Debt stressing me out, can't sleep!

Grumpelstiltskin

When you have your own house you do have to have an emergency fund in place because emergencies do happen.

You seriously need to decide about your life style, private medication is it needed not wanted also contact lenses, needed not wanted and are they the cheapest you can get, furniture can you get secondhand?


Life is about compromises,.

sapphire193

Grumpelstiltskin said:

When you have your own house you do have to have an emergency fund in place because emergencies do happen.

You seriously need to decide about your life style, private medication is it needed not wanted also contact lenses, needed not wanted and are they the cheapest you can get, furniture can you get secondhand?


Life is about compromises,.

I mean, I don’t spend £200 a month on medication for fun lol 

life is about compromises but I don’t particularly want to compromise on being able to see. 

When is it too much? To cut back on everything and … do what? 

sapphire193

kimwp said:

Realised I didn't give practical advice - if your debts are at 0%, then you need to figure out what needs to be saved each month to be able to pay them off. You also need to figure out what you need to save for your new kitchen, new cars and when this is likely to be needed. You should also have some money saved as an emergency fund, that only gets used in a real emergency such as a job loss - three months essential outgoings as a minimum - it looks like you have this already.

Then set up savings accounts, maybe regular savers to get the higher interest rates (though check if these are easy access or will mature before you need the money).

If the amount you need to save each month is less than you have spare, then you can decide whether to save faster or to allocate that money to other things eg an adventure pot. I'd personally wait until you have 

If it gets to the point that you need to spend eg on a new car because a car has broken and not worth fixing, then this gets replaced and you recalculate what you need to be saving each month.

Thanks. That’s helpful. 

I just don’t want to run out of time for living life. We want to start a family but also want to have experiences before we do so and we’re both getting on so just feel very panicked that we will save and save and never have any experiences. 

Altior

Why would anyone want to pay off debt that's yielding at 0% earlier than they have to? 

You just need to be in a position that you know you can pay it off, if needed. In the meantime you can be earning interest on the set aside capital. 

sapphire193

kimwp said:

sapphire193 said:

kimwp said:

Realised I didn't give practical advice - if your debts are at 0%, then you need to figure out what needs to be saved each month to be able to pay them off. You also need to figure out what you need to save for your new kitchen, new cars and when this is likely to be needed. You should also have some money saved as an emergency fund, that only gets used in a real emergency such as a job loss - three months essential outgoings as a minimum - it looks like you have this already.

Then set up savings accounts, maybe regular savers to get the higher interest rates (though check if these are easy access or will mature before you need the money).

If the amount you need to save each month is less than you have spare, then you can decide whether to save faster or to allocate that money to other things eg an adventure pot. I'd personally wait until you have 

If it gets to the point that you need to spend eg on a new car because a car has broken and not worth fixing, then this gets replaced and you recalculate what you need to be saving each month.

Thanks. That’s helpful. 

I just don’t want to run out of time for living life. We want to start a family but also want to have experiences before we do so and we’re both getting on so just feel very panicked that we will save and save and never have any experiences. 

I know what you mean - but if you are 30, you have another 40-60 + years to live life - life doesn't stop at a certain age or when you have children. I have friends that travelled round Asia with their three young children. Admittedly they lived out there for a bit, but that itself is a pretty cool adventure. 

Why don't you start setting £200 aside for adventures and start researching where you want to go. Thailand is fairly affordable, so is Vietnam I think. And try to vary what you do - you could go to a hundred different countries and basically have to same experience - different weather, different sites, but basically no different to being at home looking at the sites on TV. Or you can go volunteer in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand, build houses in Africa, interrail in Europe and work in Australia. Make the most of your time and your money. 

Yes but we won’t be able to afford to do those things when we have children so we either do it now, forgo it completely or don’t have children. Childcare costs alone will wipe out our surplus. 

sapphire193

kimwp said:

sapphire193 said:

kimwp said:

I'm struggling to see what you are anxious about. Is it that you are worried about getting into more debt?

Re your SOA, are you really spending £233 on medical a month?
Also, £1200 is a lot for two adults to spend on presents.

Best to save up before you spend, but your SOA shows a decent surplus, so you can save for the new kitchen. What is making it barely functional?

