My SOA - Any Advice?

floss2

Take a wander over to the Old Style board to help you reduce your food bills & housekeeping.

Oh, and hello! :hello:

lynzpower

what bothers me is your OHs wages./ job
What sort of contract does he have for his employment. how long has he been working for them?

I dont think its legal for him to be working on these terms?

HairyHandofDartmoor

Definitely do the spending diary, make sure you take it with you and write everything down, it's tedious but it works.

Can your OH reduce his mobile contract? If OH could give up smoking as well that would help!

Your food bill could definitely be reduced. If you go to the old style board and put up a typical shopping receipt they will go through it for you and suggest cheaper options for feeding your family.

As you cannot get new cards to balance transfer onto because of a non perfect credit rating, you need to free up extra money, make regular payments, and ideally clear one card. You can then BT an amount from another card onto this empty card at lower interest (ideally a low life of balance card as this is more sustainable in the long term).

HairyHandofDartmoor

Oh also if your OH's job is a bit unreliable then a weekend/evening job when you can babysit may help to top up your income on those months when he is earning less.

Fortheloveofmoney

Welcome to MSE and the boards. Well done, it's not easy to put everything down in writing although usually a very good wake up call.

I can't really add too much advice as I'm quite new to this forum however I would say that car tax isn't really an unexpected bill. We all know we have to pay it every 6 or 12 months and it's not cheap. Going forward you have to be able to put money aside every month towards this bill. This will make it easier to pay as you won't have to find it in one go.

The same thing goes for all other annual expenditure like insurances, birthdays, christmas, MOT, repair bills, car servicing etc.

Good luck. Others will be along sooner who will give excellent advice.

firesidemaid

i may have got this completely wrong, but for the weeks he does not work can your partner not claim benefits? there used to be a system for this ?does anyone else know? o/wise get him to grab any kind of temp work at that point.

use martin's mantra when you come to buy anything - do we need it? can we afford it? can we get it cheaper anywhere else?

use coupons etc in tescos and asda, cook in batch from scratch - see the old style board. use value products where you can't tell the difference - there is a thread on here for that too.

ebay what you can and save money on all that you buy. if you do have to buy anything (including insurances) then use quidco as well as getting the cheapest deals.

work out all your annual costs and put a monthly amount away in a savings account - you are going to have to pay it anyway. car tax is cheaper if you can buy it annually. make sure you get the cheapest petrol or get 1.5p cashback per litre from morrisons.

there are also deals on here for car breakdown - see the sticky on the front page x

laurawaite

thanks again for all the further replies, with regards to OH job, he works as a labourer for a local builder, he has worked for him for about 3 years, up until april this year he was classed as self employed but apparently as from april 'the law changed' and he has to be classed as an employee - i'm not sure what this mysterious law change was, i think it has something to do with the fact that OH only works for this one builder, so technically he is his emplyee, not self employed as he doesn't find his own work, work for a variety of builders etc.

anyway, i thought great, this will mean we are better off as he will get holiday pay and be paid even on days when he can't work. but no, he gets holiday pay but apparently he still does not need to be paid for days he can't work even though it is not his fault. he can't apply for temp jobs or claim benefits when he is not working bcoz it is only on odd days, and he won't know about it until the actual day, eg if it is raining tomorrow morning his boss will ring him up and say 'we can't go in today' and then he will lose a days pay. i did try looking this up on the internet when he first got told this but couldn;t find anything to say it was wrong/illegal.

i have tried to encourage him to look for a more secure job but he really enjoys this job and does not really have the skills/qualifications for anything else so is reluctant.

we are both currently looking for second jobs and i have signed up for mystery shopping.

as for car tax etc you are right i do need to open up an account and put x amount a month in so we have this money handy and it is not a mad panic to try and find it! my tax for this 6 months is due next week so once that is paid i will work out how much i need to save for next time, plus other bills such as mot etc.

i will try out all your other money saving suggestions, thanks and keep them coming!!

lynzpower

Do ask about this over on the employment board.

My understanding is that he shuld be paid whether there is work to do or not,.

I work somewhere which is really dead. I come into work every day, and some days do literally nothing. they cant just send me home or choose not to pay me, its not legal ....

RAS

Hi

Can OH sign on with a temp agency who say packaging or warehouse work? Then if it is chucking it when he wakes up, he could ring and see if he can get a shift to fill the day up.

I do however, think that his boss may not understand his legal obligations unless he has put him on something like a zero hours contract.

Whatever, give your debt, if he is not working, additional income would be useful whether or not he is paid by his boss.

laurawaite

Thanks for the last 3 replies - I have tried pressing the thanks button, doesn't seem to be working but I will try again!!albertross - good point! will do this insteadi am still scouring the internet for anything that says you have to be paid if you can't work because of the weather, not got anywhere yet. OH doesn't actually have a contract, prior to april he was self employed, and the change over to being employed was all very casual, i kept telling him to ask his boss for a contract but he isn't a very pushy person. i don't think he wants to rock the boat as his boss is more like a friend than a boss but i will nag at him to ask again.RAS - good idea about the temp agencies, I will send his CV round and see if he can ring up on rainy days for ad-hoc work, to be honest I can't believe I didn't think fo that before!Also I have a bit of good news, a Barclaycard I applied for a while ago and assumed I had been declined for arrived yesterday! So I have transferred the balance of my current Aqua card onto it at 6.9% for the life of the balance with no balance transfer fee. So that will save us money in interest. That one small thing going right has made me really postive and motivated about becoming debt free and I am determined to do it! So I will probably be hanging round these boards even more than ever!!