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SOA - please help!! I want to start today!
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Ha ha. Indeed Asparagus. Looking forward to the children going to bed so I can reread the whole thread in detail. Sourcrates - no satellite here - just an apple box with rubbish television. I think suggesting to my husband that we get rid of the tv would finish off any team work though. I have already met him at the door ready to inspect his shopping bag - eggs, kitchen wipes, ready made mashed potato and more PLASTIC CUPS. Again!!!!!!!!!0
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Good luck with everything - I really hope that you get him on board. It took me 6 years to get my dh on board but it makes a world of difference once it does happen. I spent a lot of years trying to do what I thought people would expect of me, rather than what fit with my circumstances. I'm not the same person any more...Not giving up
Working hard to pay off my debt
Time to take back control
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6290156/crazy-cat-lady-chapter-5-trying-to-recover-from-the-pandemic/p1?new=10 -
Well done on starting; not going to repeat previous advice but couple of smaller suggestions. One is a family den plan, can be gotten for £22 a month if NHS really isn't achievable; also points cards for supermarket shop and signing up for baby and toddler club etc can add up to some helpful savings longer term.2025 in 2025- 2027/2025
365 savings challenge- £41.12/667.950 -
Why is hubby shopping?
He should be too busy working
Thinking about it IMO moving now will be a mistake it will throw too much uncertainty into the picture and distract from the real problems.
One option that might work is to allocate certain discretionary spending to your income(like the holiday but it needs a lot more like £25k worth) and the rest has to be covered on budget from hubbys income.
remember on the current SOA you need to be earning over £30k gross to be breaking even.0 -
Firstly - well done on being so positive and taking the first step. I want to make a few observations, you don't have to agree or accept them!
I'm not sure your husband is very interested in any of this, and I'm wondering, just a little bit, if he is actually the big spender... First he sat down, which is great, he showed he was interested, but if he is a clever man and didn't want to go through with it that is the way to do it. Agree, do it but then hope it doesn't happen. I may be wrong, but I bet I'm not. My partner was the same, she listened but didn't want to hear anything, she agreed but hoped it would all soon go away and we would spend spend spend again.
Then your son says he comes in with shopping every night. He doesn't get much time off so you have to have holidays. It just points to him a little.
My point is, you may agree and make decisions, just be ready for him to disagree.
The biggest thing that jumped out at me is that you don't own your home and are in significant debt. Although easy to clear with the right spending, the debt is stopping lots of other hinge happening.
A horrible thought but you touched on it yourself earlier - what if....
What if your husband lost his job or couldn't work.
What if you suddenly needed big sums for something.
What if your landlord kicks you out I a few monhs.
As others have said your accountant is wrong. When you rent a property all a letting agent can do with their 'credit check' is basically check you exist. They don't see any financial records except for CCJs and bankruptcy rulings, so if you don't tell them you have lots of debt they won't know. I'm not saying you should lie, but the fact is with your husbands income the debts are not that big compared with what many people have with half his income, so it's manageable debt. I too thought letting agents could see your entire credit history and know what cereal you ate, but I was proven wrong on this very forum and someone from Experian has even (somewhere round here) posted to clarify the same. Letting agents don't have the same rights as financial organisations, they get to see a very diluted version of your credit file. It basically proves your name and address and that you are not bankrupt.
So yes, move!
Next, I want to stick up for you a little. He people in this section of the forum are amazing and so good at tearing through an SOA and saving serious money. Personally some it is goes further than I would ever go, but if someone has serious debts I agree they need to do everything and take the pain for a period of time to get things sorted.
I don't waste money like I used to, I used to earn more than your husband and spend more, and I was single initially. So I know how easy it is, and I know how hard it is to change. I did go through the pain, and it didn't work so I went bankrupt and kind of lost everything. Except I didn't, as I still had my family, my true friends (many ran for the hills, so not really friends) and the chance to start again. What it did was make me realise what was important.
I couldn't give up tv and some of the other things, I didn't have expensive sky packages but I had some stuff. I also think if you try to stop everything you will face more resistance and it becomes harder to argue and harder to swallow. I think you agree you need to make a massive hit in this though.
