BigEars' debt diary - please help v silly person become more sensible

BigEars_2

OK, this diary got abandoned last year as I had a terrible horrible disaster and whole life turned upside down.
But, it's a new year and a time to be positive. I've had a bad January with lots of essential spending but now it's time to get back on the wagon. I'm hoping some people who dropped in before might come back to visit, lots of good advice so far.:D
As an update, my situation remains pretty much as it was except that rent has gone up (grrr) and OH is now expecting me to make more of a contribution to household (boooo)
On the positive side, I'm tutoring once or twice a week (except for today - I've just been cancelled ) and making an extra effort with the mystery shopping.
Also I've joined a couple of challenges to try to get motivated.
Sooooooooooo..............is there any kindly souls out there who feel like ripping my finances to bits and telling me where I'm going wrong? Please?!
Thanks for reading
BE x

Jenna

Hey BE,

Just read your thread from the beginning, you seem really focused on paying back your debts so that will help you to be organised. I'm not sure about how your electorall roll can show up as bad on your credit rating - have you been registered at the address for long, have you made sure you're not financially associated to anyone else, is there anyone registered at your address that doesn't live there? If it's none of those then I don't know sorry!

Anyways just thought I'd say hello and welcome back to the DFW bandwagon, there's a lunch log thread on here (packed lunches for work) so you may want to join that for motivation as well?

If you post an updated SOA (just copy & paste what you had before and change the new rent totals etc) then will be happy to have a look through at your spends and see if I can help. Also have a look at www.spendingdiary.com - it's quite cool as it's all online and it will also do monthly / weekly reports showing your spending, which you can categorise too.

OK - sorry to ramble on - hope that helps!

xx

moneydesperate_x

Hello, ive just read your thread for the first time, and wanted to say hi too.

I know I may be being really thick, but whats 'mystery shopping'?

BigEars_2

Hi moneydesperate and Jenna, thanks for dropping in
Thanks for the comments and suggestions, and for reading all my ramblings! I am still confused about the electoral roll thing, I have moved around quite a lot since leaving uni but I've never run out on a debt or anything like that (maybe that's where I went wrong, he he:rotfl: )
I don't think I'm associated financially with anyone - if only! ha ha
I'll check out my online bank and do a really up to date SoA in a bit, thanks. Ooh and defo join the packed lunch thread (need inspiration, had tuna and lettuce every single day this week!)
Defo wasn't a ramble Jenna, v useful thanks
Moneydesperate, I signed up with a couple of agencies after reading the thread on it in the maximising your income section of this site. Basically you go to shops or pubs and review the service and get a few quid in return. It's not huge amounts of money but if you're out shopping anyway, or need the thing they want you to buy, it's a bit extra pin money.
Hope that helps! Right, off to find stupid pin sentry so can find out how much money I haven't got!
BE x

Frugaldom

Hi BE, I spotted your diary and have just read through it from the beginning. Jenna mentioned www.spendingdiary.com and I wholeheartedly second this as it is a fantastic little website programme that keeps everything tallied up and lets you print out the sheets. I swear by it now

You mentioned that your SOA had changed - perhaps if you could ipdate it to reflect just how much extra you need to contribute and do a new budget. I'm sure your participation in the various challenges will be a great advantage to you as everyone here is so helpful.

Good luck with everything

BigEars_2

Thanks nykmedia, I have redone my SoA and as you will see I am using your recommended weekly spend figure! I am so keen to just get shot of this debt and get my life back!
OK, here goes....
SoA
Income
Wages: £1623 (guaranteed)
£10 challenge: £300 (not guaranteed so will use as bonus ie pay off extra towards debt, or big purchases such as new passport)
Outgoings
Rent: 509 – fixed til May but only likely to go up not down!
BT (phone and internet): 35 – only provider in our area
Travelcard: 102
Trains home: 70 – an essential – will be a nightmare even keeping it down to this now the prices have shot up
Mobile: 40 – need to try and reduce this but can’t get rid completely for another 14 months
Food: 50 – planning to drastically cut down, think this is the lowest I can go
Loan repayments (see breakdown below): 411.61
Personal spends (entertainment, clothes, gifts, holiday spends etc): £76.50 a week or 382.50 a month – will be abiding by the 4k challenge!
Total: £1603 (and 20 quid left in case of emergency!)
Loans
Career development loan - £2172.06 at 12.9% APR (will up payments as per the snowball)
Graduate loan - £1132.23 at 7.9% APR (repayments of £75.77 will also go up as per snowball)
Parents - £400 at 0% interest (repay £100 a month)
Overdraft - £1,550 at 0% interest on first £500 and I pay about £4 interest a month on the rest. Not so high priority – happy to leave this if I can just stop going over it, then once the debts are gone this won’t take long to clear.

