Going under quickly! Where to start?

weezypoos

lynzpower wrote: »

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

It will and the more we pay off Next, the less the monthly payments will be!

duchy

I find food shopping online saves me money as I shop once a week except for milk and refuse to buy anything else. It means I have to menu plan and I NEVER put an order through without an offer code for money off or free delivery. There's plenty out there.
I start with the special offers and BOGOFs (which I often miss when shopping in store) and go from there. Sometimes you get some nice bonuses too as delivery shopping has more glitches. This week the delivery man forgot to give me my frozen food-he was coming back to collect the delivery trays later so I didn't call Tesco but did send a missing items email. He dropped the frozen off later but Tesco have emailed me informing me they are refunding my frozen food (ignoring the BOGOF discount) and my delivery charge so that was approx £13 off my shopping bill extra. Out of a £50 shop before discounts.
Once you start looking at where the money is going it's amazing how much you do save and can chip away at the debt.
Once you see it start to drop it's a big boost and encourages you more than you think-suddenly it doesn't seem so scary.

weezypoos

Thanks, I've added our debts to my signature so hopefully it inspires me to keep plugging away at them.

The smoking stops tomorrow and hubby and I will have a c/c cutting ceremony tonight I think!

ltm07

You're right Duchy,just by cutting out a few luxuries the money you save soon adds up. We stopped buying newspapers saving us over £25 a month & cancelled Sky Sports saving £17 a month & would have completely cancelled it but am tied in til February next year(i am also a big footy fan,but i know in my heart that i cannot justify indirectly supplementing football players who are on more in a week than our total debt)! The only matches that i will miss watching are Derby County & important England matches & when these games are on will pop down the pub to watch them & only take £10-£15 with me so i don't spend more than i should! I think weezy has come on here in the nick of time & will soon be on the right track to busting those debts.

jo1972

Take Duchy's advice and shop online, I started doing this a couple of months ago and have saved loads of money. I write a list before I start and only get what's on the list. You can't be tempted by walking past the cakes aisle, or BOGOF's, you only get what you need. I was really impressed with my first shop, I spent £55 for a weeks shopping including cleaning stuff and that's for 5 of us (including nappies), I'm sure there are some from the OS board that could do it for half of that but I would normally visit Tesco and spend £120+ in a week so I'd halved my spend!!

Good luck with the smoking, come join us on the quitting smoking thread for support and help. There's loads of links to useful stuff and people to make you feel better if you're finding it hard, I don't know what I'd do without them.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=445572

Good luck

lynzpower

Rent - £330
Council Tax - £110
Sky TV - £46.00
Gas - £80
TV - £10.99
BT Rental - £35
My Car Insurance - £35.69
Hubby's car Insurance - £24.27
Tiscali Broadband - £29.52
Catalogue - £180.04
My Loan - £181.56
Hubby's Loan - £185.96
My C/C 1 - £50.00
My c/c 2 - £54.00
My c/c 3 - £84
Hubby's c/c 1 - £80
Hubby's c/c 2 - £78
Overdraft Charges Currently £150 plus £30 interest charge

Untill I get home I have no idea of APR's.

My Loan £9804.24 with HSBC
Hubby's loan £10,098 with MBNA
My c/c 1 HSBC. Limit £500, current balance £442.04. (£50 per month)
My c/c 2 - Vanquis. Limit £1000, current balance £1078, (£54 per month)
Mt c/c 3 - Capital 1. Limit £1000, current balance £1038, (£50.01 per month)
Hubby's c/c 1 - MBNA. Limit £2500, current balance £2545.22, (£78 month)
Hubby's c/c 2 - HSBC. Limit £2000, current balance £2098, (£80 month)
Catalogue - Next. Limit £2300, current balance £1805, (£181 a month) :eek:
Overdraft HSBC. Limit £1500, current balance £1876 with £150 charges to add on plus interest of around £30.

Ok

Ive looked at these figs again.

If you manage to bin sky off, then your outgoings ( with ther reduction for BT) should be around 1150 per month.

one way of looking at it might be to have all of one wage ( say yours) paid into one account ( and a DD into this a for the extrA) THis acount can just be left well alone to tick itself over as a rent & bills account. therefore youll have the majority ( c900) to "live on" for the month, food, and any other bits and bats eg petrol, clothing, to come out of that account. in there there should be hundreds of pounds left over.

hope Ive got the figures at least half right, if not its a system worth thinking about whether it would work for you guys.


the other thing no ones mentioned yet- GET SELLING! ebay, car boots, they are all your freinds, the more you raise, pay off your big debts asap with your income from those.

