Just need to unload this

starship15

Hi

Sorry, quickly replying on mobile so please forgive typos, brevity and tone.

I find all your replies really helpful.

I'll try and go through all the points

Mobile phones: unfortunately these are on contract so can't be reduced, we changed the contract just over a year ago when we had more money and it wasn't an issue. We stream a lot of music when out and about and previously when I had 5gb of data I was always having to but bolt ons to go up to 8gb so we use a fair bit! Also I'm incredibly lucky that parents pay for us to go to see my brother and as we stay at his our holidays don't actually cost that much.

Parking and fuel: my round trip each day is around 60miles, I pay £90pm month parking but get £70 of that back in expenses. It's the cheapest all day carpal, previously I was paying £7 a day.

Contents insurance: this is paid in one lumpsum. As the house is shared ownership I don't pay buildings insurance, it's covered in the rent.

Car insurance: I need to loom at changing this, currently it has me, my husband and my parents on it - but as it turns out they've never used it- however having my dad on it did reduce payments.

Child payments:yep this is maintenance paid to my husbands ex as £50 weekly

Haircuts: I don't have haircuts and do home dye jobs.

Gas & Electric payments: due to BG not billing me on DD for gas when I first moved to my house (even though I was on duel fuel) I had a debt with them which was around £100 a month, I don't use the heating much and so normally it's only £45 for both a month - even during the winter. I've switched to coop energy and so am just waiting for that to go through, plus I also have £257 in credit with BG so I'll get some of that back after the switch.

Sofa: again I'm lucky my mum is going to pay this off for me over the next couple of months

MOT: a friend of my dad's own the garage and my dad normally rakes it for me and pays.

Entertainment: I knew after my divorce that I wouldn't be going out much so this is for Netflix and Spotify family plan which we both use and I put my dad on the account too so much cheaper, saves cinema trips buying music. Apart from that we stay in and watch movies at home

Thanks

Happier_Me

You've answered some of the questions regarding your SOA, but the key question is: Do you actually have £640 a month left after all your bills and outgoings?.

If the answer is no then your SOA is wrong and you'll be missing some expenditure somewhere which you need to track down. Checking bank and credit card statements could help you fill in any gaps.

StokieBecks

You seem to be relying very heavily on parents funding certain things. Not sure how old you both are but you need to be taking responsibility for your own expenses even whilst battling debt. This helps you to have a realistic budget. Keep a spending diary for a month and be totally scrupulous down to every single penny...every coffee or chocolate bar you pick up needs accounting for so you can see where the money goes. If parking is ninety pound a month but you get seventy back how long before you see it returned? Does it get paid separately or part of your wages? If your SOA is correct and you have £600 left to put towards these debts that's great but I suspect you don't have this much left in reality. First big key is working out where it has gone

starship15

My dad pays my car MOT so that's like £30 and my mum is paying a couple of hundred for carpet payments. The trip to the US is a wedding present but they wouldn't want to not have their children see each other. So other times I've been they'd paid.

My parent's view is that they have the money, and my brother and I (neither of us have children) will get the money eventually so they don't mind helping us out with little bits. I borrow the odd £50 from my mum to avoid overdraft charges, but this gets paid back.

I get paid for parking in my wages about 6 weeks after I've paid it.

No, I agree we don't have that much left, but for February we're going to set aside cash for fuel and food and then hopefully we'll only spend that much. Moving £600 into a savings account as soon as I get paid on Friday, that we'll try to keep there until Feb 20th when it will be used to pay off debt or if we get stuck before then we'll use it to pay things. With him getting paid weekly it means that by the time the bills come out he's only been paid 50% of what he will over the month.

I've included things like coffee and snacks within the £200 grocery shop.

starship15

Just heard from Co op energy my monthly DD with them will be £47

EssexHebridean

I'm commenting in red within your post again as this is easiest to address some of your points.

starship15 wrote: »

Hi

Sorry, quickly replying on mobile so please forgive typos, brevity and tone. Noted.

I find all your replies really helpful.

