Disagreement with OH

JourneyToSolvency

Hi all,

Long time reader here and I'd just like some confirmation that my OH is wrong!

We've gotten ourselves into a lot of debt, issues with cars and then my maternity leave and crippling childcare costs - though none of this is excuses just extremely bad financial planning. Our little one starts school in Sept so outgoings should be even less so now's a perfect time to tackle this.

I've never had anything to do with the finances other than sending OH a set amount every month but I've now got hold of YNAB and am attempting to get it under control.

The disagreement we're having is we recently spoke to a mainstream building society when opening a joint account and they suggested we could remortgage to them and add in the debts and our monthly payment would be 200+ cheaper. But you see OH has consolidated this debt twice now and it obviously doesn't work. So I'm really not comfortable with this (we have an appointment with the bank on Thurs) and I'm hoping to convince him to just remortgage without the debt (if we can get accepted) we're currently on SVR and the new mortgage is around 2% less APR.

I've done an SOA (included below) but it's possibly more aspiration than realism as we definitely don't have that much left at the end of the month. We're still on the first month of YNAB and have cut our food bill massively and I've stopped most of my frivolous spending but I can see YNAB is helping and I shall keep trying to tighten the belts and throw as much at these debts as I can.

Is this do-able? I'm really worried about it as although our jobs are both secure you never know what could happen - I'm all for paying it down as quickly as we can but he's not had his lightbulb moment yet and thinks along the lines of "if we get this put on the mortgage we'll have more money to spend on other things" which is when I get cross and say if we did hypothetically do it ALL the money that would have been going on debt should still be going on the ones left and the mortgage.

Sorry for the really long post - guess I needed to get things off my chest.

SOA:

(Birthdays/christmas is high as we've just started saving and hope to have a decent amount by xmas)

(Childcare comes off before tax)

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 1
Number of cars owned.................... 1

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1299
Partners monthly income after tax....... 1119
Benefits................................ 82
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2500

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 271
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 112
Electricity............................. 116
Gas..................................... 0
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 15.53
Telephone (land line)................... 0
Mobile phone............................ 45
TV Licence.............................. 10
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 35
Groceries etc. ......................... 216
Clothing................................ 45
Petrol/diesel........................... 160
Road tax................................ 12
Car Insurance........................... 62
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 25
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 12
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 24
Contents insurance...................... 23
Life assurance ......................... 22
Other insurance......................... 8
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 75
Haircuts................................ 15
Entertainment........................... 53
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 50
Total monthly expenses.................. 1406.53


Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 88000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 1500
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 89500


Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 58000....(271)......3.99
Total secured & HP debts...... 58000.....-.........-

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Barclaycard....................3558......80........0
Tesco loan.....................16000.....251.......11
Student maint loan.............3600......150.......0
Catalogues.....................492.......24........37.5
Total unsecured debts..........23650.....505.......-


Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,500
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 1,406.53
Available for debt repayments........... 1,093.47
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 505
Amount left after debt repayments....... 588.47

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 89,500
Total HP & Secured debt................. -58,000
Total Unsecured debt.................... -23,650
Net Assets.............................. 7,850

Silver_Queen

It's not a good idea to turn unsecured debt into secured debt. If you don't pay back unsecured debt, your credit file takes a hit. If you don't pay back secured debt, you lose the item it's secured against, i.e. your house. Your OH sounds like a prime example of people who should never consolidate - you'll just end up with bigger and bigger debt.

JourneyToSolvency

My thoughts exactly - we argued for the first in years about this yesterday and it seems to be affecting me a lot more than him.

We can service the debt, we were in our overdraft constantly till a couple of months ago - I used some money that I got from a car accident to wipe out the overdraft and have taken over the bills - I'm happy to say even though we've had a few expensive surprises this month we've not spent more than our wages and the bills have been serviced on time.

I always thought he was great with money (that's what he told me when we got together) so I was happy to just leave him to it. I'm having to learn as I'm going along - spent the last few weeks reading every post I could on here that seemed similar to our situation.

