The 3 year plan 23 April 2015 at 4:27PM in How much have you saved? 3 replies 1.2K views

Claree__x

I'm Clare, I'm 25, married and have a 20(ish) month old daughter. I have always been reckless with money - it burns a hole in my pocket.

We currently live in a house owned by my husband and his cousin (weird, I know). His cousin lives in London at the moment and has no plans to return "home" - which is good. However, I hate it. I hate the area and I hate the type of house (4 in a block cottage flat with the world's noisiest neighbours).

Problems are 3 fold;
- The house is in massive negative equity (~£20k)
- We don't have the money for a deposit
- My credit file is in tatters.

However, instead of moping about this and hoping it goes away - I'm actually going to do something about it. Cue the next post.

Claree__x

The Negative Equity

The amount outstanding on the mortgage is currently ~£98,000 with a monthly repayment of £488. We've decided that we should overpay to bring this down quicker. There are no penalties for doing this, which is fab. We (my husband & I) are paying an extra £100/month and Chris (my husband's cousin) is paying an extra £100/month.

Not much else we can do for this part except hope that the prices increase soon. Houses nearby are selling for ~£75-80,000.

Claree__x

My Credit File

So I was really stupid when I was 18/19 and ran up a lot of debt. This was all sorted through a Trust Deed which ended in December 2013, woohoo.

Annoyingly, the noddle website isn't working for me right now so I'll have to update this another time.

There's not a lot I can do but wait for my defaults to drop off and keep paying for my current credit to keep it healthy!

Claree__x

Savings for the Deposit

This is the big one, and what the thread is really about.

We have no savings at the moment - a big fat zero.
However, we have no debt other than a loan which we pay at £256.63/month (I dunno why I remember the specific number) and, obviously, the mortgage. Until last month we had a tesco credit card with ~£600 in savings. I decided this was daft and cleared off what we had.

Joe's salary will be paid tomorrow - £1,778.
From next month he will be paying £200/month into a share save scheme with work so will take home £1,578/month.

My salary will be paid on Monday - £857.

Gives us a monthly income of £2,635/month or £2,766 including what's already in the account.

We pay out the following;
House Bills - £750 [This goes into a separate account which all the utilities/insurances etc are paid from]
Mobile Phone - £35
Life Insurance - £11
Baby's savings - £20
My gym membership - £23
Loan - £254
Bank account fee - £13
Spotify - £5
Total - £1,111

Which leaves a ridiculous £1,655 to "spend".
I feel like I must have missed something, there's no way we have that "left"

To pay off we have;
Argos Card - £350 [For Joe's (never used) xbox]
Vanquis Card - £71.23 [Used for fuel in an emergency]
Tesco Card - £0 [Normally used for fuel]
Next - £0
Debenhams - £0
(Only including these as they sometimes have a balance)
Total - £422

Leaving - £1,233

I'll update this - and YNAB - tomorrow with the plan.