I'm struggling...

enthusiasticsaver

Let me tell you straight away that getting a loan would not help you. In fact it would make it worse.  Straight away I can see some savings on your soa.  Your groceries is far too  high for one adult and two children.  You could easily halve that by meal planning or using Lidls or Aldi.  The satellite and cable tv package could be reduced.  £122 is one of the highest I have seen especially as your mobile phone is also high and you pay separately for internet. Is that £250 under child related expenses the money you pay your mum? You cannot afford to subsidise her and even if your son has special needs presumably he is at school normally?  Why does it not show as £300 if that is what you pay her? Ideally she needs to reduce that further.   What interest rate is the furniture payment at or is it interest free?  What is that £65 insurance cost?

There are some gaps on the soa.  You have a relatively cheap car so you need to be saving for maintenance costs and you need some emergency savings so you do not have to use the credit card.  Are you claiming the single persons  council tax deduction? I appreciate money is tight but I think things will improve if you get your mum to charge a more realistic childcare cost as your  children are secondary school age, the furniture loan goes and you are more careful with the grocery spends. 

Drawingaline

Your food bill is crippling you. We spend £650 as a family of six and I know that is high! You should be able to halve you food bill. Lots of ways to do it, but you need to make the decision to get organised with it. 

If you can halve the food bill and get rid of the TV package (we only have Netflix and YouTube these days) you would have £400 spare. This can be used to save for Xmas, emergency and starting to get the o/d down. 

Start there and see how you got it won't be an easy fix, but small steps will get you there. The suggestion of opening a new bank account and transfering your bills in order to treat your o/d as a debt to repay is also a good idea. 

Purplelady65

I agree with enthusiasticsaver that your grocery bill could be significantly reduced. If you look on some of the other threads on the MSE forum there is lots of information on how people are feeding families on less than £300 per month. Meal planning, batch cooking and bulking out meat with lentils and beans seem to be popular things to do to reduce food bills. I also agree re the satellite cable tv - that looks really high. Could you reduce to the basic package and maybe supplement with a Disney or netflix? Could you change your mobile phone to a sim only or are you in a contract? Your car insurance also seems high - could that be reduced? You don’t have anything listed for petrol. Does the other insurance category cover your house and contents insurance? Re the childcare as your daughter is 15 is it just your son who requires supervision? It does seem quite a high amount to be paying out if your son is at school during the day and if your mum is covering only a few days after school rather than every week day. I appreciate you’re also trying to help your mum out but are there any alternatives? Could he go to an after school club? Are you registered for the  childcare government scheme so you’re not paying tax on the childcare? Finally the amount the children’s dad is paying for the children is very low but I’m assuming that as the contribution to your son is enforced that you’ve gone through the CSA and that’s the amount they calculated. 

Mellee79

What appears as the food bill is where I put my monthly credit card for essential so everything such as food and fuel is spent on there. £600 isnt just on food.

I cant reduce the payment to my mum. She paid the deposit for my house. If she hadnt done that she would have money behind her but we didnt know then that all her income would die with my dad. She gets some benefit but it doesn't cover everything. Then she has fuel costs and food costs and activity cost plus some clothing costs as well as having my son 3/4nights per week. The money is in part for that and in part to help her as she helped me.

My sky package is for tv/landline/broadband. It started off at £68 and has been rising year on year. It only just went up to £122 a few months back. I have Netflix (which I put in as internet)
What is entered as 'mobile' is for 2 phone contracts- mine and my daughter's.

Insurance- I dont have to pay buildings insurance. I dont have contents insurance. I have mobile phone and essential appliances covered. 

The money under child expenditure is to account for school meals and my son goes to boys SEN club once a week for £10.

The furniture stuff is 0% I wouldn't have got any credit of that sort if I had to pay interest. I'm pretty sure those are ending later this year.

enthusiasticsaver

Unfortunately if you cannot reduce the amount you pay to your mum any further and that £600 cannot be reduced then the only ways I think you can save is to get rid of the appliances insurance which is notoriously expensive but that means you need to save up some emergency money to replace anything essential.  I would try and get the tv/phone/bb package down in cost as that is high.  Beyond that it is only when the debt is gone and you are not paying out £500+ a month in repayments that you will get money back in your pocket to spend on other stuff.  Or increase income. The overdraft is really one you should tackle first as they are expensive and can be withdrawn at any time. 

kimwp

The more accurate you can be with your SOA, the more likely people here will be able to offer useful advice. If you're struggling, then a £122 non- essential would be a good place to start cutting costs.

kimwp

Another thought- packed lunches (sandwiches and fruit) would save you another £200.

