Debt Advice

Willing2Learn

@Spurs70 - Welcome to the forum 

My thoughts on your SOA:


Are your council tax payments spread across 10 or 12 months?
Are your water rates payments spread across 10 or 12 months?  Is your water metered?
You don't use any gas, so I'm guessing your water and heating are electric?
Your mobile costs are way too high.  Are you stuck in a contract?  (You can get SIM-only contracts for less than a tenner/month)
Satellite/Cable costs are too high @ £60/month.  Is this luxury affordable?
Groceries is a bit high.  Do you live anywhere near a discounter such as Lidl or Aldi?  Do you batch cook?
Can you really afford to be putting aside £50/month toward holidays?  Maybe you could reallocate this money elsewhere in your budget?
Are all your unsecured debts really at 0% APR?

Spurs70

Hi sorry im not so sure on the aprs.

Mobiles are still contracted
water is over 12 month
gas and electric is joint.
groceries is including nappies for  my children cleaning stuff etc
tv does include internet and Netflix.
holiday wise your right i could put this towards something else.

Spurs70

Has anybody got any thoughts of what u should do
should i stop paying these debts bar the car payment.

EimearF

i dont think you have a choice. You dont have the money to pay them without incurring further debt. 
If you can pull together and emergency fund of a few hundred.
Speak to stepchange about a DMP and see if you can arrange token payments on the unsecured debt. there are a few cutbacks you can make from your budget but not anything that will allow you to make your payments in full. 

Spurs70

Hi
thank for your advice
i wil just do that.

figjamjoanne

Hello,
I was hoping for a bit of advice. Due to working aboard for over 10 years I didn’t have a good credit score as I didn’t have any credit cards or debt to show I had made any payment, this in turn had a knock on effect when I bought my house with a high APR of 4.9% rather than the 1.54% that I was initially offered. I am in a position now to change my mortgage providor and have received a bonus of £4500 . I currently have an overdraft of £5500 and 5 credit cards with varying amounts in them. Would the best option be to use my bonus and pay off 4 cards totally and close them and the rest go towards the overdraft or to spread the money about? I am looking for the best option that will raise my credit score in order to get me a better mortgage deal so that I can get at least £200 less than the £950 pm I’m paying but will then be able to make overpayments.
thanks for any advice.

Naomim

I'm not sure about the mortgage application but I'd say the overdraft is the most important as the bank can withdraw this facility at any time. Just prior to the Coronavirus stuff starting, bank overdrafts were about to hit 40% interest which I guess is much higher than your credit card interest fees. It's probably best to get out of the overdraft and not rely on it.

Naomim

figjamjoanne

Thanks. I think I’ve been lucky at the moment and my bank haven’t brought in the overdraft charges yet due to COVID-19 but I was hoping that with a new remortgage I would be able to access extra funds for a house extension and pay off the overdraft as well