I do think you should be allowed a holiday, but you don't need to spend 5k, that's over the top with your money issues, and hard to justify for people earning twice what your husband brings home. You don't have to go for an old tent in a field (although that would be great and the kids would love it) but you could do so many things that would be so much cheaper. You could have an amazing holiday renting a cottage somewhere beautiful and enjoy yourselves, spend real quality time together outside. Maybe go off season, schools don't like it but hey ho, it saves a fortune.
I guess the thing to consider is what happens if one of the situations we mentioned earlier happens. What happens if your husband loses his job or can't work? The fact is you then couldn't spend that money. You would have a sum to live on, you would spend that and that's it, and you wouldn't be able to service your debts, so chances are you would then go bankrupt anyway.
Oh I'm sure your husband won't lose his job, but I don't know many jobs that are 100% safe, and even if the job is it's not impossible that he may have to stop working for some not very nice reason.
The fact is if you had a couple of pretty tight years, living on the sort of money the average family spends, take out the holiday, move house, you can then clear the debts. That will mean as well as the saving per month from all the cut backs you will also be debt free and not be paying for the finance each month. Then you could look at buying your own property. It would be a challenge to buy on e outskirts of London without a big deposit, but it's worth a shot.
The car. I can't remember the amount you said you pay now, but I know it was over £600 a month. My other half has a lease car through her work on a scheme called salary sacrifice. It means the cost of the car is taken from her gross salary so she isn't taxed on it, it also means she pays back less of her student loan. It's a luxury to some extent, we could get a car for a grand, but we did that for several years and he money we were paying on repairs just wasn't making sense. I'm sure we could have purchased better, people get it right, but I did my best.
Now she has a net salary loss of £265 a month for a new car with 4wd which is essential as we live on a farm in rural countryside where gritters don't venture and if the roads are icy she can't just call in and say sorry (A&E nurse). For hat money the car is fully maintained, taxed, insured, tyres, the lot, all she has to do is put fuel in and hand it back in 3 years. Your husband may find there is a salary sacrifice scheme via his job, a lot of companies do it, and if they don't they can easily sign up, there are financial benefits to them for doing it too. There are no credit checks, certainly not for the NHS schemes, no deposits, it just comes from salary before tax so you can't forget to pay!
That's not the cheapest way of getting a car of course, you could get one for a few hundred pound, or save for a few months and get one for a few thousand. That is still. A lot cheaper than over £600 a month.
The medical insurance obviously means a lot to you. My son is disabled so I understand the need to keep them safe, but all his care is through the NHS. I have had some issues in the past, but when I complained they were rectified and on the whole I couldn't fault his care. He needs a lot of support, in fact we couldn't get private medical insurance now if we wanted it, so I'm grateful for the NHS. Maybe have a think about it, I know it's tough but again if your husband couldn't work you may well have to stop it anyway. I know it can be hard to find an NHS dentist, but the NHS choices site (I think that's right) as they tell you of local dentists taking new patients. I think people have given up looking, it's often easier to find one than people think it is!
If you took the advice from everyone here and cancelled stuff, halved shopping, new clothes to a minimum (5 pairs of trainers a year at £20 max each is £100, you have £2400 in there for clothes, take a couple of years off), put £200 a month towards a holiday (still an amazing holiday), save £500 a month on rent, £300 a month on car, you have already said water is £100 a month now, get rid of cleaner, cut £100 a month from clubs/school dinners, stop health insurance, few other little savings....
I reckon that's a saving of around £33,000 a year.
That's saving a staggering £2750 a month. Each month use that to pay off the debts, including the money owed to parents.
After 18 months the debts would be cleared, saving an additional £1,000 a month.
That means in 18 months you could have £3,750 a month left come the end of each month, or an amazing £45,000. And you would be debt free. It wouldn't take too long to save a sizeable deposit to buy your own home.