Mellee79

I tried to do packed lunches but then found it hard to provide the healthy meal daily that my kids should get due to me workin, my daughter back and to from her dad's and my son was receiving free school meals and that worked well (but they didnt stay free). My food bill obviously was higher as well. 
I just feel trapped. That SOA thing was quite hard to fill in as I wasnt sure where to put the outgoings and I dont have specific amounts each month that are spent and defined as 'food', 'fuel' etc as those things are paid on the credit card and the bill is averaging £600 a month for both fuel and food. Other items such as clothes are also purchased during a food shop. I had been giving myself £200 allowance a month in a separate account that was for miscellaneous spends such as coffee with a friend, cards and gifts. I stopped that last year during lockdown and have not been in a position to have miscellaneous spends. 

This side of the year is toughest as I have the children's birthdays, MOT due, my niece's birthday and then my mums Birthday and xmas and then my other niece's birthday and then my brother's! So I'm usually on an even by March/April for 2 or 3 months. The child tax credits reducing and then stopping is what has caused the hardship. 

I will call Sky as I think my bill doubling is outrageous. I will be looking at my gas/electric deal and pretty sure my car insurance is due for renewal soon too.

TheAble

Here's a few things I would do, were I in your shoes.

1. £5 SIM only deals for you and you daughter. Saving £42
2. Cancel the sky and the Netflix. You don't need a landline. Get a £20/month internet only deal. Saving £100. If after a while you find you're totally bored with Freeview, iPlayer, itv player, all4, 5od, YouTube and yours and your friends' respective dvd collections then you may consider reintroducing the basic Netflix package.
3. I'll assume you're spending £150/month on fuel; £450 on food. You can get that food bill down to £300. Saving £150.
4. You're spending £210/month on school lunches. Cut that in half and they can take a packed lunch half the time (which is what we do). Saving around £75/month.

So that's the best part of £400 right there, just for starters. You see it can be done. And maybe with close examination you may find a bunch of other savings to be had.

Of course, in a broader sense, a 90 mile round commute 3-4 times a week is awful. If you can somehow bring your work closer to you I think you'd have a much better quality of life. Maybe explore some options as to how this might be achieved.

kimwp

Mellee79 said:

I tried to do packed lunches but then found it hard to provide the healthy meal daily that my kids should get due to me workin, my daughter back and to from her dad's and my son was receiving free school meals and that worked well (but they didnt stay free). My food bill obviously was higher as well. 
I just feel trapped. That SOA thing was quite hard to fill in as I wasnt sure where to put the outgoings and I dont have specific amounts each month that are spent and defined as 'food', 'fuel' etc as those things are paid on the credit card and the bill is averaging £600 a month for both fuel and food. Other items such as clothes are also purchased during a food shop. I had been giving myself £200 allowance a month in a separate account that was for miscellaneous spends such as coffee with a friend, cards and gifts. I stopped that last year during lockdown and have not been in a position to have miscellaneous spends. 

This side of the year is toughest as I have the children's birthdays, MOT due, my niece's birthday and then my mums Birthday and xmas and then my other niece's birthday and then my brother's! So I'm usually on an even by March/April for 2 or 3 months. The child tax credits reducing and then stopping is what has caused the hardship. 

I will call Sky as I think my bill doubling is outrageous. I will be looking at my gas/electric deal and pretty sure my car insurance is due for renewal soon too.

Can your mother help with making the packed lunches? A cheese salad sandwich and a couple of pieces of fruit is perfectly healthy and shouldn't add £200 to the grocery bill.

Very few people find the SoA quick to fill in - it's going to be difficult to separate out clothes that you bought with groceries, unless you kept the receipts but your credit card statements will have each purchase separately listed.

When you call Sky - cancel it (as per @TheAble's message), don't try to haggle it down - you are paying for lots of things you don't need.

If you are struggling for money, then you need to spend less (or very little) on presents - they are not a necessity. There are plenty of ideas on the internet for no or low spend gifts.

As you are a single parent and away from home long hours, you will find some of these things difficult, but the reality is that unless you cut back so that your income is less than your outgoings, you are going to spiral into more debt and end up on some sort of debt management plan (DMP/IVA) where you will need to cut back in the ways advised but also with debt markers on your financial records for at least six years.