New here, desperate to get out of debt

TheSpectator

Why are you paying more 'so your partner can get on top of her own debts', when you are in such a position yourself?

And what is 'family member credit card'?

greenglove

dawnybabes said:

Will your partner still be able to pay that when she starts maternity leave ? 

When she starts mat leave she will get:

• 8 weeks' full pay, less any Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) or Maternity Allowance (MA)
• 18 weeks' half pay plus any SMP or MA (providing the total does not exceed full pay)
• 13 weeks' SMP or MA

We have worked out we need to save minimum 10k between now and during the Mat leave to be able to cover her loss of earnings, which at the minute seems quite impossible. We have both recently taken on 2nd jobs to hopefully be able to both save this amount though,

greenglove

@kimwp thank you! From the 6 month review I did, the average spend on groceries by me alone was about 250, then 50-100 on takeaways! 

kimwp

greenglove said:

@kimwp thank you! From the 6 month review I did, the average spend on groceries by me alone was about 250, then 50-100 on takeaways! 

Ok, so that's roughly what I spend for me and I buy organic, but don't eat meat or alcohol, so unless you can look at your receipts and select items that you are going to not buy, or buy cheaper versions of (and can quantify that), I suggest you only knock £50 off that. If you can consistently spend less than that every month for next 3-4 months, then great, and you can update your SOA with your new spend, but for now, put £200 as your individual grocery budget and £50 as your takeaway budget as reducing to those amounts will take some effort and conscious spending, but are manageable budgets. Start with meal planning, aiming to have no food waste and seeing if you can buy cheaper versions of what you normally buy. 

I think though, you may be in dmp or other debt management territory. Your total debt isn't a huge amount, but if you were to throw that £225* at reducing your debt capital, it would take five years to pay it off (during which it is likely that you will need to buy yourself or the baby clothes) and you are about to have a significant reduction in income. Fatbelly or sourcrates are the ones I'd look to for thinking on this, but my feeling is that you may be better to stop paying all of your debts and instead save towards covering maternity leave and building an emergency fund.

* Edited to say that I chose £225 as that's pretty much the excess that you have after your outgoings.

kimwp

I forgot to ask - what is entertainment, is that dinners out?

greenglove

Thank you all. I need to pay the extra £225 towards the joint account because of the difference in earnings between me and my partner, there is no way around this so I won’t be able to change that.

I really want to avoid a DMP. It has taken years to get rid of the negative markers from all of the previous payday loans on my credit file and I feel like a DMP would be a huge step backwards. If it is possible to avoid that then I would much prefer that.

the entertainment section covered things like gifts, pub, dinners out - on my 6 month review this was sitting at about 300 per month.

the 2nd job I have got will add about £500 per month to my income - if I throw this at debt and get it cleared more quickly perhaps I could then use the excess disposable income when it is paid off to use towards the mat leave shortfall?

I also have this 0% Barclay card which I haven’t transferred anything to yet. I can’t use it for either of the loans because they can’t be paid off with a cc, but I could move the Tesco card to this?

Thank you all

kimwp

When does your partner go on mat leave?

greenglove

She goes in April 2025

warby68

I don't think you can avoid looking at your finances jointly if you are going to get to a truly realistic budget. If you are having to 'subsidize' your partner now, then surely that will increase when maternity leave kicks in and its only a few months away. You have quite a lot of work to do already in reducing the spend in some categories which still look quite tight imo. Also is your partner breaking even or is her debt creeping up as well?

I'm also suspecting you may need to prioritise saving/covering maternity over debt in some way - not exactly sure how much until you run some forward looking numbers - perhaps see how much your essential bills are versus your joint income which will start to change month on month to start seeing what your surplus for debt really is.

Well done on the 2nd job - its a nice amount to add to the pot.

FlorayG

Hi this looks much more realistic I notice 2 things;
£8 a month on petfood? What do you have, a hamster? ( Your pet insurance payments belie this, more likely a cat or dog surely?) Are you sure this is correct?
Second, I'm not in any sort of debt and there's no way I spend anything like £150 a month on eating out and entertaining. I HAVE been seriously broke in the past and this was my solution; Let your REAL friends know your situation and invite them to your house for a drink and a meal or explain that you absolutely can't afford to eat out and let them pay for you if they want to and can easily afford it. That's what real friends are for. Anyone you would not ever consider explaining your situation to isn't a real friend in my book.
Remember this isn't forever - only until you have cleared the debt. You can take them all out to celebrate when you have spare money again once the debt is gone