Going under quickly! Where to start?

david_hellier

Hi and welcome,

Well done for tackling this now before leaving it any longer.

The others will give good advice on cutting back to reduce your overheads so please listen to them. One thing you are going to have to do is live within a budget.

According to my figures you have £153.46 per week to spend on anything else including food, clothes going out, etc. I suggest you write this amount each Monday in a little note book (a spending diary) and keep a note of what you spend/withdraw. If you do have any over at the end of the week carry it forward to the next Monday. The figures include an amount for an OD payoff, so ignore your bank balance, go by your book.

Stop making any more purchases using credit cards, but use a debit card only, keeping a note in your book. Set up standing orders for the CCs to fix the repayment figures, do not use DDs as the min payments will never pay them off, especially if you continue to use them. So cut them up!

Good luck in your marriage and my best advice is to be honest with each other over money; it's the main cause of arguments.

The figures are as follows:

incomeweeklymonthlyself £ 1,024.00 partner £ 1,089.00 cb £ 68.00 wtc £ 45.00 total0.002226.00divide by 4.33 £ 513.70 £ 513.70 total weekly incomespendweeklymonthlyrent/mortgage £ 330.00 council tax £ 110.00 elec gas £ 80.00 water secured loans TV licence £ 10.99 fines bt £ 35.00 sky £ 46.00 car ins £ 35.69 car ins £ 24.27 bb £ 29.52 cat £ 180.04 my loan £ 181.56 his loan £ 185.96 my cc1 £ 50.00 my cc2 £ 54.00 his cc1 £ 80.00 his cc2 £ 78.00 od payoff £ 50.00 total0.00 £ 1,561.03 divide by 4.33 £ 360.24 £ 360.24 total weekly spendStart= income - spend = £ 153.46 per week

weezypoos

Thanks so much, theres my 3rd c/c payment to go on there plus £150 in bank charges which we're paying a month too and around £30 in interest! I will use your formula though if you don't mind.

As I said before, I don't really see any of this money as its swallowed up by HSBC. They will not allow me to get any out of our account at all and are taking it to pay back our unauthorised o/d.

3LITTLEPIGS_2

Hi weezypoos,

You sound like i was back last December, i didn't really want to stop paying my cards as i still wanted them but in the end we went with cccs on a dmp which costs us now £170mth..(we also owed £31000...i know at the moment it will take about 20 odd years but will increase this pymt as my little ones get a bit older. i can honestly say that not having any cc anymore and no next directory(it is too much temptation!!) i feel so much better paying with cash.
it is hard going on to a DMP but once the calls from cc's stop and it settles down, it gives you a bit of time and money to sort yourself out and then concentrate on getting the debts paid off.
And anyway,i don't really want anymore credit so having all the defaults don't bother me.
this site is amazing and has completely changed the way i spend money!
Have a look on the tesco thread-there are so many codes for points with internet shopping-it also saves you buying not needed things you see in the shop!!
making a meal plan for the week and just buying the ingredients & essentials helps too.
good luck and i will follow this thread!!

3LITTLEPIGS_2

also change your bank account to a basic one (co-op do a good one) and get your wages put into there!

jo1972

Sign up to Quidco and get your credit file from Credit Expert UK for £5 cashback, it's a month's free trial so just make sure you send them an email a few weeks later and cancel it.

Print it all off so you've got the hard copy otherwise once you cancel the subscription you will not be able to access it online without paying and I think it's £5.99 per month.

weezypoos

3LITTLEPIGS wrote: »

Hi weezypoos,

You sound like i was back last December, i didn't really want to stop paying my cards as i still wanted them but in the end we went with cccs on a dmp which costs us now £170mth..(we also owed £31000...i know at the moment it will take about 20 odd years but will increase this pymt as my little ones get a bit older. i can honestly say that not having any cc anymore and no next directory(it is too much temptation!!) i feel so much better paying with cash.
it is hard going on to a DMP but once the calls from cc's stop and it settles down, it gives you a bit of time and money to sort yourself out and then concentrate on getting the debts paid off.
And anyway,i don't really want anymore credit so having all the defaults don't bother me.
this site is amazing and has completely changed the way i spend money!
Have a look on the tesco thread-there are so many codes for points with internet shopping-it also saves you buying not needed things you see in the shop!!
making a meal plan for the week and just buying the ingredients & essentials helps too.
good luck and i will follow this thread!!