I'll try and go through all the points

Mobile phones: unfortunately these are on contract so can't be reduced, we changed the contract just over a year ago when we had more money and it wasn't an issue. We stream a lot of music when out and about and previously when I had 5gb of data I was always having to but bolt ons to go up to 8gb so we use a fair bit! Also I'm incredibly lucky that parents pay for us to go to see my brother and as we stay at his our holidays don't actually cost that much.

Parking and fuel: my round trip each day is around 60miles, I pay £90pm month parking but get £70 of that back in expenses. It's the cheapest all day carpal, previously I was paying £7 a day. So where is the £70 shown? This should be either showing as income, or if it comes back to you in the same month as it goes out, reduce your car parking amount accordingly. Otherwise you're "losing" £70 from your figures before you start.

Contents insurance: this is paid in one lumpsum. Excellent - but you do still pay it, which means you still need to budget for it. You need to budget an approximation of 1/12th of the annual cost, each month, and actually put this moiney aside somewhere - otherwise where does it come from when it needs renewing?As the house is shared ownership I don't pay buildings insurance, it's covered in the rent.

Car insurance: I need to loom at changing this, currently it has me, my husband and my parents on it - but as it turns out they've never used it- however having my dad on it did reduce payments. If you can find a better deal then again, with your surplus, I'd say pay up front and then budget monthly to have the following years premium ready.

Child payments:yep this is maintenance paid to my husbands ex as £50 weekly

Haircuts: I don't have haircuts and do home dye jobs. What about your OH? No visits to the barber for him?

Gas & Electric payments: due to BG not billing me on DD for gas when I first moved to my house (even though I was on duel fuel) I had a debt with them which was around £100 a month, I don't use the heating much and so normally it's only £45 for both a month - even during the winter. I've switched to coop energy and so am just waiting for that to go through, plus I also have £257 in credit with BG so I'll get some of that back after the switch.

Sofa: again I'm lucky my mum is going to pay this off for me over the next couple of months

MOT: a friend of my dad's own the garage and my dad normally rakes it for me and pays.

Entertainment: I knew after my divorce that I wouldn't be going out much so this is for Netflix and Spotify family plan which we both use and I put my dad on the account too so much cheaper, saves cinema trips buying music. Apart from that we stay in and watch movies at home

Thanks

starship15 wrote: »

My dad pays my car MOT so that's like £30 and my mum is paying a couple of hundred for carpet payments. The trip to the US is a wedding present but they wouldn't want to not have their children see each other. So other times I've been they'd paid.

My parent's view is that they have the money, and my brother and I (neither of us have children) will get the money eventually so they don't mind helping us out with little bits. I borrow the odd £50 from my mum to avoid overdraft charges, but this gets paid back. All of which is lovely, BUT - and forgive me if this sounds harsh. They're not currently helping you take responsibility for your situation. You say your car MOT is "like £30" - but what about all the rest of the maintenance stuff? To give you a clue, I reckon in terms of MOT, servicing and depreciative costs, my car costs around £600 to keep on the road for a year. That doesn't include tax or insurance. That's quite a lump you're letting your Dad shell out each year on your behalf, especially considering your SOA currently shows you have over 7k a year surplus in your budget? I understand that they might say "Oh we've got the money" - but as a responsible adult, you have to consider whether truly, you're happy taking from them for things you can afford to pay for yourself. The US trips are a slightly different matter, and if they are content to pay for your flights, and so long as you treat them to a few meals out as a thank you while there, that seems fair enough.

I get paid for parking in my wages about 6 weeks after I've paid it. As above - you need to think about where you show this in your SOA, or make a committment to pay this straight against one of the debts each month maybe?

No, I agree we don't have that much left, but for February we're going to set aside cash for fuel and food and then hopefully we'll only spend that much. Moving £600 into a savings account as soon as I get paid on Friday, that we'll try to keep there until Feb 20th when it will be used to pay off debt or if we get stuck before then we'll use it to pay things. With him getting paid weekly it means that by the time the bills come out he's only been paid 50% of what he will over the month.

I've included things like coffee and snacks within the £200 grocery shop.

