Converting salary from monthly to weekly

monetxchange

AbundantBudget wrote: »

I would rather pay for my son to go to the gym and play sport than be on street acquiring bad habits. I started to work at 16 myself but it didn't help me to be wiser with the financial decisions. My LBM happened only after I was drowning with payday loans. Luckily managed to reclaim thousands and thousands of interest paid to them and change my financial habits for good.

Rather to cancel the gym membership I'd visit Debtcamel website and look at the 'Reclaim payday loan interest' section on this Forum and start to reclaim interest from SafetyNet.

I don’t see how it’s an either/or. Yes, the OP should look into reclaiming missold payday perhaps. But how does that then lead to her not getting son to pay for his own gym membership? You said it yourself you were bad with money at 16, so surely it’s the perfect time to instil in him how to be good with money and budget for what he wants. Reclaiming from payday loans is a nice bonus, but not a sustainable financial plan going forward, everybody in the family would benefit from living to a budget.

Sarahwithlove

How many phones do you have in your household? Are they contracts? Could they become sim only? Also you mentioned data plans? What are they for? You have broadband at home why are you not using this instead? You need to get everyone in your household on board with this debt busting and that means the kids too. There are cheap ways to get protein into your kids then having meat. Also the teenagers should be old enough to make their own packed lunches especially if you are working. Could you make one of the older children's chores to be to make packed lunch for the youngest as well as their own? Maybe allow them to have school lunches once a week as a treat?

EssexHebridean

AbundantBudget wrote: »

I would rather pay for my son to go to the gym and play sport than be on street acquiring bad habits.

That's fine for you - but perhaps you are in a rather different place financially than the OP currently is. Their situation is currently really serious - and it needs tackling now before it deteriorates to a place where straightforward interventions like those being suggested here will no longer be effective.

AbundantBudget wrote: »

I started to work at 16 myself but it didn't help me to be wiser with the financial decisions.

Perhaps not - but that alongside some financial education might well have done! I started working at 13 - with a paper round and various other jobs - at that stage my parents quite rightly stopped giving me pocket money - so I quickly learned the value of things I wanted to buy -v- hours needed to work to pay for them. Not saying that I haven't made financial mistakes over the years, because I definitely have - but the skills I learned from 13 - 20 certainly meant that I was able to correct those mistakes far quicker later than had I not had that experience of learning financial responsibility.

AbundantBudget wrote: »

Rather to cancel the gym membership I'd visit Debtcamel website and look at the 'Reclaim payday loan interest' section on this Forum and start to reclaim interest from SafetyNet.

Firstly - you will notice that what I suggested to the OP was that they cancel the gym membership "or at least tell their son that they had". Two different things.

Secondly - the advice about the possibility of Payday loan reclaims is good - but it's never good practice to rely on a reclaim like that instead of putting in short term work to fix the issues that are currently causing problems. Reclaiming will take a while, and the OP needs to take action now - not kick the can down the road on the basis that "they might be able to get something back" later. If something goes against them and they DON'T subsequently get anything back on reclaim they will be an awful lot worse off a few months down the line if they've not started getting the overspending under control now!

combeferret

Did I read correctly that your son has two gym memberships and goes to rugby training? As someone who used to spend £300 a month on fitness (aerial classes, pole classes, and gym membership) it was incredible for my fitness, but could I have done it cheaper? Of course! Especially as your son's sport is rugby, he really doesn't need anything fancy to do strength training with. When I have to cut back expenses, I sign up to Pure Gym for a couple of months at a fraction of the cost. If he wants the bells and whistles, he's going to have to pay for it himself.

On_my_way

Sarahwithlove said:

How many phones do you have in your household? Are they contracts? Could they become sim only? Also you mentioned data plans? What are they for? You have broadband at home why are you not using this instead? You need to get everyone in your household on board with this debt busting and that means the kids too. There are cheap ways to get protein into your kids then having meat. Also the teenagers should be old enough to make their own packed lunches especially if you are working. Could you make one of the older children's chores to be to make packed lunch for the youngest as well as their own? Maybe allow them to have school lunches once a week as a treat?

