Disagreement with OH

EssexHebridean

JourneyToSolvency wrote: »

Just been on the phone to Student Finance (surprisingly quicker and more helpful than they've been in the past!) my debt with them is an over payment that I'm trying to get paid off - I just rang to double check it definitely was interest free and it is That's good!

So I think my plan is to throw absolutely everything I can at these catalogues (reckon I can pay them off by Oct/Nov) Ummm...look again at your surplus and then explain to me why it will take until then to pay this off? then start overpaying that loan (with or without 0% cards). I'm going to speak to OH tonight and try and explain it better in figures, putting 0% finance onto a mortgage seems ludicrous to me, especially now I've had chance to talk it through with others.

Sorry sticky, I don't agree with you but I do appreciate that you're trying to help and I'll try and be more gentle with OH - I'm just frustrated I guess.

EssexHebridean - the leccy and gas is on EON saver fixed one year which OH recently switch it to from economy 7 or 8 I believe. It's fixed till next March and as we owe on it I don't think we can change can we?

On the gas/electric - I can't work out why they've accepted a switch to take you OFF the economy 7 specific tariff? How do you give meter readings as usually it's only E7 (or 8, 10 etc) tariff's that will accept the dual readings? If you're only giving them a single reading then bear in mind you might be digging a deeper hole for the future as they won't be getting the whole of your use. Alternatively it could be that the root of your high electricity is that things like the storage heaters and the immersion for hot water (which I assume you have) are all running overnight as they should be are being charged at full daytime rate?

I'd ring them up and have a chat about it - if you've been put on a tariff that isn't right for you you may be able to get it changed, albeit you may have to stay with the same supplier. If they've steered your OH onto a blatantly wrong tariff then it may even be you can get the change backdated.

JourneyToSolvency

So I think my plan is to throw absolutely everything I can at these catalogues (reckon I can pay them off by Oct/Nov) Ummm...look again at your surplus and then explain to me why it will take until then to pay this off?

Just being cautious because I'm not convinced the SOA is accurate - YNAB certainly doesn't show me that sort of surplus but I guarantee I'll throw everything I can at them.

Which brings me onto another question - I have about £150 I've been using as a safety blanket until I know what I actually spend - is this wise? I'm new at this remember so I'm attempting to avoid using CC's with it. I could throw it at one of the catalogues.

oldhand

JourneyToSolvency wrote: »

The snowball calculator did the sums for me, it said over the time of the mortgage adding on the debt (not all because we don't have that much equity) assuming the rate was 5.5% (I can see it going higher in the future) then we'd be paying over 6k more in interest. I have shown him but then he says I'm being stupid because some of the excess would be used to pay off the loan and therefore less interest. :mad:

He could be right, I'm not the best with this stuff but I doubt by putting at extra 200 (less if he got his way) onto the loan a month would reduce the interest by 6k :huh:

Perhaps someone with better maths skills than me would be able to work it out?

I'm still not comfortable with having it secured against our house though - it'd be taking away security for our son.

God I hope he never reads this :eek:

On the contrary you should make a point of showing him these posts,perhaps then it may get through to him just how concerned you are about both your debts and your future together,it might just waken him up more.
You appear to be the one making the running in trying earnestly to solve your problems whilst his contribution seems to be at best giving a nod toward it,and im willing to bet your the one loosing sleep at night?...

JourneyToSolvency

oldhand wrote: »

On the contrary you should make a point of showing him these posts,perhaps then it may get through to him just how concerned you are about both your debts and your future together,it might just waken him up more.
You appear to be the one making the running in trying earnestly to solve your problems whilst his contribution seems to be at best giving a nod toward it,and im willing to bet your the one loosing sleep at night?...

Yup all correct. I'm cautious of being too harsh with him because as I and others have pointed out - this mess is both of our fault - he just seems a little lacklustre when it comes to dealing with it - perhaps he doesn't see what I can see? I think it'll be a long and difficult slog and we may mess up occasionally but it's do-able. I'm a little calmer now than I was when I first posted.

barbiedoll

OP...your husband sounds exactly like mine did around 8 or so years ago (and yes, we're still married!)