I think you need a spending diary as a priority, if I'm honest. £600 (let's be honest, with the expenses coming back, that's actually £700, isn't it) is a lot to lose over a month - over £8,000 per year, to put it into context. Finding out how much actually goes on "coffee and snacks" would be a good idea by the sound of it.

The bit I've highlighted in bold above by the way - if your budget works, and is accurate, then you won't "get stuck" - because you'll know what is going where, to who, and when. Might be an idea to go through all your Direct Debits and stick them into a spreadsheet in date order over the month, interspersed with your & your OH's pay dates and amounts. It may be that currently although you have enough over the month to meet all your liabilities, you don;t necessarily have it at the right time - in which case a simple re-jig of the DD dates might help.

Money_maker

Coffee and snacks are things you might like to think about. Somewhere like Costa you'll pay £2-3 per coffee. Add another couple of pounds for a cake and you're looking at a fiver each you're paying for a drink and a bite which could go towards your £33,000 debt. It's the little things that add up.


Get a little notebook and one of those freebie pencils from argos and make a note of every single PENNY that you spend. Use coins rather than debit cards so you physically part with each and every one. This will show you where your overspends are going. You will also be able to review at the end of the month and ask yourself why you are spending xx on coffee/snacks/lunch/newspapers/scratch cards etc when there's plenty of cheaper/free options available.

starship15

My car insurance is included in my SOA, My dad pays for my MOT - like I said around £30. Other car things like Tax and insurance are included in the SOA and come out of our bank - although touch wood there's not been much we had to get a new wheel the other week but got it for £10 from a scrap yard, servicing I do in accordance with the book and this is all up to date.

I have no issue with my parents for helping me out, the way I see it I either keep the £30k+ debt for 15-20 years until I get an inheritance and pay it off or I get out of it now myself with trickles of money from them (given and borrowed) as I go - they don't know about my level of debt. Maybe it's just the way I've been brought up in that families work together (I think it also helps that my family is small no grand kids for them to dote on) and help each other out in different ways that they can, so I occasionally get gifts from my folks and I'll feed their cats when they're away, or include them on my Spotify subscription, get stuff they want from Amazon with my prime account or help them out with their tech.

EssexHebridean

I'd do all those things you list in your post for my folks too - without a second thought - but I wouldn't feel at all comfortable taking money from them that in my view they worked hard to earn and should now be using to make their lives more comfortable. Like you say though, it's probably all down to upbringing and where your personal boundaries lie, I guess.

Good work on getting the wheel from the scrappy - are you able to switch your existing tyre straight on to it or will you need a new tyre as well? As for the servicing on the car - (Sorry - your wording in your earlier post combined with the fact that there was nothing showing on your SOA for this lead me to believe that your Dad was paying for this as well) presumably you need to incorporate a monthly budgeted figure into your SOA for that, too? What we've rfound helpful is to have a separate savings account that we can put a monthly transfer into to cover the annual costs of tax, insurance, MoT and servicing, plus a bit extra for the depreciative costs. It saves having to scrabble around for the money when the things become due, and also avoids the possibility of that money getting spent on other things if it just stayed in our current account or a central savings account.

I wonder whether it might be a good idea to go back over the SOA thinking about all the things that are paid out annually, as well as the monthly things? It's easy to miss stuff (like the contents insurance for example) if it doesn't appear on your last few months bank statements that you've used for your figures. Had you included your Amazon Prime subscription on there? That would be something else that might be easy to overlook.

starship15

The £70 is included in my wages income. I don't use it to pay of debt because it's replacing my outgoings.

Also with my folks, I would prefer to pay off debt than spend money on things so help/gifts from folks goes to 'things',so (apart from the carpets) they're practical things like the car. That wouldn't give me money to go out for instance but if I have an MOT and got an advisory on a tyre my dad would sort a new tyre, because he wants my car to be safe.

I went to theirs on the way to work last week and while I was there I had to top up my washer fluid and finished the bottle I had and my dad saw an offer on two for one later that day and so dropped one of at my house.