DMP advice for newbie. Please help

fatbelly

Breathing Space is the colloquial name for the government's formal Debt Respite Scheme. Stepchange campaigned for it, got it, and generally recommend it to their clients

You can ask each creditor for breathing space but it contains no statutory protection.

Not that you need any at the stage you are at. The debt management process is not that scary

moogle87

Hi everyone,

What we owe...
Barclays: £8710
Tesco card 1: £3726
Tesco card 2: £8356
MBNA: £6156
Santander: £2932
M&S: £2443

In my name...
Virgin: £7246
PayPal: £1852

moogle87

Budget...

Joint income £2650 (I'm self employed, so this is based on the lowest I earn)

Mortgage	£484.00
Council tax	£167.00
Life	£30.02
Sky mobile	£45.00
Water	£60.00
TV licence	£15.00
Boiler cover (Scottish Power)	£14.50
Pet insurance - A	£73.00
Pet insurance - E	£73.00
Buildings & Contents (Rias)	£63.12
Octopus	£150.00
Sky (TV, broadband + Netflix)	£85.90
Car insurance (RAC)	£53.64
Car tax	17.06
Prime	11.98
Lebara (data plan)	8
NHS	11.45
Lebara (data plan)	6
Ground rent (Trinity)	15

Food & household	£500.00
Maintenance fund	£50.00
Petrol	£75.00
Prescription & supplements (includes medicinal cannabis)	£200.00
Spending money (Me)	£100.00
Spending money (Hubs)	£100.00
Credit card repayment	£150.00
Cat food & litter	£100.00
Total variable	£1,275.00
Fixed & variable	£2,658.67

[Deleted User]

Pet insurance seems incredibly high to me. Sky and Prime could go saving nearly a £100 a month. Groceries are very high. Possible savings of up to £200 a month there. How many cats do you have that cost £150 a month? You say you have a disability but £200 a month on supplements seems excessive. Perhaps more information on those would help  us understand the cost. 

So possibly £300 a month savings identified. Apologies if I am missing reasons why some costs could not be cut. 

What is Lebara?

RAS

Phone contract, one each?

helensbiggestfan

There's a fair bit of wriggle room there.........food, sky, spending money could all be reduced as a temporary measure.  Also Water bill seems high, are you on a water meter.  How much live tv do you watch.  

Reduce food to £300 ."...............................£200
scrap Sky ...................................................  £86 
reduce spending money to £50 each.         £100
scrap TV licence ........................................... £15 

That's £400 of what should be relatively painless savings. Remember it's not permanent.  You can reassess later.  

Definitely keep the £4500 emergency fund.  

I would probably keep Prime for now, especially if you use Amazon.  

You have a lot of insurance.   Keep the life insurance but maybe you can cut back a bit elsewhere. How old is the boiler.  Are you paying extra on car insurance by paying monthly.  

Is the maintenance fund compulsory.  

Can you shop around for a better deal on your mobiles or are you locked in.  

Prescriptions and supplements seem high.  Do you pay as you go for prescriptions, can you get an annual plan.  Can you buy supplements in bulk.  

Sorry can't advise re stepchange etc.  When I was in debt I managed the debt myself.  I felt more in control that way and had more flexibility but it's understandable that you might be feeling overwhelmed and prefer to leave it to a third party debt management plan.  

Can you talk to the credit card companies and ask them to freeze the interest or does it have to go to default first.  I managed to do that but it was a while ago so dont know if that's an option these days.  

Always prioritise the big 3, mortgage, council tax and utilities.  They are the most important. Plus in your case your medications.  

Default on your mortgage and you risk losing your home, default on council tax and you risk a prison sentence, default on the utilities and you risk services being cut off.  Go without meds and you risk your health.  

After that The next level of priorities is usually food, transport and at least one phone, home insurance (buildings at the bare minimum because its usually a condition of the mortgage),  life insurance (make sure you have enough to cover your outstanding mortgage plus a decent lump sum).  Then pet insurance.  

After that it's a case of seeing what's left and taking it from there.  

Don't panic, one step at a time.  

[Deleted User]

Personally I think the licence fee is good value compared to all the other TV subscriptions. I would keep that and cancel everything else.

helensbiggestfan

 I guess it all depends on one's viewing preferences. 

I have prime, which offers a range of viewing choices as well as free access to books and magazines, plus free delivery on Amazon and deals on Morrisons deliveries - although I dont use Morrisons much.  I pay an annual fee, I think around £90 which I think is pretty good value for all that's on offer.   

I also have "Netflix" light😁 which comes in at £5.99. I don't bother with the premium package, I find the basic is good enough.  I don't need premium sports channels or the like. The two together probably equate to about the same as the BBC licence fee. 

There's also you tube......some really interesting stuff on there, loads of  factual "how to" channels, such as money management, gardening, diy, science stuff - in fact just about any subject you can think of.  I am even managing to learn some maths....... There's films, some really good music channels as well as the news and all sorts of interesting stuff such as specialist channels like the History Channels, podcasts, discussions, documentaries, interviews etc. My grandchildren love the quizzes, there's quizzes for grown ups too. And let's not forget the cat and/or dog videos ......😂🤣.    

If you dont mind the adverts, it's free.  You can pay a bit extra to go ad free but I don't bother. If I was skint or in serious debt and needed to slash costs and could only have one thing, I would keep you tube and ditch the rest.  

You tube should pay me a commission for doing such a good selling job.  Lol 

moogle87

[Deleted User] said:

Pet insurance seems incredibly high to me. Sky and Prime could go saving nearly a £100 a month. Groceries are very high. Possible savings of up to £200 a month there. How many cats do you have that cost £150 a month? You say you have a disability but £200 a month on supplements seems excessive. Perhaps more information on those would help  us understand the cost. 

So possibly £300 a month savings identified. Apologies if I am missing reasons why some costs could not be cut. 

What is Lebara?

Yes, pet insurance is high but it's a plan that covers all costs (I know it is rare & I have checked, it covers absolutely everything including their boosters/worming/flea treatment, all emergency/dental etc.) We have a cat who has diabetes, so this plan is actually saving us money with her & our other cat was costing £56 a month on insurance but we would still need to pay for his worming/boosters etc + 20% of any treatment, so we decided to go with this as it means we have stability & won't get any unexpected bills. Having just recently paid for £1500 on dental (includes 2 emergency visits) which our insurance wouldn't cover, we decided this was best as it gives us stability & peace of mind. & like I said, we're even saving with 1 cat.

moogle87

[Deleted User] said:

Pet insurance seems incredibly high to me. Sky and Prime could go saving nearly a £100 a month. Groceries are very high. Possible savings of up to £200 a month there. How many cats do you have that cost £150 a month? You say you have a disability but £200 a month on supplements seems excessive. Perhaps more information on those would help  us understand the cost. 

So possibly £300 a month savings identified. Apologies if I am missing reasons why some costs could not be cut. 

What is Lebara?

Lebara is our mobile data plans.
Sky bill also includes our internet, so tbh it isn't that high (I also work from home so need decent a decent speed) but I have looked & we could maybe save £5/£10 a month if we change providers.

Supplements includes my medicinal cannabis. Yes it is very expensive, but sadly it isn't an area that we can cut back on but is also why I am going to apply for PIP.