Ilona

Hi. I am not great with masses of figures, but it seems to me that you two are not reading from the same page, not even the same book. Consolidated twice but still in debt, not good, it doesn't work to take out more debt when you are already struggling. Pushing the debt free date further and further back means you will never get out of it.

You need to have a very serious talk, you either work together, or against each other, which will end up a constant battle, possibly the demise of your marriage.

Looking at your SOA, you could cut the food budget further, cut the presents you can't afford it, and stop ALL of your frivolous spending, hubby as well. My income went down drastically when I was in my mid fifties, what did I do, I STOPPED SPENDING. Even managed to save a little and paid off my mortgage early. It can be done, but you have to look at the psychology of why you are spending. Keep a spending diary, log every penny, every single penny. Best wishes,

Ilona

JourneyToSolvency

Thanks Ilona,

I am trying, it's just a bit of a shock to the system as I've been plodding along completely unaware of the situation for so long.

I've tried speaking to OH - he gets cross and says I'm not listening to him - he thinks remortgaging to include the debts is the best way.

We could be debt free by 2021 if we just worked hard getting them down now.

I'm using YNAB to keep a spending diary - and to be fair to OH he is putting in his spends, but I just dont think he gets it if you get what I mean?

I'm probably annoying him by keep bringing it up too but it's all I can think about at the moment, even affecting my sleep.

JourneyToSolvency

Oh - re the food budget - we've spent just under 160 (including trips to shop for milk etc) this month with one more shop before the end of the month (we shop on a Friday so will be a 5 shop month) I just put £50 a week on the budget as I wasn't sure how far we could get it down.

Ilona

JourneyToSolvency wrote: »

Thanks Ilona,

I am trying, it's just a bit of a shock to the system as I've been plodding along completely unaware of the situation for so long.

I've tried speaking to OH - he gets cross (he gets cross? Oh poor thing, throwing his toys out of the pram, diddums, grow up man) and says I'm not listening to him (he is not listening to you) - he thinks remortgaging to include the debts is the best way. (He thinks wrong)

We could be debt free by 2021 if we just worked hard getting them down now.

I'm using YNAB to keep a spending diary - and to be fair to OH he is putting in his spends, (he shouldn't be spending anything except for the essential needs) but I just dont think he gets it if you get what I mean? (no, he doesn't get it)

I'm probably annoying him by keep bringing it up too but it's all I can think about at the moment, even affecting my sleep.

Your health is more important than him having a mardy tantrum.

Ilona

JourneyToSolvency

Oh Ilona, your post did make me laugh - thank you I needed that.

Yes he is mardy and I suppose he's had a long time to get used to this so probably doesn't understand why I'm making such a fuss - I did try to get him to read the "your debt is an emergency" article someone else posted a while back.

OH isn't spending too much, he's usually the one that pops out to get things I've ran out with or forgotten or the petrol (I don't drive). But him logging it does help.

I think I'm going to need to put my big girl panties on and put my foot down aren't I.

I am worried like a Silver Queen said that it will break us up eventually though.

Silver_Queen

Sorry that your OH is being difficult. At the end of the day if you just keep consolidating you will be in debt forever, and worse, if you secure it against your home and then end up not being able to service the debt (i.e. If one of you becomes sick or loses your job, god forbid) then you may end up homeless too. With a bit of belt tightening you could be free of this entirely in a few years. I know which option I'd pick. I think you need to try to persevere with OH even though I know he's not being helpful at the moment!

JourneyToSolvency

Just had an email from OH - gas/leccy is going up in August because we owe them from using too much in the winter :wall:

JourneyToSolvency

Yeah I think the best way to deal with it is to snowball it.

I got involved because he complained that his CC's were costing him too much interest (they were like 21% or something from before we met) so I suggested we look at 0% cards and got the balance transferred. Which has obviously saved us quite a bit, we're also now NEVER AGAIN going to pay overdraft fees (extortionate aren't they!?). Then I discovered just how deep we were

So I've made a little progress, my first goal is getting the catalogues down (this was my own stupidity) and that will free up £50-£75 (what I'm paying now) to go on a different debt.