Lastly, you say your husband doesn't get much time away from work and the kids are growing so fast. Your husband said he needs to work harder, in reality in a few years he could work less, get a new job, change lifestyle completely. You could buy a lovely house well away from London and actually enjoy each other most of the time, not just the odd week in the sun when he can afford to not work. It would be a big change of course but the reality is you are currently spending something around 30-50k a year more than the average family I would guess, and he's working flat out and missin the kids growing up just so you can spend more money on stuff you realy don't need.
All you really need is a roof over your heads, a comfy bed, warmth, running water, a nice hot shower, some food, and each other. Everything else is just stuff we don't need sold to us by people who want us to make them richer.
I wish you all the best of luck0 -
When I had my LBM I wrote down all of our outgoings on a piece of paper and decided to reduce every single one (I even tried to reduce my council tax haha). To start with it wasn't making my life any harder just comparison sites and cashback. It was easy and it spurred me on.
If it was me I would move! And sack my accountant. Your rent is a third of your income. And the associated bills are too high. I also agree about changing car.
I know what you mean about impacting the children. Talk to them about clubs. I don't think they should lose their clubs. Cutting the food budget will do way more. Plus if you're like me id forgo my haircuts over my kids clubs any day.
Get on zoopla xLoan 1 £5200/£8000
Loan 2 £300/£5800
Total £5500/£138000 -
Forward_thinking wrote: »Point taken lee111. I do accept that. I am currently absorbing what everyone has said. Yes, I think we should get rid of the hire car if we can afford a cheap second one. Yes, we can drop the clubs - feel terribly guilty but would feel even worse if we ended up with no roof over our heads. Happy to go into a smaller house - 3 or hopefully 4. Happy to get rid of the cleaner. Happy to cut down on groceries - try the freeze suggested, cut down on the hair cuts.
The only things I can't get my head around is having no tv, no holiday (it's the only real time we get for bonding as husband works so hard. Also, we only have a few holidays left with the children being children and memories are a priority for me). The other thing I really don't want to lose is our medical insurance. Without going into detail, one of our children has a condition that really needs ongoing treatment and it has been a lifeline for us. We only have very basic so I could probably drop ours).
Sorry if I haven't commented much yet - am going to sit down tonight and spend some real time on this. I really do appreciate your help.
What kind of holidays do you have? You could half your budget for holidays and still have a great time somewhere more local - look online now with companies like Airbnb and you can probably find somewhere unique ready for the summer - book now and consider that your holiday planned, and save that huge monthly fee. Many of your kids are too young to know the difference between a beach in a fancy resort or a beach an hour down the road.0 -
When I had my LBM I wrote down all of our outgoings on a piece of paper and decided to reduce every single one (I even tried to reduce my council tax haha).
I did the same. Went through each bill and expense one by one to see if I could reduce the amount, get better value, get rid of it completely. I looked into the council tax, it can be done. However I lived in a quiet little close with 18 houses, many of my neighbours had much bigger extensions than our house and when I checked online they paid 1 or two bands below ours. I think is was because our house was converted soon after it was built so when council tax bands were set (1993 I think it was) it was bigger than the other houses. Since then theirs have all doubled in size. I was going to ask for a reassessment but found out they would do the whole street and it was very likely they would all be put up a couple of values - I would not have been popular! We moved soon after so it isn't matter.
But yea, it can be done, a lot of valuations were done by someone driving past with a clipboard and deciding how big it was and how much it was worth, lots of mistakes were made. I believe this site has a whole section on it somewhere.
Taking each cost one by one is the way to go though. It's also really important you get really accurate amounts and as suggested already over-estimate outgoings and under-estimate income, never the other way round. If you look at it as a whole it's daunting, some of the costs will take weeks to reduce but it's worth the effort, don't just swap to another provider, make sure it's the best swap.0 -
Just wondering if you could involve the older kids on cutting expenses. When I went through mine with our son it turned out he hated his golf classes & gave some really good suggestionsTallyhoh! Stopped Smoking October 2000. Saved £29382.50 so far!0
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Can people that are working out savings remember the first £1900pm is to break even with the £1k pm debt payment and £900pm over spend.
At that point the £49k debt really starts getting paid off some at 17%(on the SOA)0
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