a chance of saving extra and paying off the cc earlier. This month every pound is accounted for and I've included a nominal amount for dh and i to have as cash in our pockets each week. I know that if we want any additional money we will have to sacrifice it from another category. I wish I'd started this years ago!

BargainButtons

andyfromotley wrote: »

Of course it may be even worse than it looks,

How did you accumulate over £15k of debt? If it was by paying for stuff like hols, christmas and other 'emergencies on your card then you are seriously overspending and need to take pretty dramatic action. Is this debt still increasing??

Just food for thought.

11k of the 15k is a personal loan (we originally borrowed 14.5k so have paid off 3.5k in 2 years, we have 3 years left on it - oh and it was for a car).

The other 4k is a purely a balance transfer credit card - we had a couple of old cards that we wanted to shift to a 0%. It was spending from emergencies, car repairs we hadn't budgeted for, the boiler breaking down etc. I have a separate card for purchases but rarely need to use it although i had to use it this month as the car needed an mot and service before payday. When i get paid on Mondayit will be paid off.

We never pay for food or essentials on the credit card and we are usually pretty good at saving money for Christmas (i save £600 with Park hampers) and holidays (i have a savings account i call 'holiday fund').

This has really highlighted to me that my issues with money are that I'm not budgeting properly. I've been through our spends over tge last few months and have been able to set categories that cover all of our expenditure.

The test wilk start this Monday (payday) - how well can we stick to the new budget?!

andyfromotley

Hi BB,

Just make sure that you really have included everything. You will inevitably think of stuff. Just add new categories as you think of them. Be sure to include,
Car service/mot/maintenance (tyres exhaust etc)
School trips
School dinner money
School trips
Birthday gifts
Haircuts
Emergency Fund

You get the idea, have a category for absolutely everything!! Good luck.

Beaker99

I didn't realise water could be so expensive in other parts of the country.. In Herts we pay £40pm for no meter. - I thought the general rule of thumb was meters are only beneficial if there are less people than bedrooms..? - or is that old? - certainly I'd be surprised if the standard rated cost was more than £67pm!


..more on topic - you're pretty much at the same level (debt wise as us) - our income is about 1k more per month, but we have a 1k monthly nursery bill!


The big change we made to turn ourselves around was to take out £150pw in cash and put it in a tin. That is your money for the week.. for all food and luxuries. Seeing the pile of notes will really make you not want to spend it, and after a while you'll get used to adjusting your lifestyle to fit... and at the end of the week if there's still some money in the tin, have a nice takeway - or even better add it to next week's cash..


just make sure there's always 10-20 quid in you and other half's wallet so you don't have to go to the cash machine for little bits.