Debt is so depressing

Magentasue

This is just repeating what everyone else has said but I've survived desperate times and would suggest:

1) Cut out the mobile - I never make personal calls on mine and only pay for texts but if I had to I'd stop - it's a real luxury. Between the two of you, you're paying more than £40 a month on top of your phone bill. I'd fight you to keep my broadband but could do without using my mobile. T

2) Go to the market late on a Saturday - they literally give the stuff away. If you're lucky, whatever you buy that they're trying to get rid of, they throw in some free. They'll almost certainly be reducing stuff like mushrooms and salads that won't keep.

3) I'd

Magentasue

Ooops, didn't mean to post. Was about to say that broadband AND mobiles seem like luxuries when you're trying to cutback.

3) I'd not pay for the Dyson cover although I've found them unreliable. When we had them, they were guaranteed for two years. If you saved £6 a month for two years, you'd have enough for another one!

4) Your food bills do sound high. I could feed six of us on that if I wasn't buying pet food and cleaning stuff but I've learnt it over time. It's not easy - try the library for a frugal cookbook. We're vegetarian and I spend a lot on veg but the market will help here. I use Tesco.com but for me, it's cheaper to go to Asda and the market.

5) Don't know about contact lenses but a friend of mine only wore his for work when he was cutting back. Used specs at home - every little help.

Finally, you ARE getting closer to the end and it will get better but a lodger or a part-time job would make the biggest difference.

Best of luck!

rushnowt

2) Go to the market late on a Saturday - they literally give the stuff away. If you're lucky, whatever you buy that they're trying to get rid of, they throw in some free.  They'll almost certainly be reducing stuff like mushrooms and salads that won't keep.

great idea, also if you can do your shopping late in the evenings supermarkets can be a great place to pick up some mega bargains on bread etc. sometimes selling loaves for 5p so you could fill your freezer

Magentasue

Absolutely, my not so frugal but greedy son goes to the supermarket just before closing time and stands there waiting for the doughnuts to go down to 10p a bag ;D

ashmit

Hi Ashmit, you say your combined gross income is approx £26.5k gross but unless I am having a funny five minutes your budget breakdown does not equal what I would expect the net income of £26.5k to be especially as both of you are working so you both earn the first £4700 tax free etc.

Yes but my husband only gives me £315/month to household expenses, he keeps the rest for himself, for various reasons. I'm talking about my salary plus that money he gives me. I wish he *did* give me it all ;D

On your note about council tax I could almost guarantee you would not get any council tax benefit - you have to be on the absolute breadline to get this, even families receiving Working Tax Credit don't get any CTX Ben.

That's what I thought.

I would definately recommend getting a part time job.  This is something you can do when you are young free and married.  When you've got kids its not always possible.  Even working a couple of shifts in a pub would bring in £30 a week, if you each did that you would have an extra £60 to pay off your debts - how quickly would they be paid off at that repayment level?

I'm thinking of doing this sometime after March when we have our first wedding anniversary - we've just got rid of our annoying lodger so are really having fun just having the flat to ourselves for the first time ever (never lived together til two months before the wedding and she already lived there, so this really is the first time on our own) - and I think that right now, that's more important. But hubby works 40 hours a week as it is and is on call evenings and weekends (yes every evening and weekend, don't get me started...) and as I say it's not his debt so I don't really see it as his responsibility to help me as he's on low wages anyway. But yes, part time job and it gets paid off a lot sooner, and I do plan to do that soon

Thanks

ashmit

hi, i don't know if this only applies to certain times of day etc. but you can buy cheap train tickets in advance from the trainline.

Honestly I've tried five billion different combinations (and always book train tickets through thetrainline.com) and there are never any cheap tickets.

i would stop paying the student loan. i know it's growing all the time but there are better uses for that money, the interest on student loans is piddling compared with interest on most debts, or even the interest you'd get if you saved the money instead.

But it's the only debt I'm being charged interest on - and if I'm getting charged 2.6% and earning 4.5% net then I'm only earning 2% which just doesn't really seem worth it. I keep meaning to recalculate to see if it would pay it off sooner if I concentrated on the student loan first rather than the credit card - will post back once I've looked at the figures.

you might find that your mortgage says you have to have life insurance, but it doesn't necessarily have to be from the mortgage company. i don't know anybody who buys their cover from the mortgage lender, it's far too expensive.

It's not from the same company but it is the one they recommend. I don't think there's any problem with getting cover from someone else but will have to check the small print.

are you in a high risk area? your house insurance sounds really high.

REALLY? For buildings and contents? I'm paying the same this year as we were last year for better cover (contents are worth much more than last year after all the wedding pressies) and was quite happy with it. But there are next to no companies that will insure my flat for buildings as well as insurance so I couldn't shop round - only got three quotes and the tesco one was £30/month or so.

do you have a plan for your credit card debt once your 0% period comes to an end? asda are doing 0% cards right now. i have my main debt of a 3.9% life of balance card (texaco).

I keep getting rejected for new deals I'm appealing though but otherwise I'll just have to keep on the not-really-very-good standard Mint rate.

by the way did i read it right and you are getting savings account interest gross? how did you manage that on your income? just curious :-)

Sorry I mistyped it and didn't notice for ages :-[

good luck :-)

Thank you

ashmit

1) Cut out the mobile -  I never make personal calls on mine and only pay for texts but if I had to I'd stop - it's a real luxury.  Between the two of you, you're paying more than £40 a month on top of your phone bill.  I'd fight you to keep my broadband but could do without using my mobile.