3LITTLEPIGS_2

it is very daunting going through with a dmp but they way i saw it,i had a rubbish credit score anyway once we couldn't keep up with all the repayments and it wasn't going to improve so we did it, i know it does affect it for 6 years and i have to say we already have a house & mortgage so it may be different for you to try & manage the repayments so it will be easier to get a mortgage in the near future.
it was a huge weight off our shoulders though going with cccs and we can finally look forward knowing it can only get better.
you have made the break today so you now can only go onwards & upwards!!

chevalier

My comments are in blue
Monthly Incomings

My wage after tax - £1024
Hubby's after tax - £1089
Tax Credits - £45
Child Benefit - £68.
Total £2226

Monthly Outgoings

Rent - £330
Council Tax - £110
Sky TV - £46.00You have said this is going yippee
Gas - £80Have you checked your meter to see if your usage tallies up with your bill?
Electric?
TV - £10.99
BT Rental - £35
My Car Insurance - £35.69When you come to renewal have a look at www.quidco.com, to see if your cheapest provider is doing cash back.
Hubby's car Insurance - £24.27As above
Tiscali Broadband - £29.52
Food?
Car Tax All of these yearly expenses need to be factored into your budget so that they don't bite you on the ahem, when they come around!
Car Servicing
Car MOT
Birthday For both birthday and christmas I look in the sales now for things that will keep till later.
Christmas
Child care costs? If you are using a professional service, have you looked at whether both of your employers have a child care voucher scheme. This could save you a lot.


My Loan £9804.24 with HSBC Can you take a payment holiday from either of these loans?
Hubby's loan £10,098 with MBNA

My c/c 1 HSBC. Limit £500, current balance £442.04. (£50 per month)
My c/c 2 - Vanquis. Limit £1000, current balance £1078, (£54 per month)
Mt c/c 3 - Capital 1. Limit £1000, current balance £1038, (£50.01 per month)
Hubby's c/c 1 - MBNA. Limit £2500, current balance £2545.22, (£78 month)
Hubby's c/c 2 - HSBC. Limit £2000, current balance £2098, (£80 month)
Catalogue - Next. Limit £2300, current balance £1805, (£181 a month) :eek:
Overdraft HSBC. Limit £1500, current balance £1876 with £150 charges to add on plus interest of around £30.

The reason I asked about whether you can take a loan holiday is because virtually all of your credit card/ credit accounts are over the limit. This will be costing you an absolute fortune in over limit charges, and if you are only paying minimum paymens each month then you won't be paying off the capital of the debt at all. So your first goal is to get all of these accounts under their limits.

To this end as others have suggested ebay/carboot/amazon anything you can to get a short term injection of cash to bring these back under the limit.

Ref the HSBC overdraft. This account is now JUST ANOTHER CREDITOR. So you need to get another bank account to pay your wages into and direct debits out of. Then YOU have control of your money and you can pay off the debt in ratio to your other creditors. This would be what you would do if you did a debt management plan (DMP) with CCCS of Payplan anyway.

Can either of you get a seconc job? A lot of shops will be starting soonish (end of september) to recruit their christmas staff. Or could one of you do a bar job? Anything to boost your income. Again in the main to get all of your cards under their limits.

Or (and I know this will be humiliating), can you ask your family for a sub? Again to bring the cards down under their limits?

Finally my guess is if you have spent that much on your Next catalogue you like clothes, or kitting your child in their clothes? So now it is time to go cold turkey spending wise. Send your new Autumn directory back, and make sure they credit the £3 cost of whatever it is. And make a deal with yourself

'No spending on clothes for me or OH until the January sales' :eek:

I know children outgrow their clothes with amazing speed, but that just means that they can go onto ebay that much quicker (unless you are planning another one - once you are debt free?). Also any clothes that you haven't worn this year, they go on too! Decluttering is good for the soul I hear (though I am not the best advert for this idea - my guest room still looks like a box room:eek: )

There are also sites on the web to earn points/ cash for doing surveys. I make about £30 a month ( on a good month), but that is just for me doing surveys, doing click throughs etc. And every little helps!
best of luck
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MrsTinks

lynzpower wrote: »

the other thing no ones mentioned yet- GET SELLING! ebay, car boots, they are all your freinds, the more you raise, pay off your big debts asap with your income from those.

yes they did! I did heehee! But they should be mentioned LOTS of times - because they are THAT important

weezypoos

Wow, so much useful information I have no idea where to start!

With regards to HSBC. We talked about transferring our DD's to my other (debt free) account but surely then I would still have to transfer £150 a month into HSBC or still keep getting charged? I rang them tonight to see if they would suspend the charges.... they said there was nothing they could do, especially as we have already claimed from them!! All they would offer us is another loan to consolidate which we don't want to do. I'm really unsure whats best to do with this account. Also, I doubt very much they would be welcoming to the idea of a payment holiday!;)

Ebay will be widely used as we sell off unwanted or unused stuff and we'll be having a car boot sale for the other stuff.

Online shopping is a must as I know we'll have a budget to stick to.

A second job is hard as we have a little one at home and both work full time as it is. Hubby is planning on getting his overtime paid now though rather than time off.

QUESTION.... Do we continue paying off the overdraft and HUGE fee's to HSBC and struggling desperately (this option will take about 3 months until we are within our agreed O/D), or do we transfer our bills to another account and just continue transferring a little each month to pay HSBC? I'm scared they'll demand payment in full for the O/D and C/C's.

Sorry for all the questions!:o