After Advice Please

onarollsaver

Hi, Me and my wife have been stupid with money over the last few years. we earn decent money but have big outgoings. looking for advice & ways around it please. nursery fees will be stopped in January which will help

Income a month (after tax)

Me - £2190 - Wife - £2500 = £4690

Outgoings

personal spending - Me - £300 - Wife - £350

(Goes towards fuel, car tax, car insurance, kids clothes, general spending etc)

MONTHLY TOTAL - £650

NEEDS

Nursery Costs (finish in January) - £450

Food Shop - £500

House Insurance - £12.33

TV Licence - 12.97

Council Tax - £182.90

Energy - £138.34

Broadband - £29

Welsh Water - £78

Mortgage - £691.20

MONTHLY TOTAL - £2,094.74

DEBTS

Got in to debt mainly due to paying off 0% credit cards (couldn't be trusted with them) & big wedding we had, paid off our car finance and a few other things

money owed to mother in law is paying back a holiday

Money owed to Mother in Law - £100

M&S Personal Loan - £434.75

Amount Remaining - 26,466.35

Settlement Figure - £19.888.36

Admiral Personal Loan - £680.60 a month

Amount Remaining - £28.584.13

Settlement Figure - £25,373.36

MONTHLY TOTAL - £1,115.35

WANTS

Aviva Life Insurance - Me - £49.94 - Wife - £35.48

Pet Health Club - £22.99 - Pet Insurance - £11.47 - Dog Walker - £132

Spotify Family - £17.99

Cleaner - £130

MONTHLY TOTAL - £399.87

Family Spends

Daughters Clubs - Dancing - £47 - Acro Aerobics - £17.50 - Swimming - £150 every 6 weeks

MONTHLY TOTAL - £64.50 - EVERY 6 WEEKS - £214.50

Mortgage

Halifax - £139,000

Help to Buy Equity Loan (20% of current house worth) - £56,000

House currently worth £280,000

£85k Positive Equity

ROUND UP

INCOME - £4,690

OUTGOINGS - £4,324.46

LEFT OVER EACH MONTH - £365.54

Keep_Buggering_On

Hello from a fellow chap on the money saving path! Looking at your figures a few things struck me (although feel free to ignore as I don't know all your circumstances)- I think you are going to have to think about making some lifestyle changes to prioritise getting the debts down. If it were me (and again you know whats best for your family), I would consider trying to cut your personal spends (maybe each try and cut them back by £100 a month to save £200). I would say a cleaner might be a luxury you could do without, at least int he short term. If you tackle the house between you once a week then that is a major saving. Consider having a serious chat with daughter to see if there are any of the clubs she could drop, even losing one of them would help save some money. Depending on how old she is, she will understand even if she doesn't like it (my Daughter is 10 and she does Cubs for £10 a month and although she would love to go swimming and we would love to let her, she understands its not something we can afford for her). Food shopping is another area you can usually find savings in, even if you shave £25 a week off your shopping bill, thats an extra £100 towards paying off the debts. All that would shave £400-£500 from your budget without being too painful and then you can focus on putting that towards the debts and try to get them down as quickly as you can.

vampirotoothus

Hi are you able to edit your post to show the totals for each section as I can't work out where you are.
Personal spends stand out to me, how much of it is tied up each month v what is contractual payments? You may be able to find some money here to reduce the gap (I am assuming that is the problem). V x

elsien

I would suggest filling in a proper SOA with the lemon fool one on here, formatted for MSE.

You have some things that are missing on there so your spending isn’t giving an accurate picture.

Mobile phones

Any car or travel expenses,
any health expense, prescriptions Dentist optician?
regular maintenance costs such as a boiler service.

There may be more.

It’s unclear what personal spends actually covers, but what about entertainment, days out, your daughter’s clothes?

onarollsaver

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032631#Comment_82032631

Thanks for you reply. yes we have already stopped one club which was gymnastics - but these figures are for both daughter and we feel its essential that she learns to swim.

Food shop wise we used to budget £400 but changed it and still struggling on £500

Yes i agree with a cleaner but my wife insists on this and i cant persuade her otherwise

onarollsaver

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032729#Comment_82032729

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032641#Comment_82032641

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032650#Comment_82032650

Thanks for your reply i have edited this. does it make more sense?

onarollsaver

thanks for your reply ive edited my post so all these come under personal spends

x_raphael_xx

I would class pet insurance as essential, not a want. We have just lost our pup after a short and sudden illness. In the space of a week the vets bills racked up to £3k. Very thankful for the insurance. You may never need it (I didn't with my last dog) but its very much a boon if you need to claim.

Could the dog walker could be dropped, and you draw up a schedule as a family? The bf used to do the morning feed & walk, and I would do the afternoon.
I would also suggest another conversation about the cleaner. Dropping those two alone will save £262 to throw at the debt. Even maybe reducing the cleaner to less frequency?

I would use the snowball calculator, add in the £262 and show your wife the difference it would make.

It would also be an idea to write down all your personal spends, and seeing where you could cut back. Things like car tax you can't really change, but cutting back on kids clothes, coffees out etc would help.
You may be slipping in little spends here and there you don't realise can make a difference, especially when you label it all under 'general spending'.

How much is still owed to the MIL?

Good luck with your journey. The finish line seems so far away, but small changes here and there really make a difference and you will get there step by step.

elsien

I would also suggest separating out car and phone stuff from personal spends.
How do you decide who pays for servicing, car tax, new tyres, repairs etc and things like that tends to be where you end up spending more than you think.

beanielou

Dog walker & swimming jump out to me as being high. Is your wife aware of your level of debt. If so she should be able to take on board you cannot afford to have a cleaner.

Smudgeismydog

Well done for acknowledging the position you find yourselves in and posting

If you and your wife really want to address this, then as other posters have noted, you do need to make some lifestyle changes. A full SOA would be useful, as there will be additional costs to the ones you have listed e.g presents, haircuts, clothes, so if you can post this, based on your last few months bank statements it will give a more accurate picture.

I also felt very strongly about my children learning to swim when they were younger, although this would have been over 10 years ago, we used the group based swimming lessons in the leisure centre for a very reasonable cost. We also had a young dog, and managed dog walking between us, so avoided dog walking costs. The cleaner is also a cost you just cannot afford right now. Saturday cleaning just sucks after you’ve worked and juggled the kids all week, but if you share out the jobs it doesn’t take long.

best of luck