Nah, hubby doesn't spend anything on his, he lets me do all the calling and texting ::)
I'll try and keep that down to a minimum anyway.

2) Go to the market late on a Saturday - they literally give the stuff away. If you're lucky, whatever you buy that they're trying to get rid of, they throw in some free.  They'll almost certainly be reducing stuff like mushrooms and salads that won't keep.

Ooooh, good idea! Have to try that

3) I'd not pay for the Dyson cover although I've found them unreliable. When we had them, they were guaranteed for two years. If you saved £6 a month for two years, you'd have enough for another one!

Only guaranteed for a year now but hey. Yes I'll get that cancelled asap.

4) Your food bills do sound high. I could feed six of us on that if I wasn't buying pet food and cleaning stuff but I've learnt it over time. It's not easy - try the library for a frugal cookbook. We're vegetarian and I spend a lot on veg but the market will help here. I use Tesco.com but for me, it's cheaper to go to Asda and the market.

OK, OK, I'll cut back :-[ The market should help anyway.

5) Don't know about contact lenses but a friend of mine only wore his for work when he was cutting back. Used specs at home - every little help.

This is good for your eyes, and I do mostly do it, but I wear monthly lenses as I get protein build up so it doesn't make them last any longer.

Finally, you ARE getting closer to the end and it will get better but a lodger or a part-time job would make the biggest difference.

We won't be doing lodgers again after the last time (unless they're very short term) as our sanity is too important and the last one drove us nearly insane. I would be more willing to do it but hubby runs a letting agency and has to deal with this kind of thing all day every day and isn't quite as keen anyway..... And I will get a part time job in the future, but see upthread for reasons why it's not now.

Thank you again everyone - will put the new figures into my budget and let you know how much it shaves off the time

Spendless

Ashmit

Totally !!!!!! at maths (having had 2 attempts at maths o@level and failing even with mum paying for private tuition :-[) so am prepared to be told i've done this wrong -

you say you're being turned down for 0% cc's. So wouldn't it be better to stop paying student loan and put money in bank to throw at the cc instead when 0% finishes - just in case you can't get another?

jellyhead

i was going to suggest that too.

when i was in the situation of being turned down for cards (what am i saying, i still get turned down! i managed to get a marbles 0% one a couple of years ago and a texaco life of balance 3.9% one last month though) i asked my 2 banks what their overdraft rates were in case it was worth transferring my credit card debt to an overdraft. halifax was 8.9% but would only give me £850 and the barclays one was higher interest but they did a special 'additions' account you could pay 7.50 a month for (now £9.50) that lowered the interest rate to 9.9%. i filled up the 8.9% one and calculated that it was worth having the barclays additions rate because i would save more than the 7.50 fee in monthly interest. the barclays additions account also gave us extended warrantee on anything electrical bought with the connect card or a cheque (so we could claim on the TV we bought from the catalogue - yippee!) and free green flag motoring cover. the 9.50 a month fee now also includes home emergency cover for burst pipes etc.

i wouldn't normally say additions accounts etc. are a good idea but i was in a position of having to stick with the two banks i'd been with for years because they looked at my banking history rather than credit checking me. barclays also offered me loans but the rates were poor. the other thing with an overdraft is that interest is worked out daily so if you have your direct debits coming out towards the end of the month you still have your salary sitting in the account for lots of days and it means you are only charged on the amount you owe each day. with a credit card debt you owe that full amount of money every day so you'll pay more than you would with an overdraft. the bad thing about overdrafts is that they have no minimum repayment so you might be tempted to keep it maxed and never repay it but no repayment isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you are paying your debts off somewhere in your budget.

i had 2 full overdrafts and still had a balance left on my high interest rate credit card so i spent all of my spare cash paying off the credit card as quickly as i could. when i got the marbles card i filled it up from my overdraft so i had some of my debt interest free (so i could afford to pay off more of my debt as my monthly interest bill was lowered) then i transferred it back to the overdraft at the end of the interest free period. now that i have a 3.9% life of balance card i have filled that up and am paying the min on that and as much as i can off the overdrafts as they have a higher rate of interest than the life of balance card. my student loan is the lowest interest i can get so i'm not repaying it yet. once we're debt free i can pay it, or once hubby's is repaid.

barclaycard charge me a massive amount of interest despite it being a gold card so i won't use that card apart from time to time when they offer 0% balance transfer deals. i will leave the large balance transfer on texaco and not use the card at all. i use the marbles card as a monthly purchase card and repay it in full every month, they give me half a percent cashback too :-)

no doubt i'd be richer if i could get 0% cards and stooze but i think i've done the best i can based on what's available to me.

by the way i know you feel responsible for your own debt but can you maybe ask hubby what he does with his money and if there's any chance of an interest free loan? come to think of it if he's not giving you all of his wages towards housekeeping then maybe he ashould be paying for your honeymoon with what he keeps back ;D

Spendless

Hi - well i agree with what jellyhead has said- shouldn't some of the money your hubby earns be going on clearing these debts? After all it's going to be for the benefit of both of you.