It's private medication so yes. Also includes contact lense subscription. 

£1200 a year is presents for all of our families, birthday and christmas and presents for each other birthdays christmas. Unfortunately we have big families lol. 

The kitchen is essentially falling apart and we are using plug in appliances as it needs to be completely gutted and re-done. It's fine but it's been hard living like this. Annoyingly the money we had put aside for the kitchen had to go on a new roof instead. 

I'm worried because everytime I save for things, some boring emergency comes along and I'm back to square one. Just wasting my life away by saving and spending on emergencies and repeat. 

Thank you for explaining.

I echo what others are saying - it's about choices - instead of buying furniture on finance, you could have bought two camp chairs and a blow up mattress until you had saved up. 

And you may have a big family, but do you need £1200 of presents a year? Because if you are all spending £1200 on presents, you are all receiving £1200 in presents. I imagine it's mostly stuff that isn't needed and is either adding to the piles of stuff or gets thrown away. (If it goes to a charity shop, it'll probably get thrown away, most of the stuff doesn't get sold) So it might be worth a discussion with your family as to the value that is being gained from this spend and decide to cut back.

I'm not judging your choices, just highlighting that you do have choices that you might not think you do. I think you already are thinking a bit like this - trying to live with your kitchen while you save up and I recognise that it feels a bit miserable that you are having to spend your savings on boring things but honestly it sounds like it's just that you have a lot of big spends (car, roof, kitchen, furniture) at the moment that you won't then have for another 5-10 years. You've got a healthy surplus, even without cutting back and once you get through this period of high outgoings, you'll be on a really good position to save some of your surplus alongside having adventures. 

Why don't you lay out your plan for paying your debts off and saving for new car and kitchen and that will give you some targets to work towards. Also, think of some low cost adventures - inter railing as someone suggested, but also exploring more locally. Good memories are largely due to the people you are with, rather than how far from home you were.

Nothing is low cost anymore. But I’ll lay out a plan. 

I also can’t stop my family from buying presents therefore need (and want to!) get them presents too. I’m not spending £1200 on each person, just £10-20 each and maybe £100 on my partner. 

RAS

So you and your partner need to sit down with the last 6 months statements and work out exactly where that money has gone. Has it gone on essential house stuff or gone on things you just see. Are you mainlining chazzers rather than catalogues?  And are you still trying to socialise as you did before you bought the house?

To put it bluntly furniture is a lot less important right now than essential house repairs. And getting a decent car replacement fund is more important than a holiday.

The roof situation is an example where you maybe need to find a few people who know a bit about houses and stuff. Did the survey identify that the roof needed replacing urgently, or did you get a few leaks and a roofer told you it needed replacing?

Can you re-think the kitchen a bit? If the doors are not closing properly, take them off. Learn how to adjust the hinges and replace if possible. If not, just leave them off. Add a curtain rod to base units if you want to hide clutter. Look for freebie cookers, washing machines, fridge and freezers. Changing a single socket to a double for smaller appliances is easy, as long as you turn the mains off at the board.

There's a lot of comments on the house-buying forum about first time buyers who want to buy an "Air B&B" rather than a fixer up. You need to be patient. Before you think about the kitchen, you probably need to get a decent layout and get that circuit at least re-wired. Or you'll be ripping it all out to solve problems sooner than you want.

You'll get there but it takes time. And you both need to be on the same hymn sheet or it'll not work.

You may also need to agree to a personal monthly allowance, with no other spends from the household budget beyond those agreed for that month. If he wants a couple of pints with mates, and you want that nice duvet set in the chazzer, that's fine. Or you save up for a weekend away with mates, and they don't bother, that's fine. But they don't then get to pay for the weekend from the household budget.

sapphire193

kimwp said:

sapphire193 said:

kimwp said:

sapphire193 said:

kimwp said:

I'm struggling to see what you are anxious about. Is it that you are worried about getting into more debt?

Re your SOA, are you really spending £233 on medical a month?
Also, £1200 is a lot for two adults to spend on presents.

Best to save up before you spend, but your SOA shows a decent surplus, so you can save for the new kitchen. What is making it barely functional?

It's private medication so yes. Also includes contact lense subscription. 