Agreed- depending on the age of your younger child I would tell them that you have spent too much money lately and need to cut back. They are likely to understand. You don't need to say it in a scary way but you do need everyone on board with this. 

chkir

Some great advise here people thanks, you are right that I absolutely do have enough money coming in, I just need to manage it a lot lot better! 

Slightly harsh on my 15 year old! He can’t get a job for another month when he turns 16 which he is excited to do and he’s a lovely boy who doesn’t expect anything from us. He doesn’t hang around the streets or cause problems, he goes to school then the gym and plays rugby and also has a lovely group of friends from these activities, I would like to encourage this. As for ‘bank of mum and dad’ he’s 15 and absolutely knows exactly how much things cost and is very grateful.

Sarahwithlove

chkir said:

Some great advise here people thanks, you are right that I absolutely do have enough money coming in, I just need to manage it a lot lot better! 

Slightly harsh on my 15 year old! He can’t get a job for another month when he turns 16 which he is excited to do and he’s a lovely boy who doesn’t expect anything from us. He doesn’t hang around the streets or cause problems, he goes to school then the gym and plays rugby and also has a lovely group of friends from these activities, I would like to encourage this. As for ‘bank of mum and dad’ he’s 15 and absolutely knows exactly how much things cost and is very grateful.

What about school lunches? I understand you wanting him to have good hobbies etc but this is a simple and small change that he could make without much sacrifice and he is old enough that he can make his own and his siblings especially if he is going to keep his activities. By his age I was making my own packed lunches and doing my own laundry and cooking dinner once a week for my family to help take some pressure off. 

warby68

I don't think the spend on son is excessive for his age - they are good hobbies.
Its a relatively small amount in the overall scheme of things and I agree it would be harsh to pick on him first when there is a whole host of other lifestyle choices which parents have made (£700 on cars, £200+ on phones) which are stretching things in a much bigger way.
I'm not saying its wrong to pay part of your way if you want luxuries at a young age but nor is it wrong for parents to fund a couple of activities for school age children.
Obviously if problems can't be fixed its in the mix, just seems a harsh 'early' choice to make. 
I think a full SoA is needed here to help with a plan of action that is a bit less scattergun. Reducing wages by £700 for 2 cars was a shocker to me but didn't come out at first. There's a good family income here but some serious overspending going on and OP admits that they don't have a handle on their budget at all yet.

MerryGoRoundAvoider

For me it's taken years to have a watertight realistic budget. It's hard as you have 4 week months and 5 week months, some months with more fuel usage etc and some with less. And I'd say I'm pretty good with money. It sounds like you are at the beginning of your budgeting journey. I know it looks like a total PITA but honestly, when you sort it out it's brilliant and you know exactly what you can afford ... there's zero guesswork. 

Now we're not hard up at all but we did find we'd jettison tons of money on a food shop for the first few weeks of the month and then inevitably run out towards the end of the month, which was annoying and stressful.  Budgeting weekly for that has been great (create savings accounts for each of the weeks in the month and withdraw it into your current account at the beginning of that week when you go to do the shopping). For months with only 4 weeks you save a bit more which goes towards the 5 week months that cost more. So for us £100pw tends to be reasonable and we put aside £430 per month. It's not totally perfect but if you overspend you immediately know about it. HTH.

monetxchange

I think things have been slightly sidetracked with the stuff about the son's memberships. I don't think anyone was suggesting it was completely unreasonable and you had to stop them immediately and it would solve all your financial problems. It was more people challenging the response that "nothing" could be adjusted at all in that category, when in reality it was several gym memberships that weren't exactly all essential/something that the OP had to pay forever. I think it's always good to question where you can cut costs in any category and what the plan is going forward.

To reshift the focus, what's the story on the cars? It's a huge amount to pay on a relatively tight income. And the school lunches? It's a lot to pay when either your partner or one of the older kids could take charge of doing the packed lunches. All these little changes cumulatively really could add up to giving you so much more spare income a month and take the pressure off some.