A little advice for a 'newbie'

nicko

Hi guys, this is my very first post so you could consider me as a newbie!

I was just after a little bit of advice really....

I'm a 21 year old student in my first year of uni and have a part time job which is relatively well paid, (£610) per month.

I have a loan of £7800 (for a car, which is worth about £2500), it's a 5 year term and I've been paying it for almost a year.

I have a student overdraft which is maxed out (£1000).

My only 'commited' outgoings are my phone (£30) Board (£100) and car ins. (£55) and loan(£175), all per month.

My questions are:

Would you say this is a bad position to be in? (My girlfriend earns less than me, no debt, and a lot of savings)

Can you suggest any way of improving my situation.

Much appreciated, Nick. (By the way, sorry if this topic has been covered on numerous occasions)

poorandindenial

Hello Nick

It is difficult to say whether your position is good or bad, to be honest it is as good or bad as it feels to you.

What we can help with though is finding ways to make your money go further which will help you to not rack up more debt in the future.

Use this link: LINK to get to the SOA calculator, then paste it into here and we can identify areas that you can cut costs.

The first thing that stands out is your car insurance, have you used a site like Moneysupermarket.com to see if you can get it for cheaper??? If you can get it cheaper then check out Quidco.co.uk and see if you can get cashback.

sophie27

Hello! Welcome to MSE!

I was pretty much in the same money situation when I was at uni. That is a v well paid job part-time, how many hours do you do? Do you have no travel to add in?

There are lots of experts on here who give out fantastic advice but just wanted to say hello and say you are in the best place to get advice.

Sophie

nicko

On the statement of affairs calculator there is no place for a student loan payment. I get my student loan paid into my account approximately every 3 months, I would therefore presume I should just estimate how much I would get paid each month if that was the case?
To be honest with you, I think the car insurance is a fair cost because everyone else in my age group is paying almost double. I wish I could just get rid of my car sometimes, its such a drain on the cash...it's such a hassle trying to sell it though!

Tustastic

nicko wrote: »

I have a loan of £7800 (for a car, which is worth about £2500), it's a 5 year term and I've been paying it for almost a year.

Hi Nick and well done for posting. You'll get excellent advice on here. Could you explain a bit more about how you came to buy the car and what the finance deal is? As quoted above, looks as though it has lost £5K in value in a year.
BTW, if you look on the main Forum page, you'll see a Student Moneysaving Board. I don't go there myself but must be worth you taking a look.:)

Bismarck

Hi and welcome,

Er...not sure where to start... you sound concerned but needing reassurance that you're doing OK...key questions are this:

are you happy?
is your job impacting on your study more than it should...curious as to what it is you do as it's not badly paid and I remember being knackered when I worked and studied at the same time!
are you fully focused on where you want to be when you finish your degree.
I also have alarm bells about the size of the loan in relation to your car value....

anyway, let us know more and we'll try and help..:cool:

poorandindenial

EDIT: Ignore me - had missed some info in first post

nicko

Well, I must admit, I've been quite stupid with cars in the past. I got a loan for £7800, the car was worth £3500 at the time and the rest was used to consolidate. I would ideally like to drop the number of hours I work per week because 20 is a bit too much at the minute, but I cantas the cash doesnt permit. I was full time up until september '07, then I took the uni plunge! The APR on the loan is 12% i think.
My outgoings per month:

Loan - £175
Phone - 30-35
Car Ins 55
Petrol - 75 - 100
Board - 100

These are my definite outgoings, but I also have other things such as MOT, tax, books etc....

Jenna

Hi Nick,

Welcome to the site! Just wanted to say hello and that you're in the right place to get lots of advice

Let me put it this way ... there are students in worse positions than you, and in better positions than you. As others have said it's really up to you how you feel about it and what you want to do about it - are you happy with your current situ? Would you rather be debt free?

I know it's hassle to sell your car but it's also hassle to pay £175 a month towards the loan ... if you see what I mean. But if it's lost so much value in the past 12 months then maybe there's no point selling it as it wouldn't go very far towards paying it off??

If you post up an SOA (there's a link stickied on the top of the forum telling you how to do it) then we can try and help you out with tips on saving money / making your earnings go further.

HTH

andromache_2

Hiya nicko!

I'm a first-year as well so I thought I'd just pop in to say hi

If you're getting SLC money on top of that then your financial situation sounds very healthy to me! I have £440 a month to live on all told with SLC money and some from my parents - and I pay £838 a term or £210 a month in rent so your board looks like a good deal to me as well though I do come home to get fed during the holidays, lol. I find that I have plenty as long as I'm reasonably careful, though I'm not running a car which must make quite a difference. I'm saving the money I earn from irregular part-time work for the summer

To be honest, the main way in which I'd be worrying about you being in a 'bad position' is the impact that your part-time work might be having on your studies - if you're earning that much it must be taking quite a lot of time? Especially with exams coming up... Sorry if you're managing your work perfectly fine it's just the first thing that struck me. I guess I prefer to have a little less money and a little more study time.

Good luck with everything :cool: