My SOA and diary of my debt journey

dsljfreeman

Hi everyone,

I've decided to chart my debt journey if that's ok with you, I've read the other diaries and find them very inspirational so I thought that if I recorded my own, it will give me more motivation to continue as I know the next year will be very hard.

Anyway my soa:

Monthly - Incoming

Hubby's income - 953.33 (basic, not including overtime)
My income - 500.00 (basic, not including overtime)
Tax credits - 40.95
Child Benefit - 72.40
Total £1566.68

Tax credits and Child benefit will be going up in the next few months as we are due our 2nd child on Boxing Day

Monthly - Outgoing

Life Insurance - 12.00
Tv License - 11.37
CSA - 232.63
Gas - 55.00
Electric - 29.00
Loan - 403.90
Home Insurance - 23.87
Internet - 18.00
Phone - 50.00
Garage - 24.11
Car Insurance - 23.00
Mortgage - 376.19
Council Tax - 86.00
Mortgage Insurance - 23.87
Sky - 53.50
Credit Cards - 161.00
Overdraft - 70.00
Shopping - 75.00
Total 1728.44

Debts

Loan - £33k 11.02% apr variable
Vanquis credit card - £1044.45 Hope to pay this off when car sells
Natwest credit card - £418.27
Adams credit card - £1007.54
Alliance & Leicester credit card - £2804.77
Natwest credit card - £781.28
Overdraft - £5700
Total - £44,756.31

So thats a negative of £161.76 a month, which is not as bad as I thought now I have it down in writing.

What I plan to do/Have done to lower monthly outgoings:

- I have joined Quidco and Pigsback - Have already made £50 on Quidco for changing life insurance provider, I'm in the process of changing home insurance and will hopefully get some cashback on that too.

- I have cancelled ppi on the loan we have, waiting for them to confirm new payment

- I am cancelling Sky, hubby watches Sky Sports News, I watch Sky News so we decided Sky is a luxury we can't afford and we are gonna get Freeview which has both channels anyway

- CSA is paying arrears too so in a few months time the amount will be £187, but hubby and his ex are back on really good terms now so he is gonna see if she will boot CSA out of the picture and have it between the two of them.

- I am gonna try to get the phone bill down to £25 a month, most of the bill is me ringing hubby at work and I've told him I'm gonna cut down, might even get a timer and keep calls down to 5 minutes - who knows

- We are in the process of selling our car - we can't afford a car at the minute and if truth be told, we do not rely on it, I don't drive, prefer to walk and hubby cycles to work, so when the car is sold, we are using the money to pay off 1 credit card and various people we owe money to, also we will be able to cancel the car insurance and garage payment

- I was looking at changing our mortgage payments from repayment to interest only, I need to ring them and see where to go from here.

- I can't change gas/electric supplier as we are a little in debit with them and can't afford to pay it off just to change.

- I have cancelled the mortgage insurance, we have sufficient life cover so feel that this is a waste in the short term

So thats my soa, at the moment we are skinto, but hopefully once the cancellations come into effect, we will have more money to put into paying off our debts.

Please feel free to make any pointers which I may have missed.

dsljfreeman

But on a very good note, I managed to source 2 main presents for our son's christmas for the grand total of £4.99, we got him a Mega Bloks dragon worth £24.99 with our Nectar points and a Mega Bloks Pirate ship through Argos's clearance sale for £4.99 (I think it retailed at £20 or thereabouts) I'm still waiting for the Mega Bloks Smugglers Fort to be back in stock and that will cost me £2.49 through the clearance sale too.

I'm really pleased with myself about that as the 2 presents are huge and I know he will love them

Scarlett.1974

Yay, well done on the bargains, fantastic shopping there! :T

I've just had a look for that Pirates one on Argos for my son, he would love that (hope you don't mind!), but it's now out of stock, booooo

I'll have a look at your SOA for you now and see if I can offer any advice, I'm no expert though, you have been warned

nicola1982_2

How many children does he have? My OH pays less than him but earns a fair bit more, and that's before the baby is born.

His CSA will go down with the second child I assume?

Do you BT between your existing cards? I often with xfer just a couple of hundred to a slightly lower card just to get the better apr.

Your internet is expensive - AOL is much cheaper.

And can you email OH at work?