We had credit cards and a huge loan, and the traditional Saturday afternoon spending spree was well-ingrained. I can remember when the Nintendo Wii came out, he simply had to buy one as they were "only" around £120 or so. Of course, by the time he bought the joysticks, the games and the other stuff, he'd spent over £330! :eek: To be fair, it was for our son, he's never spent money on himself, he doesn't go to the pub or buy expensive clothes or jewellery. To this day, we honestly don't know where the money went, on needless !!!! mostly, I suppose.

I am the tightwad of the family, I come from a single parent household where money was always tight, so I know how to budget. My husband was much more devil-may-care, as he said at the time, we're both working, we can pay our debts.

Then one day he went into work and found that his employer had gone into administration. I had to leave my lovely part-time job and go back to full-time work immediately. We were putting our mortgage payments and all of our bills onto a credit card, with no means of paying them back. It all came to a head, and, with the help of the good folk on here, we got back on track, via a DMP (which we're still paying off.) We had no recourse to credit for years so if we couldn't afford to buy something, tough! I can remember the first time that we bought an item, in cash, that we had saved up for (a telly) and it felt so good to actually own something and not have to pay for it ever again!

There will be tears and tantrums before your OH has his lightbulb moment, my husband had his when I showed him, in black and white, how bad our situation actually was. Then I showed him the potential solutions, from posts on here mostly, and from then on, we were a proper team, he did great and although it's been tough at times, we've both learned a lot. My oven door broke recently, before, we would just have gone and bought a new oven. But we searched online and bought a new door catch, which fixed the problem. Total cost? Less than six quid! :j

You will learn new habits....ALWAYS shop around for car/home insurance. Make a shopping list before you go food shopping and don't go out when you're hungry! Kids don't care about designer labels, or if their clothes are a bit too big. Not buying presents for adults is a great idea. (We're doing a Secret Santa thing this year, where we have to buy the most awful item that we find in a charity shop or boot sale. I've already earmarked the most dreadful painting for my sis to put in her new house haha!)

You can do this, both of you can. And please do tell him that everyone on here agrees that consolidating is very bad news. And you can also tell him that many of us speak from very bitter experience!

Good luck

JourneyToSolvency

barbiedoll wrote: »

OP...your husband sounds exactly like mine did around 8 or so years ago (and yes, we're still married!)

We had credit cards and a huge loan, and the traditional Saturday afternoon spending spree was well-ingrained. I can remember when the Nintendo Wii came out, he simply had to buy one as they were "only" around £120 or so. Of course, by the time he bought the joysticks, the games and the other stuff, he'd spent over £330! :eek: To be fair, it was for our son, he's never spent money on himself, he doesn't go to the pub or buy expensive clothes or jewellery. To this day, we honestly don't know where the money went, on needless !!!! mostly, I suppose.

I am the tightwad of the family, I come from a single parent household where money was always tight, so I know how to budget. My husband was much more devil-may-care, as he said at the time, we're both working, we can pay our debts.

Then one day he went into work and found that his employer had gone into administration. I had to leave my lovely part-time job and go back to full-time work immediately. We were putting our mortgage payments and all of our bills onto a credit card, with no means of paying them back. It all came to a head, and, with the help of the good folk on here, we got back on track, via a DMP (which we're still paying off.) We had no recourse to credit for years so if we couldn't afford to buy something, tough! I can remember the first time that we bought an item, in cash, that we had saved up for (a telly) and it felt so good to actually own something and not have to pay for it ever again!

There will be tears and tantrums before your OH has his lightbulb moment, my husband had his when I showed him, in black and white, how bad our situation actually was. Then I showed him the potential solutions, from posts on here mostly, and from then on, we were a proper team, he did great and although it's been tough at times, we've both learned a lot. My oven door broke recently, before, we would just have gone and bought a new oven. But we searched online and bought a new door catch, which fixed the problem. Total cost? Less than six quid! :j

You will learn new habits....ALWAYS shop around for car/home insurance. Make a shopping list before you go food shopping and don't go out when you're hungry! Kids don't care about designer labels, or if their clothes are a bit too big. Not buying presents for adults is a great idea. (We're doing a Secret Santa thing this year, where we have to buy the most awful item that we find in a charity shop or boot sale. I've already earmarked the most dreadful painting for my sis to put in her new house haha!)

You can do this, both of you can. And please do tell him that everyone on here agrees that consolidating is very bad news. And you can also tell him that many of us speak from very bitter experience!