£1200 a year is presents for all of our families, birthday and christmas and presents for each other birthdays christmas. Unfortunately we have big families lol. 

The kitchen is essentially falling apart and we are using plug in appliances as it needs to be completely gutted and re-done. It's fine but it's been hard living like this. Annoyingly the money we had put aside for the kitchen had to go on a new roof instead. 

I'm worried because everytime I save for things, some boring emergency comes along and I'm back to square one. Just wasting my life away by saving and spending on emergencies and repeat. 

Thank you for explaining.

I echo what others are saying - it's about choices - instead of buying furniture on finance, you could have bought two camp chairs and a blow up mattress until you had saved up. 

And you may have a big family, but do you need £1200 of presents a year? Because if you are all spending £1200 on presents, you are all receiving £1200 in presents. I imagine it's mostly stuff that isn't needed and is either adding to the piles of stuff or gets thrown away. (If it goes to a charity shop, it'll probably get thrown away, most of the stuff doesn't get sold) So it might be worth a discussion with your family as to the value that is being gained from this spend and decide to cut back.

I'm not judging your choices, just highlighting that you do have choices that you might not think you do. I think you already are thinking a bit like this - trying to live with your kitchen while you save up and I recognise that it feels a bit miserable that you are having to spend your savings on boring things but honestly it sounds like it's just that you have a lot of big spends (car, roof, kitchen, furniture) at the moment that you won't then have for another 5-10 years. You've got a healthy surplus, even without cutting back and once you get through this period of high outgoings, you'll be on a really good position to save some of your surplus alongside having adventures. 

Why don't you lay out your plan for paying your debts off and saving for new car and kitchen and that will give you some targets to work towards. Also, think of some low cost adventures - inter railing as someone suggested, but also exploring more locally. Good memories are largely due to the people you are with, rather than how far from home you were.

Nothing is low cost anymore. But I’ll lay out a plan. 

I also can’t stop my family from buying presents therefore need (and want to!) get them presents too. I’m not spending £1200 on each person, just £10-20 each and maybe £100 on my partner. 

Yey for making fun plans!!

Btw, in my 20's, I lived and worked in Europe and Canada, travelled a decent amount of Europe and some of Australia and Asia and I spent a decent amount of time in my 30s thinking I should be travelling more like others I knew. But I'm into my 40s now and recognise that there really are diminishing returns from travelling. Which is why I recommend doing different things when you do go travelling, to optimise what you get out of those travels.

Based on your presents numbers, your family is spending roughly £40k per year on presents, hope they are good ones!

Haha how have you worked that out? 

Really confused as to why buying our nieces and nephews birthday and Christmas presents has become such a big thing… as if it’s so weird to buy presents? 

Does no one buy their partner presents for their birthday and Christmas? 

What about having to chip in £10 for each person at work for their presents which is the norm where I work? 

Do you not get invited to weddings and christenings? You need presents for those too… 

I don’t think £1200 a year between 2 people for all this is a lot.

sapphire193

RAS said:

So you and your partner need to sit down with the last 6 months statements and work out exactly where that money has gone. Has it gone on essential house stuff or gone on things you just see. Are you mainlining chazzers rather than catalogues?  And are you still trying to socialise as you did before you bought the house?

To put it bluntly furniture is a lot less important right now than essential house repairs. And getting a decent car replacement fund is more important than a holiday.

The roof situation is an example where you maybe need to find a few people who know a bit about houses and stuff. Did the survey identify that the roof needed replacing urgently, or did you get a few leaks and a roofer told you it needed replacing?

Can you re-think the kitchen a bit? If the doors are not closing properly, take them off. Learn how to adjust the hinges and replace if possible. If not, just leave them off. Add a curtain rod to base units if you want to hide clutter. Look for freebie cookers, washing machines, fridge and freezers. Changing a single socket to a double for smaller appliances is easy, as long as you turn the mains off at the board.

There's a lot of comments on the house-buying forum about first time buyers who want to buy an "Air B&B" rather than a fixer up. You need to be patient. Before you think about the kitchen, you probably need to get a decent layout and get that circuit at least re-wired. Or you'll be ripping it all out to solve problems sooner than you want.

