Young people in debt

loken152

lyrh2017 wrote: »

We shop at Aldi and spend around £50/55 a week on breakfasts, lunch and dinners, and always use everything we buy. What else could we do to bring it down??

How much? We spend £50 a week in Aldi feeding four of us! Food wise, maybe write a meal plan for the week and then go buy what you require to make each meal stick to it. We found this was a great way to reduce our food bills.

Leasing your cars are killing you both financially, don't get me wrong i love my cars and this is one of the reasons i am in debt! Ditch doth of them and get a couple of cheap run arounds for now. I know it doesn't sound fun and they would probably not be want you want but would save you so much money.

Write a monthly budget for each pound, so you know where it is going. I have found using the debt snowball method has worked best for us. Write another list of debts smallest to largest, pay the minimum off them all, but the smallest debt and attack it with every spare penny you have and once that is gone. Do the same with next one on the list, attack each debt as hard as you can. It also gives you a good sense of achievement when you can knock them off the list.

Rocketlolasaves

This is from my personal experience. Im 23 and had debt of nearly £12000. I entered into an IVA and now I pay £70 a month on my IVA that's it. I'm a year into it and I can now offer to pay my debtors around £3000 to get this cleaned off and back to normality. It's a big step and my credit score went to 33 however it's now back at 300 and I'm using a capital one card to bring it back up too only £200 on it. I also stupidly got a Vanquis to help one month my comissions were low.

It's doable and as long as you read into it it's good in my opinion - not for everyone. My mum transferred all her debts to her husbands name as only one person could have the IVA and he went forward with it so they are now paying just £80.

I felt a sigh of relief knowing it was squashed into those payments and I can get out of it if I save and sort it out that's my next goal.

ceb1995

lyrh2017 wrote: »

Yes £200 for two of us for the month.
We shop at Aldi and spend around £50/55 a week on breakfasts, lunch and dinners, and always use everything we buy. What else could we do to bring it down??

Cheap cuts of meat or less of it , great proportion of frozen things rather than fresh perhaps?
Get a delivery every couple of weeks and minimize top up shops? I can't say it's easy but we spend £55 on a delivery every two weeks and set a limit of £10 a week for milk and bread and the like so can keep it under £150.

usernameisvalid

Perhaps a full SOA will help

It's ok saying you both put 500 each into the living fund, but when you also say there's nothing of the £400 a month that should be left actually there, you really aren't balancing the books

ani*fan

Hi there

Welcome to the boards and well done for getting some help so soon. I wish I'd done it when I was your age. Ah well.

First things first. Are your finances combined with your OH's? This will impact on the help and advice we will give. Here's why.

You make £1,281 per month and have listed £1,206 in outgoings. You have not included clothes, haircuts, presents, car tax and a load of other things in your soa. Of the £75 you will have leftover every month, it probably goes here and I suspect you spend more than that which is why you have to use credit cards. This is a desperate situation that needs addressed immediately. You need to get solvent.Try not to worry, we can help you.

You OH makes £1,500 and you've listed £1,067 of outgoings. This means your OH has £433 leftover every month which, even with the gaps in your soa, is enough for him to buy what he needs and start to pay down the debt.

You are both in a very different financial position. I'm guessing from your soa that your finances are NOT combined and that you are splitting expenses equally and trying to manage on your own. But do let us know so we can help you come up with a strategy for dealing with this.

If you do some more work on your soa and include things like interest rates on the cards, monthly payments to the cards, guesstimates on clothing and nights out and things like that then we can help you more.

Best of luck.