Sudden Spike in Debt - Options?

Karonher

Sorry if I am misunderstanding, but are some of the figures only half the family expenditure?

If so £180 is a lot for part of the food bill.

Sprogladite

Revisiting this after little to no success paying down the MBNA and has frankly risen by £765. My wife is paying over half her earnings to chip away however SOA shows entire household expenditure. Mortgage ERC doesn't expire until next December and really struggling to see any way forward

AllyMac

But over half her earnings is only around £125?
Can she go back to work full time? Have you costed that against childcare.

I'm confused by your SOA because of the half bills thing - not sure what is a total.

Did you do a spending diary? If not, get out the bank statements and do it backwards. You're SOA must be wrong if your debt has increased.

You can do this, but looks like you didn't get there when you first posted with a proper plan!

-taff

If you are only paying the minimum of a large amount , and the apr is high, it's not going to go down....
Did you look at the snowball calculator?
http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx
With a 400 odd surplus you should be able to pay more than the minimum, where is that extra 484 going?

EssexHebridean

Taff has said it - that SOA shows you have £484 a month surplus. Where is that going?

I'll tell you one thing for nothing - your car costs are unrealistic. You're spending £150 a month on petrol/diesel, for two cars, which means your mileage is only a little lower than ours. We pay £155 a month into our "car account" which covers Tax (both of ours are cheaper tax than yours too - ours are £30 a year each) insurance, servicing (once a year for each car) and MoT Tests. Also most of the depreciative costs, so wiper blades, tyres etc. On the mileage we do we can expect to need to replace a couple of tyres on each car, per year - I'd guess you'll be similar. Your estimate of your annual costs for your two cars is £759.00 - we set aside £1,860 for our two vehicles - and sometimes that doesn't *quite* cover everything - mine needs a belt change next year for example which will be extra.

From what you've said about your mortgage term etc, I'm presuming that you are in your late 20's or early 30's at the most - is your car insurance really only £420 a year for both cars? This does seem rather less than you might expect?

This SOA is missing something - and while I understand why you've done it as you have, I think you need to put in ALL your income. And I mean BOTH your income. the picture as you're painting it currently simply doesn't add up, and is almost impossible to understand! If we can;t understand, ultimately, we can't help!

MrsTinks

If you really want to get to the bottom of this then you need to sit down and use the last few months of statements to give us the details. You probably won't like what it comes up with but it's so very very important that you know where the money goes. If you don't know then how can you hope to fix it?

You claim to have nearly £500 that you could overpay each month - even at those APRs that shouldn't eat that up!

So re-do your SOA as a joint household SOA - because this isn't his and hers bills, you can't split the bills down the middle as you earn differently. Get brutal, check every penny and THEN we can help you work out how to fix this. Until then your SOA is telling us that you gamble away nearly £500 a month (or burn it... but it's vanishing into thin air!)

EssexHebridean

As things are, if your side of things is 100% accurate OP, then you need to sit your OH down and have a really serious conversation about what she's spending, because somewhere along the line, a LOT of money is going out, and you don't seem to know where it's ending up.

You mentioned her having just come out of an IVA - is there any chance that she's returned to the spending habits that may have caused her problems in the first place?

enthusiasticsaver

As others have said you should have a healthy surplus to reduce the debt but I have a strong suspicion that something happens every month to throw a spanner in the works. £20 to cover 2 cars sounds too low. Do you need 2 cars or could you manage with 1?

You need a cash emergency fund and get rid of the cards. Moving this on to secured debt would be a bad mistake. I am guessing the debt has built up due to you living beyond your means for a while? Can your wife work more hours?