Good luck

Thank you, this shows me hope that there might be hope for him yet lol

Good job on fixing the oven btw - I think if mine broke I'd be sat on the kitchen floor in tears!

OH's family do SS too - but not everyone is included - and whomever we get always wants the amount in cash or vouchers - so pointless!

Currently looking at my christmas spreadsheet like santa with a red pen saying "you've been naughty - no presents for you" hehe.

Hopefully with some persuading I can get the list down to just kids.

EssexHebridean

Barbiedoll that's a brilliant post - well done you and your OH for tackling things and proving that there is light at the end of the tunnel!

Yep we too have gone down the route of researching fixes for household appliances rather than replacing. Twice our old dishwasher was apparently completely dead and we managed to fix it ourselves! It's only gone now because we wanted a built-in with the new kitchen!

JTS can I suggest an opening gambit with your OH along the lines of "I'm sorry we fell out over this last night - I think you're right that we need to make a change to how we deal with things but for a while, rather than adding to the mortgage which really frightens me, can we try to approach it this way and see how we get on?" that way you've acknowledged that it was him that instigated the need for change, but also underlined the fact that you're scared by the mortgage idea.

First job is probably to sit down (both of you) with that SOA and your bank & card statements and go through every line on the statements and make sure it's accounted for. It's the reason why I said an aspirational SOA isn't always a good starting point - you're jumping straight to the "this is how things should be" but without the "building block" steps that show you how to get there. normally we advise people to do the SOA to reflect how things are now - so if you're spending £400 a month on groceries, put that in. Remember also to tot up from bank statements what you withdraw in cash as that will just be "fritter money" and might be a good starting point to plug the surplus gap.

I suspect where you're going to find your figures are inaccurate are car maintenance (as that £25 a month doesn't sound like much to me - £300 over a year for tyres, service, MOT, screenwash, wiper blades and all the little odds and ends?) and food where you've already said that you know you've been overspending.

JourneyToSolvency

Hey Essex,

We WERE spending almost £400 on groceries a month - but we've done a month spending around £40 a month this month so I know it can be done, it's just taken me a month to build up the courage to write on here.

OH didn't instigate the need for change - unless you call whinging about his interest on the CC's change - I suggested the 0% cards and then convinced him to switch banks after I'd paid off the OD and made sure I was on the new one as a joint.

I now know roughly what goes in and out - there's no more interest or charges. OH's letting me take charge because I've got the trial on YNAB (2 month trial, got the money stashed to pay when it runs out) and he doesn't understand it other than to enter transactions Just got to work on the surprises and keeping a reign on the frittering.

OH should be back soon - then I've got to work again so I might not reply until tomorrow.

EssexHebridean

That was a lucky guess then, no?! Remember though that this is some of the reason why your SOA and YNAB don't agree currently. If the SOA is accurate though there's no reason why you can't have that surplus. Good thought, isn't it!

And no, he might not have instigated it, but sometimes there's no harm in letting them think they have, if you get my drift... At the moment you have a situation where he feels you're set against him and his proposed path - by agreeing with him (or at least, seeming to) at the outset of a further discussion, you completely change the tone of things. It just might make him more receptive... More than one way to skin a cat, I believe they say... :rotfl:

engineer_amy

Hope you get him on your side soon and round to your way of thinking - I agree with all the other posters that consolidating yet again is not a good idea, and definitely do not secure it against the home. As everyone has said, the only proper way to tackle it is to knuckle down, rein in the spending and reduce any interest attracting debt first.


I noticed earlier how much you were paying for insurance - get onto the comparison sites, I found legal and general to be the cheapest for me this year. £154 for the year for combined buildings and contents on a 3 bed semi, inclusive of accidental cover and family legal protection. The cover they were offering as standard was better than my renewal with my existing company.


And try the downshift challenge for reducing your shopping bills - there are some own brand/budget labels that I now prefer to the big name brands. I was able to cut my shopping costs significantly by shifting down a few items a week and making a note of what I liked and didn't like (some budget items are cheap and nasty), saving at least £100 per month. Also make a shopping list, don't be tempted to pick up extra treats (unless it really is a good offer and it is something that you will use), and plan your meals - the amount of food I was wasting, throwing it out because I didn't get round to cooking it before the BBE date, was ridiculous.