You'll get there but it takes time. And you both need to be on the same hymn sheet or it'll not work.

You may also need to agree to a personal monthly allowance, with no other spends from the household budget beyond those agreed for that month. If he wants a couple of pints with mates, and you want that nice duvet set in the chazzer, that's fine. Or you save up for a weekend away with mates, and they don't bother, that's fine. But they don't then get to pay for the weekend from the household budget.

Wow that’s a lot of assumptions 

ayupmeduck

sapphire193 said:

kimwp said:

sapphire193 said:

kimwp said:

sapphire193 said:

kimwp said:

I'm struggling to see what you are anxious about. Is it that you are worried about getting into more debt?

Re your SOA, are you really spending £233 on medical a month?
Also, £1200 is a lot for two adults to spend on presents.

Best to save up before you spend, but your SOA shows a decent surplus, so you can save for the new kitchen. What is making it barely functional?

It's private medication so yes. Also includes contact lense subscription. 

£1200 a year is presents for all of our families, birthday and christmas and presents for each other birthdays christmas. Unfortunately we have big families lol. 

The kitchen is essentially falling apart and we are using plug in appliances as it needs to be completely gutted and re-done. It's fine but it's been hard living like this. Annoyingly the money we had put aside for the kitchen had to go on a new roof instead. 

I'm worried because everytime I save for things, some boring emergency comes along and I'm back to square one. Just wasting my life away by saving and spending on emergencies and repeat. 

Thank you for explaining.

I echo what others are saying - it's about choices - instead of buying furniture on finance, you could have bought two camp chairs and a blow up mattress until you had saved up. 

And you may have a big family, but do you need £1200 of presents a year? Because if you are all spending £1200 on presents, you are all receiving £1200 in presents. I imagine it's mostly stuff that isn't needed and is either adding to the piles of stuff or gets thrown away. (If it goes to a charity shop, it'll probably get thrown away, most of the stuff doesn't get sold) So it might be worth a discussion with your family as to the value that is being gained from this spend and decide to cut back.

I'm not judging your choices, just highlighting that you do have choices that you might not think you do. I think you already are thinking a bit like this - trying to live with your kitchen while you save up and I recognise that it feels a bit miserable that you are having to spend your savings on boring things but honestly it sounds like it's just that you have a lot of big spends (car, roof, kitchen, furniture) at the moment that you won't then have for another 5-10 years. You've got a healthy surplus, even without cutting back and once you get through this period of high outgoings, you'll be on a really good position to save some of your surplus alongside having adventures. 

Why don't you lay out your plan for paying your debts off and saving for new car and kitchen and that will give you some targets to work towards. Also, think of some low cost adventures - inter railing as someone suggested, but also exploring more locally. Good memories are largely due to the people you are with, rather than how far from home you were.

Nothing is low cost anymore. But I’ll lay out a plan. 

I also can’t stop my family from buying presents therefore need (and want to!) get them presents too. I’m not spending £1200 on each person, just £10-20 each and maybe £100 on my partner. 

Yey for making fun plans!!

Btw, in my 20's, I lived and worked in Europe and Canada, travelled a decent amount of Europe and some of Australia and Asia and I spent a decent amount of time in my 30s thinking I should be travelling more like others I knew. But I'm into my 40s now and recognise that there really are diminishing returns from travelling. Which is why I recommend doing different things when you do go travelling, to optimise what you get out of those travels.

Based on your presents numbers, your family is spending roughly £40k per year on presents, hope they are good ones!

Haha how have you worked that out? 

Really confused as to why buying our nieces and nephews birthday and Christmas presents has become such a big thing… as if it’s so weird to buy presents? 

Does no one buy their partner presents for their birthday and Christmas? 

What about having to chip in £10 for each person at work for their presents which is the norm where I work? 

Do you not get invited to weddings and christenings? You need presents for those too… 

I don’t think £1200 a year between 2 people for all this is a lot.

I do £20 each for my parents, sister, her partner and 2 of the kids, and £20/30 for the niece who has her own family (depending if Christmas or birthday).  My partner gets a meal out, drinks and then maybe I'll buy them something they were going to buy them selves. I don't buy for anyone else, don't have the present issue at work and don't have anyone to invite me to events so I save there lol