DFW newbee

claire11_2

Evening all,
I have been trying to sort out my finances for ages, I keep planning but never seem to get any further than that. So here I am. I need to put together an action plan and get myself out of this debt.

Monthly Incomings

Salary = £1142.00

Total: £1142.00

Monthly Outgoings

Rent = £250
Council tax = £137
Gas and Electric = £40
Water = £22
TV Licence = £10.95
Sky = £22.50
Phone and Internet = £36
Mobile = £35
Food = £200 (including cat food for 2 cats, cleaning products and beauty products)
Contact lenses = £15
Bdays, Xmas and emergency money = £70
Work lunches = £30
Clothes = £20

Total: £888.45

This is based on a budget that I want to stick too. At the moment I am spending more than I get paid, and usually go over my overdraft getting charged the max in penalty fees of 90quid. For example I am 145 over my overdraft this month, so this is 145 out of my next pay cheque already. :eek:

Egg CC – Balance £1450 (limit £1450.00) min £30 APR19.9%
Capital One CC – Balance £200 (limit £200) min £15 APR 34.9%
Dorothy Perkins card – £550 (limit £650) min £21 APR 29.9%
Faith card – £150 (limit £250) min £5 APR 34.9%
Next Catalogue – £530 (limit £1500) min £50 APR26.49%
Natwest Overdraft – £1500, min £75
Barclays Overdraft – £2300 (limit £2300) - I live within this overdraft
Council Tax debt - £355 – still to work out a month payment agreement

HELP I WANT TO BE DEBT AND WORRY FREE!!!!:A

Sassamac

Hi and welcome, well done on being so pro-active so soon.

your total minimum repayments are £196 per month, which should be easily afforded within your budget.

Are you charged interest on being OD? Its worth working out what they cost you. I never gave our 2 OD's a second though til I worked out that they cost us £350+ per year, even staying within the limits.

whats your credit rating like? I would be inclined to pay off all the expensive store cards using a balance transfer if you can get a low Life Of Balance rate.

Sassamac

I assume your £137 council tax payment doesnt include paying for the arrears as you state that you have yet to work out an agreement. its seems very high in relation to your rent. Your rent is a lot lower than any rent I ve paid in the last few years, yet the CT is much higher?! Do you live alone? - you should get a single persons discount.

Also the food bill could come down quite a lot if its just for one person. Use up all your cleaning products and buy a bottle of stardrops for about 75p which does the work of almost everything. Check out the OS board for food and cleaning hints.

TangledMemories_2

Welcome to DFW!
You'll find loads of help and support here!

I was just looking at the council tax in comparison to the rent as Sassamac said...I'm going to be paying £400 a month rent and £90 council tax for two of us....seems a bit of an odd amount!

claire11_2

Sorry maybe I should have mentioned this. I live with my partner, our rent is 850 a month I pay 250 and then all the bills. And then my partner pays the rest of the rentIt works out that we pay about half each then. The only reason we do it this way is cos my partner can not be trusted to pay all the different bills on time, so the one payment is better for him. Saying that doesn't look like I am much good at paying them on time either.
The 137 I am paying on council tax does not include the arrears that I need to pay.

claire11_2

Thanks for the advice. I will def look into my OD's as I never even thought about the interest on those.
I am having a blonde moment, what is the OS board. I am going to take a look at it, as I know I spend far to much on food shopping and lunches at work.

poorandindenial

Oops - I just posted on your other thread - sorry

neverdespairgirl

Hi Claire,

You are paying some truly horrible APRs there, lots of them over 30%. I'd suggest that you throw ALL the money you can at your debts, highest interest first, and stop paying £30 a year plus for every £100 you are in debt.

The good news is that you have quite a lot of room for movement in your SOA. If you paid only the minimum payments as you've listed them now on all debts, it would take 34 months to pay off these debts. During that time, you'll pay £1,451.00 in interest, which is far too much to hand over from your hard-earned cash!

Your minimum payments (excl the council tax) are £246 a month, I make it (which could be wrong!)

Even if you don't cut your SOA at all, and spend the amount listed, you will have £253.55 to pay off debts, which is only a fraction above your minimum payments. If you shaved £80 a month off your SOA, and therefore paid £80 extra on your debts (minimum payment on all but the most expensive until the most expensive's paid, then minimum on all but the 2nd most expensive until that's paid, etc), it would make a big difference - it would take 24 months to pay off these debts if you snowball correctly. During that time, you'll pay £881.00 in interest. That's 10 months less, and a lot less interest forked out.

Could you up your income? Anything you don't wear, don't read, don't listen to, etc, stick it on amazon or ebay. If you could average just £20 a month on ebay etc, it would still make a big difference. If you could sell £350 in the next couple of months ( you must have some spare stuff lying around) you could get rid of the Faith and Capital One debts at once, which would be great because they have horrible interest rates!

I've added some suggestions to your SOA in red below.

claire11 wrote: »

Monthly Incomings

Salary = £1142.00

Total: £1142.00

Monthly Outgoings

Rent = £250
Council tax = £137
Gas and Electric = £40
Water = £22
TV Licence = £10.95
Sky = £22.50 - do you really need sky?
Phone and Internet = £36 - you are paying too much for this. £22.50 + £36 + £35 means altogether you are spending £93.50 on phones and TV, not far off 10% of your monthly income, which is far too much. Can you get an all-inclusive Virgin deal for phone, net and TV for £30 quid, and halve your mobile bill? This would save you £45.50 per month.
Mobile = £35
Food = £200 (including cat food for 2 cats, cleaning products and beauty products)
Contact lenses = £15
Bdays, Xmas and emergency money = £70 - leave this as it is, to allow for the odd work lunch and pair of tights owing to cutting the budgets below.
Work lunches = £30 - for the moment, take a packed lunch
Clothes = £20 - can you wear what you've got for a few months?

Total: £888.45 - the above suggestions cut £95.50 off your budget.

What about other things, though? Travel costs? How do you get to work?

neverdespairgirl

Is this a duplicate thread? Maybe they can be merged?