Consolidate for somebody else?

jonesMUFCforever

The SOA from the OP is incomplete - eg no mention of car servicing or MOT? There are probably a lot more bills not mentioned.

Khujiro

This information is complete to the best of my ability. I have received a new car as a gift which has free Mots for life and as I've never had it serviced in the long 2 months that I've had it I'm unaware of the prices.



There are no bills missing whatsoever so please just try help rather than imply im some kind of chancer.



As for putting the spare money in an emergency fund that leaves me with no margin for error. I don't disagree with putting some of it away but having 0 pence to spend each month isn't realistic is it?

warby68

Noone is implying you are a chancer.

It often takes a couple of goes to get a SoA correct.

In yours, you currently have nothing for clothes, children, presents, medical for example - its seems unlikely that these categories are nil other than in the very short term.

You are correct that stashing every penny in savings would be tight at the moment - thats why you aim to budget for almost every category you can so any savings truly are spare. That's why people will challenge the SoA to get it as accurate as possible for a full year.

Willing2Learn

Hello again, :hello:

Yup, it can 2 or 3 goes before the SOA reflects reality

My thoughts on your SOA:

• Is your council tax spread across 10 or 12 months?
• Are you water rates spread across 10 or 12 months? Is it metered?
• Your mobile phone cost is very expensive. Have you considered a much cheaper SIM-only deal?
• Your groceries are also quite high. Have you considered shopping at Lidl or Aldi (if they are near you)? Do you batch cook?
• There should be something allocated toward clothing (especially with a child)
• There should be something allocated each month toward road tax
• There should be something allocated each month toward car maintenance and MOT
• What is your 'other travel' category for? (It sure is a lot of money)
• I think your life assurance is high. Have you tried price comparison sites to check if you could get it cheaper?
• You need to allocate something toward the 'presents' category as you have a child
• Is your 'Entertainment' category realistic at £8/month?
• You need to allocate something each month toward your 'Emergency Fund'. This is because an Emergency Fund is an essential part of all successful monthly budgets.

Overall though, not bad as a first attempt

Khujiro wrote: »

As for putting the spare money in an emergency fund that leaves me with no margin for error. I don't disagree with putting some of it away but having 0 pence to spend each month isn't realistic is it?

With the 'perfect' SOA, you should have £0 left over each month, after all your income has been allocated.

Jonathan_Kelvin

Khujiro wrote: »

Hi. Long story short I was once very bad with money but now I'm very good. I plunged myself into more and more debt with credit cards but have consistently spent no money with them for aroun 17 months and have made every payment in that time too (as well as nearly eradicating my car loan).
The issue I have is that my credit rating is just below average and due to my earnings and the fact I now have a daughter, I can't get 0% cards to replace the ones I have (and the terms have started to run out meaning mega interest!). My brother has kindly offered to take out a debt consolidation loan to help keep my debts at reasonable payments and to give me a debt free date (5 years!).
My question is, is this possible? Can my brother use a debt consolidation loan to take the debts from credit cards in my name? I'm absolutely desperate for this to work so please if you can help, please do! Thanks everyone.

OK, you claim that you are now good with money, but lenders don’t agree with you, and frankly they are better placed to be good judges of this than you are, so no, you are not yet good with money.

This is extremely well demonstrated by your awful suggestion to use your family to dig you out of the hole that you are in.

This would be utterly selfish, and not the sort of thing that you would do if you care about your brother at all.

You are in a hole of your own digging, it is the effort of getting yourself out that will remind you not to do it again.

Khujiro

I have actually come to the realisation that if i was as good as money as I thought I was then I wouldn't be posting on this forum in the first place. I used to run a budget that account for every penny but I found it quite hard to work whenever something cropped up. Maybe with some insight from others I'll find a more workable solution.

Khujiro

-Council tax is 12 months
-water is metered and over 12 months
-phone bill actually covers me and the missus but to be fair I now have a company phone and so when the deal runs down I will be switching her to sim only and cancelling mine. Still have about 12 months to run though.



Overall I realise now that im actually pretty rubbish with money ��


If anyone could offer advice on how to integrate this new information into SoA and advise on what classifies as entertainment etc then I'd be very grateful. Cheers guys.

-my groceries are high and I'm working on lowering them by shopping at lidl and a local farm shop which is quite cheap. The bills went up with my new job as my hours are all over and I don't have time to batch cook as much anymore but I try my best.

-I've been pretty lucky so far in normally clothing us wth overtime money but this is not a sustainable strategy and I realise I'd be better to budget and use overtime for emergency fund or paying off debt.

-I haven't budgeted for road tax as its 20 a year so I pay it up front
-my mots are free for the life of the car due to the garage I bought it from and I usually get windscreen wash etc free. I don't know anything about cars so I'm not sure what other maintanence I need to budget for. Do you mean servicing?

-the other travel I budget for is my missus getting to and from work which I know is quite high and we might need to speak about different ways but I did forget to meniion my brother pays me £40 a month for giving him a lift to work as which subsidises a bit but I actually have just worked out a different way of managing this and I can get it down dramatically. Cheers for raising this one.

-planning to look at life insurance already.

-I admit I suck at budgeting for presents and normally end up skinting myself so I will sort this.

-my entertainment budget is probably not at all realistic. I've only budgeted for kindle books for the missus and to be fair my gym membership is 200 a year.

-I completely agree about emergency fund and I will work on lowering the bills we've discussed and work out a new total.

-

Khujiro

Sorry but my post has got all muddled. Please read all the hyphenated points before the plain paragraphs as my phone won't allow me to edit.

fatbelly

If you can keep your interest rates low (I note 3 of the 5 cards are at 0%) and meet the minimum repayments (your soa says you can) then there is no need for a dmp or insolvency or a consolidation loan.

Your guide to 0% balance transfers is here

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/balance-transfer-credit-cards/

I'll have a closer look at the detail of your soa later.

MovingForwards

With budgeting I have my usual spends for a year in a spreadsheet, I also have spaces for if I use my credit card, buy from eBay then I can add the figure in.

Its broken down into months, so I can fully budget:

rent
utility bills
council tax
phone
bus pass/travel
Union Subs
S&S ISA
Credit card (13th)
eBay
savings
Food
Car
TOTAL

Current Account Balance

wages
--
You need to budget a minimum for £50pm car related things, repairs, MOT, service will be a minimum of £200, MOT is about £50.
---
When I was getting myself out of the situation I was in, I lived by a cash rule.

Wages - bills/debts/savings etc = my free money

My free money ÷ 4 or 5 Fridays = my weekly allowance for food / going out / petrol (I used a bus pass for work and my car the weekend) and I would take that weekly allowance out each Friday, after no time at all I was taking less out as I still had money in my purse from the previous week allowance, then I wasn't taking anything out.

Working example £1000 income - £800 bills etc = £200 monthly allowance ÷ by 4 fridays = £50 PW for food / fun / clothes.

--
You have recognised there is an issue and now are taking steps to sort it out. That is a good thing!

If you do a spreadsheet, break your spends down further and identify each aspect, so use the SOA as a starting point and adapt your personal version to your circumstances.