Scarlett.1974

Monthly - Outgoing

Life Insurance - 12.00
Tv License - 11.37
CSA - 232.63 - ouch, that's a lot. Not for negotiation I suppose?
Gas - 55.00 -
Electric - 29.00
Loan - 403.90
Home Insurance - 23.87 - is that for contents & buildings together?
Internet - 18.00***
Phone - 50.00 - is that your landline or does that include mobiles?
Garage - 24.11 - is this essential?
Car Insurance - 23.00
Mortgage - 376.19
Council Tax - 86.00
Mortgage Insurance - 23.87
Sky - 53.50*** - that's a lot, could you drop to a cheaper package or cancel altogether and get a freeview box? If you do keep it though you could get your internet for £10 from them.
Credit Cards - 161.00
Overdraft - 70.00
Shopping - 75.00 - for the month? Really? That's awful low!!
Total 1728.44

Also, try putting your debts into the snowball calculator, it tells you which to pay off first (the highest APRs) to get you the quickest debt-free date.

HTH a little

dsljfreeman

Scarlett - Keep trying Argos website for the pirate ship, it always showed it being out of stock at my local store then the other day, it was in stock so I reserved it straight away

Nicola - My hubby has 2 kids ages 12 and 9, the csa payment will go down when our next child is born but would rather he work together with his ex to get rid of them as they are very unpredictable. I dont transfer balances, cards are maxed out. I'm already with aol for internet. Hubby doesn't have a desk job I'm afraid thats why phone bill is so high.

Thanks for your comments girls xx

Scarlett.1974

Sorry, that will teach me to skim-read, I didn't notice the bit about the CSA. Hope you can get that sorted out soon

Scarlett.1974

I'll keep checking it, thanks

Re: the phone - is that you calling him from your landline to his mobile then? Do you not have a mobile? If so, you might be able to re-arrange your package so you get loads more free minutes to call him on? Or failing that, cut out the phone calls!! You'll have to catch up on each others days when he gets home instead lol!

nicola1982_2

You should be able to reduce the service to silver then which is only £14.99. I would definitely move away from the CSA and use their online calculator to work out payment. Get you OH to check with his ex that she receives exactly what he pays. The CSA have a habit of 'losing' money.

It's not always the best option but if you really find you are struggling to meet repayments could you possibly put some of the higher debts in under your mortgage? I would only ever recommend this is you are disciplined enough to increase your mortgage repayments to cover the additional loan and you won't ever use the CCs again.

dsljfreeman

Scarlett.1974 wrote: »

Monthly - Outgoing

Life Insurance - 12.00
Tv License - 11.37
CSA - 232.63 - ouch, that's a lot. Not for negotiation I suppose? Hubby is gonna chat to his ex and see if he can pay her direct, this amount includes arrears
Gas - 55.00 -
Electric - 29.00
Loan - 403.90
Home Insurance - 23.87 - is that for contents & buildings together? yes, this is cheapest quote we went through Quidco to get cashback
Internet - 18.00***
Phone - 50.00 - is that your landline or does that include mobiles? on the cheapest tariff, this is me ringing hubby's mobile, gonna limit it though
Garage - 24.11 - is this essential? once our car sells this will go
Car Insurance - 23.00
Mortgage - 376.19
Council Tax - 86.00
Mortgage Insurance - 23.87
Sky - 53.50*** - that's a lot, could you drop to a cheaper package or cancel altogether and get a freeview box? If you do keep it though you could get your internet for £10 from them. We have already cancelled, will come into effect next month, gonna go freeview
Credit Cards - 161.00
Overdraft - 70.00
Shopping - 75.00 - for the month? Really? That's awful low!! It's amazing how little you can spend if you shop around, we have a local farmers market once a month which do great deals on fresh meat, plus I save every single coupon going, Asda will take coupons worth 10% of your total shopping if you haven't bought the item, plus I work at Asda so get 10% discount
Total 1728.44

Also, try putting your debts into the snowball calculator, it tells you which to pay off first (the highest APRs) to get you the quickest debt-free date.

HTH a little

have responded above in blue xx

Scarlett.1974

I am WELL impressed with your shopping budget - I could learn a lot from you :rotfl:

It looks like you've already started taking lots of steps in the right direction with cancelling sky, getting your house ins. through quidco etc.... Well done you And once you sell your car you'll be almost another £50 a month better off, with no garage and no car insurance. You're doing really well already, you should be proud of yourself