So I don't think this is 100% in the spirit of the £4k a year challenge but it feels like a challenge for me and will mark a very big change in the way things are going.
My OH is just so not interested in saving money at all, he encourgaes me too but gets grumpy if I feed him veggie teas or tell him I don't want to go out cos I'm skint. Mind you he gets grumpy when I treat him to nice steaks too cos he says I'll have no money left :rolleyes: What can you do hey!
So I've been a bit generous with my allowance so I can occasionally go out with him without him having to pay for it all.
Also we lost all our possessions in a fire last year(no, not insured)so the extra spends account for me slowly trying to rebuild my wardrobe (in the MSE way of course) In fact I insisted we get insured for the new place - and earned money through Quidco for doing it as well which felt great:T ! It's the little changes that are adding up to make a big difference.
Oh my word I have rambled on a lot here - sorry!

Frugaldom

Hello

I'm just wondering about this...

"Personal spends (entertainment, clothes, gifts, holiday spends etc): £76.50 a week or 382.50 a month – will be abiding by the 4k challenge!"

Not sure I fully understand that part as £76.50 is what I actually LIVE ON including food for 3 adults, heat, light, insurance, gifts, internet, telephone bills etc. Reading the above makes it seem like you spend £4000 per year just on entertainment, clothes, gifts and holidays etc? I'm more than a bit confused by this, sorry

Frugaldom

:coffee:Hope you don't mind but I copied your SOA and mulled it over with a cuppa to see where I would make the changes if it was my own personal one; hope you don't mind

Income
Wages: £1623 (guaranteed)
£10 challenge: £300 (not guaranteed so will use as bonus ie pay off extra towards debt, or big purchases such as new passport)

Outgoings
Rent: 509 – fixed til May but only likely to go up not down!
BT (phone and internet): 35
Travelcard: 102
Trains home: 70 **
Mobile: 40
Food: 100 (you don't want to starve OH)
Loan repayments: 411.61
Personal spends: £100
Total: £1367.16

This leaves an extra £256 + any extra you can earn from your money making challenge if you can manage to recalculate / reassess your personal spends.

**I'd check to see how much you could save by advance booking your trains home if it's to visit parents, and schedule your holidays/visits to coincide with cheap tickets. Even if it's only an extra £20 per month saved, it's £240 over the year.

PS: Apologies if I have misunderstood the personal spend part of your budget.

BigEars_2

Ah no that was me explaining stupidly. It covers bills too! I have to replace all my clothes which were lost in a fire, also furniture and stuff like that which also went. Electricity and water are in there, also insurance. Entertainment doesn't just mean like going out and getting wasted, it covers all stuff I have to do ie travelling for work I have to eat out a bit.
I have kept the phone/net bills out for now as I don't think I could do it under that amount simply because we are literally starting again from scratch and I really have to contribute to furniture etc as my OH won't pay more than half.
I'm hoping to be able to re-do this SoA in a couple of months including EVERYTHING in the challenge but I figured there was no point in deluding myself that I could do it immediately. If you think it's inappropriate given that everyone else makes it stretch further, I'm happy to bow out quietly and rejoin when I'm at the stage that I can do so.
I hope that doesn't sound like I'm in a huff or anything but I can take your point that other people are making their money go a lot further! Whereas I am a bit crap at the moment - hoping to improve gradually, but aware that it might be demotivating to people who are really really cutting back.
BE x

BigEars_2

he he he just read your second post, sorry! I DO want to starve him as he is a big fat pig! And yeah think we had crossed wires.
Now, that 70 for trains actually is a bit of a problem. I have a commitment to go home 2x a month but basically I always used to book ahead and that was no prob. Now they have gone up massively so I can never get them for less than 50 ven travelling at ridiculous times so I might as well say right folks, I'm coming up once a month, why dob't you come down a bit more...then we can reduce this part to 55 max.
After all they claim they never see me but they last visited me in April so that needs to change!
BE x
PS thanks for all this help, I really hope you had a biccie with your coffee cos you deserve one!