New To Budgeting And Clearing my 3 credit cards debt

laura_lau

linz said:

Hi, if you copy and paste your SOA in here, people will come along and suggest savings for you. Do you do Prolific.co surveys? It's a great way of making a little bit of extra money. I'm not sure if there's a waiting list at the moment though, but you could take a look at the site. Do you use Airtime Rewards? LNER are on there. You could book your train ticket through them and you'd get 8% cashback which you can put towards your mobile phone bill. Lots of other retailers also on there too. You link your cards to the app and the cashback just mounts up.

Thank you so much for your suggestions! I have had an extremely stressful week between work and home, and I just didn't have the mental capacity to come and respond. I used the online calculator but somehow it doesn't look extremely accurate, as I find it doesn't you in as much details as the Budget Planner about all your actual outgoing. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Anyway, I think I'll paste here the results from the budget planner, since it seems more accurate.

I did try and sign up for Prolific but there was a waiting list. I have signed up to the waiting list, but no luck yet. I am part of a Nielsen panel, and apparently you get gift cards and vouchers when you log your weekly shopping, but I have only done it twice so far, so I am not eligible yet to any rewards, but hopefully it should help. I did not know Airtime rewards, so I will have a look if my trainline is on there. We do have a cashback and rewards website as a work benefit and I have saved quite a bit of money through it, but I often forget to check. I can get reloadable cards at a discounted price, which I can use to do the weekly shopping, and somehow I completely forgot about that, so I will be more on it from now on. Thank you for your suggestion!

laura_lau

outoftheviciouscircle said:

Hello, I have just read through your diary and wish you the best of luck.
Obviously until you can get that £255 overspend to £0 you are never going to become debt free. Are you paying the minimums on your credit cards or a larger amount. If you are paying above the minimum then it may be an idea to start paying less until you are not reliant on credit. Seeing the debt figure go down is motivating even if its small. Otherwise as others have said you will need to try and find additional income to cover the shortfall if the aim is to become debt free.
You still have to enjoy life while attempting to become debt free but when you buy something thats a want rather than a need you just have to really think 'what do I want more'

Thank you so much for going through it! So, the 255 overspend is a bit of a tricky one, because it includes budgeting for things such as Christmas, holidays, eating out, etc, but obviously until I am within my means I can't really do that as much as I'd like. So for now I've reduced the amount I should actually put away based on my current (past) spending, which I've often financed through the credit cards, but until I can afford it, I can't actually use that money because I effectively do not have it. I think this was a good wake up call regarding that, because I never really stopped and thought about it, I always assumed that I wasn't spending more than what I earned. I think your advise about "something that's a want rather than a need" really sums it up for quite a big part of my finances.

I also haven't specified the amounts of some family debts that I have been regularly paying back or allocating money towards. One of them, is a 50 pounds a month, which will finish in November, so from December the 255 will become 205. From October I will be spending 10 pounds less for broadband, as I am switching to a cheaper provider, so that will bring it down to 195.
Until I can afford it, those 195 mean that, until I finish paying the other family debt of 200 a month, I can not allocate money to fun and frolics spending (hobby, eating out, holidays), which, according to my calculations, should happen at some point between April and June. 
I must also add that this doesn't take into account my annual performance bonus, which is never much, sadly, but it should be able to cover the last few instalments of the mentioned family debt. I didn't count it in the total because I never really know how much it is, and sometimes it can actually be zero, depending on the company's performance (as it was 3 years ago), so I'd rather not count on it to budget, and if it comes in it's going to be a massive help, but if it doesn't come in or is much smaller than the previous year, it doesn't set me back in my plans. I hope this makes sense, it is really way more difficult to explain these details than I thought it would be!

About my credit cards: I am paying the minimum on 2 of them, and on the third one I am paying a higher amount every month. This is because the 0% rate on that one will be the first to expire, so I wanted to possibly repay that one the quickest.

laura_lau

This is the SOA calculated from the website:

Secured & HP Debts[/b] Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR Mortgage...................... 168580...(1004).....3.71[b] Total secured & HP debts...... 168580....-.........-   [/b] [b]Unsecured Debts[/b] Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR Credit Card 1..................4334.3....128.8.....0 Credit Card 2..................4577.51...50........0 Credit Card 3..................4991.92...200.......0[b] Total unsecured debts..........13903.73..378.8.....-  [/b] Monthly Budget Summary[/b]

Total monthly income.................... 2,787.75

Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 2,331.21

Available for debt repayments........... 456.54

Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 378.8[b]

Amount left after debt repayments....... 77.74[/b]

laura_lau

New month, new balance sheet. Salary arrived last week, divided money (provisionally) into pots for planned expense by category, and left the correct amount on the main account where all direct debits happen, so I don't have to worry about there being enough money to cover next day's payments (obviously I will check regularly).

For the remaining money from the salary I've set up a pot for other necessary expenses (travelling, groceries) and another for anything that has to be bought with urgency in the month but for which I haven't made provisions, then I divided the (little) leftover across work lunches/snacks/coffees, a pot for holiday/Christmas/other celebrations and dentist and hairdresser (I have a visit to the hygienist next month and trying to budget for it so I don't have to use the credit card, and I was hoping to go to the hairdresser for my birthday later this month, we'll see).

I'm feeling better than I felt one month ago about this, at least I have a plan and trying to stick to it, but the month is still long.

So, for the proper update:

• mortgage, mortgage protection, council tax, vet monthly plan have gone through on Monday
• mobile phone has gone through yesterday
• automatically set aside in good percentage savings account money to family debt repayment

Upcoming:

• CC1 payment (£200) on 15/10
• CC2 payment (£47.73) on 10/10
• CC3 payment (£130.29) on 24/10
• Service charge on 10/10
• Internet on 10/10
• Gas and electricity on 6/10
• Pet insurance on 11/10

I also joined the NSD October challenge, and I'm on day 3 today!

Sarahwithlove

Do you have facility to do overtime at work? Anything you can sell? 

laura_lau

Sarahwithlove said:

Do you have facility to do overtime at work? Anything you can sell? 

My contract doesn't contemplate overtime. Every time that I need to work later or start earlier or skip my lunch break, is just gone. I take the time back unofficially, but that's it. 
I am selling lots of stuff on second hand app, I've sold quite a lot of things in the past couple of years, and I have a quite a few listings active, but it's slow. I did sell 2 items last week, for a total of £14 pounds. 

I do some freelance work whenever it comes in, but it has been very quiet for the past month. It usually picks up again closer to the holidays, so it might be fairly quiet for at least another month.

I have started making handmade things to sell, which is part of my hobby, and I am booked in for a stall in a Christmas craft fair in my town in December, so I hope this can be the beginning of something that can support me on the side.

Once I get to February I will be in a much better situation, as the "non credit card debts" will be repaid by then.

stymied

Hi,

Would giffgaff work for your phone usage? https://www.giffgaff.com/help/articles/when-do-i-get-eu-roaming-included

Does the hygienist trip give you value or could you skip it this time?