Help please

kimwp

Gh099004 said:

Hey Kim, thank you for your advice. My food bill is high because I'm trying to eat really healthy as it just helps me stay on a good path with the gym and keeps me occupied and food prices have gotten out of hand. All of my debt is litterally all from drugs unfortunately. All of the transactions are just cash withdrawals. Ive just filled out all of the step change forms online and I'm going to call them in the morning. I'm just going to make sure I get life right this time and take this as a very hard lesson. 

Thanks for everybody's help and advice and I hope you all have a lovely week. 

Many thanks

Sounds good - just a note to make sure the gym fees are in your SOA. And enough for at least a minor car service every year with a major service every third year.

RAS

Basically, you're good but you need to add in a lot of other costs.

Car parking, clothes, entertainment, holidays, emergency fund?

You have a mortgage and nothing for house maintenance?

Appreciate you want to clear your debts but you need to be realistic, or you will be demoralised.

Meantime, good on you and best wishes.

Ebe_Scrooge

Gh099004 said:

For some reason Soa link just says whoops when trying to post but I have screen shot. It's 2 parts. Thanks for helping me. Very kind of all of you. Also I make about 200 extra on top a month but it's not guarenteed it's just delivering food. So I can't bank on it. 

A couple of things that stand out for me in your SOA.

You groceries bill is high for 1 person.  "Eating healthily" needn't equate to "expensive" - actually, the reverse should be true.  Get yourself down to Aldi/Lidl, you'll find plenty of fresh fruit & veg, lean meat, pulses, whatever floats your boat, for much less than the "big 4" supermarkets.

You need to factor in car maintenance (and probably parking?) if you own the car.

No buildings insurance?  (Or is that covered by the leasehold payments?)

Water rates - a single person will often find a water meter cheaper.  Not sure if that option is available to you, but may be worth looking into.

Just a few thoughts that hopefully may be helpful.

RAS

You need clothing, car maintenance, parking and an emergency fund. You live in a leasehold flat and could be asked to find money for work, anytime. You need a basic fund to support that.

Your food costs are huge. You can cover the deficit in your budget and those extra spends by trimming that and concentrating on pulses and vegetables. With some yellow sticker protein.

Do you have a basic bank account set up that is not associated with any of your current creditors or their group of banks? If not organise that fast. Do not do it as a switch, as that transfers all your existing DDs.

Than move over your salary, and your utility DDs etc. 

Are the APRs definitely 0%? Are they fixed term cards? You need the APRs now, or at the end of the fixed term, plus the end dates of any deals. It's going to be about put any spare like your delivery money into paying off the debt, bit by bit.

But do you understand how you got into this situation?

EssexHebridean

I agree about the groceries - although there can be situations where eating healthily can be difficult and costly for people, as you have a car, that's less likely to be an issue for you as you presumably have access to a range of shopping options?

Aldi & Lidl - if you have those - both do their offers weekly or fortnightly on fresh fruit and veg - when you meal plan, try to plan your meals around the fruit and veg you're likely to be able to easily purchase for a good price - if for example there are potatoes, carrots, onions and maybe a swede, that might suggest cooking up a big pot of stew which would do several days. Morrisons is great for British meat if you're a meat eater. If you have an indian or turkish supermarket anywhere about then check out their big bags of dried pulses - beans and lentils are super-good for you, usually extremely budget friendly and can be frozen once cooked in user-friendly portion sizes. A tip for speeding up the cooking is to soak whichever you choose at least overnight first as that starts them absorbing water. You can also get well priced herbs and spices in those shops as well. You don't need to buy "organic" - it's no more healthy than any other form of fruit and veg, and there is also now a lot of questions being asked over whether it's ethically better, too. Also avoid fads - coconut oil is just oil (and indeed has more "bad" cholesterol than rapeseed IIRC) , honey is sugar by another name, and "superfoods" is just a label that means an uplift in price, and the brain needs carbs to work at it's optimum level.   It's easy to get sucked in to what is being said online about how we should be eating - a little nutritional study if you haven't already done so can be a complete game changer - Dr Joshua Wolrich has written an excellent book debunking lots of the myths around food and eating - and also touching on some of the barriers that exist around healthy eating too - it's called "Food isn't medicine" - you may be able to reserve it from the library if interested. 

Ebe_Scrooge

RAS said:

But do you understand how you got into this situation?

I think the OP understands the cause of the situation.  As per their opening post: "I have got most the debt because I formed a bad drug habit which I'm aware is my fault but I want my life back".

But I do agree with the excellent advice you've offered in your reply.