Thank you for the help! I spoke with cccs and based on the info I gave them, they told me that it would take around 5 years and 3 months to pay off our debts. Does this sound right to you? It would also leave us with so much mroe spare cash too but it doesn't feel right cancelling the dd's to credit cards and loans. It would reduce our debts enormously but I'm not sure whether or not to do it. I don't want our credit affected for the rest of our lives as we would love to buy a house in the future.

I signed up for Experian a while ago and our score is awful! No ccj's just a default and a late payment or 2.

ltm07

Hi weezypoos,your OH & your incomes are very similar to my OH's & my income & we are over £31,500 in debt(was £32,666 but managed to pay alot off last month. My advice would be to go to www.whatsthecost.com & put in all your debts on the snowball calculator,along with their APRs & how much you can pay each month. We have set our payments to £650 p.m. & all being well,shall be debt free by July 2012 & if we can manage to pay a little more than £650 a month can significantly bring our DFD down. Good luck.

david_hellier

Thanks for spotting the errors, the figures are revised as follows: You now have £92.54 per week. However this will be more in practice because if you stick to your budget, your daily balances will be higher, resulting in lower average charges.

incomeweeklymonthlyself £ 1,024.00 partner £ 1,089.00 cb £ 68.00 wtc £ 45.00 total0.002226.00divide by 4.33 £ 513.70 £ 513.70 total weekly incomespendweeklymonthlyrent/mortgage £ 330.00 council tax £ 110.00 elec gas £ 80.00 water secured loans TV licence £ 10.99 fines bt £ 35.00 sky £ 46.00 car ins £ 35.69 car ins £ 24.27 bb £ 29.52 cat £ 180.04 my loan £ 181.56 his loan £ 185.96 my cc1 £ 50.00 my cc2 £ 54.00 his cc1 £ 80.00 his cc2 £ 78.00 od payoff £ 50.00 my cc3 £ 84.00 bank charges £ 180.00 total0.00 £ 1,825.03 divide by 4.33 £ 421.16 £ 421.16 total weekly spendStart= income - spend = £ 92.54 per week

lynzpower

david_hellier wrote: »

Thanks for spotting the errors, the figures are revised as follows: You now have £92.54 per week. However this will be more in practice because if you stick to your budget, your daily balances will be higher, resulting in lower average charges.

incomeweeklymonthlyself £ 1,024.00 partner £ 1,089.00 cb £ 68.00 wtc £ 45.00 total0.002226.00divide by 4.33 £ 513.70 £ 513.70 total weekly incomespendweeklymonthlyrent/mortgage £ 330.00 council tax £ 110.00 elecgas £ 80.00 watersecured loansTV licence £ 10.99 finesbt £ 35.00 sky £ 46.00 car ins £ 35.69 car ins £ 24.27 bb £ 29.52 cat £ 180.04 my loan £ 181.56 his loan £ 185.96 my cc1 £ 50.00 my cc2 £ 54.00 his cc1 £ 80.00 his cc2 £ 78.00 od payoff £ 50.00 my cc3 £ 84.00 bank charges £ 180.00 total0.00 £ 1,825.03 divide by 4.33 £ 421.16 £ 421.16 total weekly spendStart= income - spend = £ 92.54 per week

however, if weezy gets rid of the sky then this will make it slightly more wont it?

weezypoos

Thanks again. Hubby and I are sitting down tonight to see exactly where we are and work out an action plan. Although on paper we have £93 per week to spend, we can't actually get at it as HSBC still won't let me take anything out of that account. I'm thinking of transferring all my none HSBC debts into my debt clear account and having my wages paid into there. Then I can just transfer the HSBC loan, cc and overdraft charge money into HSBC each month, it will take longer to pay off my od though and I'm worried that they demand the whole thing back which I'll never be able to do!

Although I hate the thought of anyone being in debt like we are, its reassuring to know we're not the only ones and there is an end to it somewhere!:T