SOA - any advice on what to do next? 29 June 2020 at 11:56PM in Debt-Free Wannabe 13 replies 1.4K views

sharpe106

You need to update the SOA, as others have said it does not seem right. Too many 0's.

How come you have managed to save £6,000 whilst one of you is furloughed, yet you have massive debt? i.e what have you been doing right the last few months compared to normal.

fatbelly

tiffaliffers said:

2. The cars aren't on HP, so there's no lump sum to pay at the end, we've gone for the option where we own the car outright at the end. We both need a car as we live in a rural village and commute to different locations. I am also an archaeologist and need the car to access sites, most of which are remote. 

That would be hire purchase then.

If you only own them at the end of the payments it's HP. You cannot sell them but you can voluntarily terminate the agreement and limit your liability to 50%.

https://www.nationaldebtline.org/EW/factsheets/Pages/hire-purchase-debt/hire-purchase-and-conditional-sale.aspx

If you have unsecured loans on them, you own  the cars now and the loans are in  the wrong section of the soa - you can sell the cars now if you wish.

You should check the paperwork that you signed

BabyStepper

The soa needs sorting out properly before we go any further here. Yes there are bits missing, but not all of the ones you pointed out Fatbelly. OP does not have children so there won't be any childcare, etc to pay. The emergency fund is already there, it won't need a regular payment until it gets used and needs topped up. It's not unusual to reduce the holiday budget to zero during debt repayment - with this level of debt, that action will probably be needed. 

But there are other bits, buildings insurance, contents insurance, tv licence, etc. I wondered OP if you pay these in a yearly lump sum and that's why they were missed off? They need to be budgeted for monthly. I also wondered if the car maintenance was paid for your employer (you hadn't confirmed what the loans were for) but clearly not. You might need 2 cars because of living where you do but they don't need to value £10k each, you could cut the debt right down here. 

There's no point figuring out whether to pay off your furniture debt with your lump sum when we don't know if you're solvent or not. I now suspect you're not, so you'll need your £6k to top up your wages until you manage to sell your cars, get second jobs, rent out your spare room, or any one of a load of things you could do to increase your income.#

Let us know how the soa is going.