Nearly 16k of debt, need help!

Boppy30

Post Deleted

indesisiv

A couple of things immediately spring to mind

You spend £140 per month on clothes
£60 on haircuts
£529 on entertainment
£71 on holiday
£52 on house repair? Is this something you are saving for or paying out?
£70 presents
I'm presuming other child related expenses are days out / clubs etc?

So simply do you really need to spend that much on non essentials!!

You could easily clear your shortfall for debt repayments without any trouble just by cutting back a bit on stuff.

eg: Clothes: £50
Haricuts £30
Entertainment £250
Presents £50

Still loads but at least that would instantly cover your shortfall. Without even getting drastic with the sky, holiday payments

swimminginaseaofdebt

Hi,

Have you checked you are getting the correct amount of benefits? The £82 I’m presuming is child benefit but on that income I think you should be eligible for child tax credit/working tax credit.

Oakdene

You could save a good amount on groceries, I spend (on average) £140 a month for me & my 13 year old daughter. This includes making packed lunch for both of us every day.

blitzboy

You spend £6,348 a year on entertainment? I hope that's a typo, if so your end figure significantly improves, if not you need to stop whatever is costing that much! At least temporarily while you clear the debt.


That was the main thing that stood out. Other things than can easily be cut down and have a big impact are £840 a year on presents and £1,680a year on clothes, you cant afford this. Also £60 a month on haircuts is a lot, can't you go a bit longer between cuts to reduce this? If not, maybe consider finding somewhere cheaper, a student at college perhaps?


Holiday could also be reduced although may not be necessary if you can save enough on the items above, though obviously if you cut the holiday down (or out) that will be more spare to go against debts and then you can enjoy a debt free holiday sooner!


If you are looking to downsize then this may free up some money to pay off the debts this time, but you still need to address the reasons for the debt building so much or it will probably just happen again once paid off.

enthusiasticsaver

You can see immediately on that soa that you are spending more than you are earning. Hence the debt. You do not need to move to repay that, you just need to learn to live within a budget. Even if you do move and realise some capital to pay off the existing credit cards you will be back in a mess in a few years time unless you get to grips with only spending within your budget.

As others have said the entertainment spend is huge for just 2 of you. It looks like you must be eating out three or four times a week which is crazy when you have almost £16k on credit card debt and no savings. The other really high spend is clothing at £140 per month. The groceries bill is not too bad for 2 of you but if you are eating out a lot then it should be a lot lower. Is the pub spend alcohol or meals out? If it is alcohol both for your health and wallet you could look at cutting back. You have an almost £450 shortfall each month so if you do not get to grips with that quickly that £16k will be closer to £25k by next January and it is much harder to get back from there without looking at some sort of DMP so I would suggest you look at that.

enjoyyourshoes

The most critical thing is:-

what triggers the need to spend?

Work this out and learn how to mitigate the triggers.

Save for things that you both want to achieve

Know where you are financially every single day and accrue for medium (1 year) term bills (car insurance , repairs, tax, holidays xmas you get the drift)

You don't need to do SOA to know where you need to cut back if have done the two points above.

enthusiasticsaver

Boppy30 wrote: »

Thank you for all the replies.

I think realistically I could cut the entertainment bit down to £200 a month, the clothes to zero until the summer when I will most definitely have to buy my son some new clothes and probably the groceries to £100 if I plan carefully.

I think the breakdown of the relationship with my sons dad is what triggered it as I was used to a certain lifestyle that just isn't achievable with the income I have.

I'm lucky that the cards are on 0% interest until end of 2019 for one and end of 2020 for the other 2, so i really need to try to clear the Barclays one asap.

That will eliminate the monthly shortfall if you make the changes in your budget. You need to stop using the cards altogether.

No way are the cards going to be cleared within the interest free period by just paying £260 per month though so you either need to up that, especially Barclaycard or you will need to balance transfer at the end of 2019 or 2020.

As a quick reality check to clear them all within the 0% period you need to be repaying £435 each month. If you repay at the current rate it will take you over 5 years to clear it all assuming you manage to balance transfer when the 0% deals expire. There will be fees to do that obviously.