My new SOA - any advice welcome!

falady

Hi everyone,

Well afer my LBM in November 07 I did quite well at bringing the debt down, with some very kind help from my parents too. The trouble is, I have been slack over the last few months and have built up another overdraft and some deb on my barclaycard. I veer between ignoring it (and my credit card debt) and worrying about it.

My current debts are:

Halifax overdraft = £828.21
Barclaycard platinum CC = approx £620. Life of balance interest rate is 6.9%
Virgin credit card = approx £3000.
Joint loan with OH of £14000. Payments of £430 per month until October 2010.
Student loan of approx £5800.

Barclaycard credit limit was about £6000, then they suddenly brought it down to £650 a few weeks ago with very little warning. They've really annoyed me as I've checked my credit file and my score is apparently 999 which is excellent. I can't believe its that high, but it should still be pretty good, so go knows why barclaycard think i'm suddenly a big risk. Anyway, nough moaning...


This is my SOA (all costs are monthly):

My new income = £1482.31

Contribution to joint account = £930. This covers mortgage, bills, food, and loan repayment. OH contributes a similar amount. I'll break it down for you in a later post.

This leaves £552.31 for fixed personal spending, discretionary personal spending and debt repayment

Fixed Personal spending:

£13.50 dental plan
£50.00 car tax and insurance
£37 mobile phone (can't change contract until at least Nov 08)
virgin card min payment = approx £5
barclaycard min payment = approx £5.

Total fixed personal spending costs = £110.50

Discretionary personal spending:

My weakness is clothes shopping :eek: I seem to have very little self control.
I have started keeping a spending diary again and and have even bought (not very MSE i know!) a special notebook to keep track of this and all the other MSE things I do. In the absence of recent spending diary records, this is where I THINK my money goes...

puzzle books = 4.50
nights out = 20
lunch at work = 20-30
meals out = 20
cinema = 5 average
haircut = 17 per month average for cut (25 every 6 weeks)
hair colour = 8 per month (25 every 3 months)
beauty appointments - rarely have these now
toiletries = 10
travel = cost of bus / train pass is taken out of my salary before net.
clothes = approx 150 per month?

This only adds up to approx £265, so nowhere near the £440 which is left after fixed costs.

This really shows me that I need to keep a spending diary.

Any tips on how to stop myself spending would be much appreciated!

Thank you very much for any help.

Ali x

PS I will post more detail on the joint account costs and the pressures on my budget coming up tomorrow (bed time now!). Hopefully I can get some suggestions on what to prioritise...

~Beanie~

falady wrote: »

virgin card min payment = approx £5 - Your balance won't reduce much if you are only paying £5 per month on a debt of £3K

puzzle books = 4.50 - you can download and printoff puzzles for free on the internet
nights out = 20
lunch at work = 20-30 - take a packed lunch
meals out = 20
cinema = 5 average
haircut = 17 per month average for cut (25 every 6 weeks)
hair colour = 8 per month (25 every 3 months)
beauty appointments - rarely have these now
toiletries = 10
travel = cost of bus / train pass is taken out of my salary before net.
clothes = approx 150 per month? - Buy less clothes! Or at least get them via quidco or pigsback where you will get money back!

I do agree that a spending diary is an excellent idea - I can't believe how much money I actually waste on junk food and wine since i started mine!

Ask yourself whether you actually NEED that many new clothes or whether you just WANT them. Are you buying expensive designer ones? If so, get cheaper copies. Can you sell the clothes you no longer wear on EBay?

And CUT YOUR CREDIT CARDS UP!!!!

sparky0107

Just bumping this up so you can get more help, Good Luck

Welshlassie

Only take cash out with you and leave your cards at home. When you do take cash on take the bear minimum £5, if you haven't got it you can't spend it. You really need to be paying more off you CC than £5 pm, you balances will actually be increasing at that rate.

A spending diary would be rally good.

IWantToBeFree_2

falady wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Well afer my LBM in November 07 I did quite well at bringing the debt down, with some very kind help from my parents too. The trouble is, I have been slack over the last few months and have built up another overdraft and some deb on my barclaycard. I veer between ignoring it (and my credit card debt) and worrying about it.

My current debts are:

Halifax overdraft = £828.21
Barclaycard platinum CC = approx £620. Life of balance interest rate is 6.9%
Virgin credit card = approx £3000. What is the APR on this, can you shift it to a 0% or even to the Barclaycard?
Joint loan with OH of £14000. Payments of £430 per month until October 2010.
Student loan of approx £5800.

Barclaycard credit limit was about £6000, then they suddenly brought it down to £650 a few weeks ago with very little warning. They've really annoyed me as I've checked my credit file and my score is apparently 999 which is excellent. I can't believe its that high, but it should still be pretty good, so go knows why barclaycard think i'm suddenly a big risk. Anyway, nough moaning...


This is my SOA (all costs are monthly):

My new income = £1482.31

Contribution to joint account = £930. This covers mortgage, bills, food, and loan repayment. OH contributes a similar amount. I'll break it down for you in a later post.

This leaves £552.31 for fixed personal spending, discretionary personal spending and debt repayment

Fixed Personal spending:

£13.50 dental plan Do you really need this? How often do you have to use it? Or are you one of the many unlucky people who don't have an NHS dentist?
£50.00 car tax and insurance
£37 mobile phone (can't change contract until at least Nov 08) Can you not reduce it at all? Whilst you're tied into a contract, a lot of the time the provider will allow you to drop the tarrif during the contract, I know o2 and 3 do.
virgin card min payment = approx £5 Are you only making the minimum payment?
barclaycard min payment = approx £5. Ditto above

Total fixed personal spending costs = £110.50

Discretionary personal spending:

My weakness is clothes shopping :eek: I seem to have very little self control.
I have started keeping a spending diary again and and have even bought (not very MSE i know!) a special notebook to keep track of this and all the other MSE things I do. In the absence of recent spending diary records, this is where I THINK my money goes...

puzzle books = 4.50 When do you do puzzles? Could you do them online rather than buy books?
nights out = 20 People would say cut this, but if it means that you don't splurge elsewhere, then I'd say allow yourself the £20 to treat yourself on nights out, but recycle outfits, don't buy new ones everytime you go out
lunch at work = 20-30 PACKED LUNCHES! They are the way forward!
meals out = 20 How much of the money you put into the joint account is used for food shopping? You should really try and eat out out of your normal shopping budget. Its hard, and its a massive weakness of mine..
cinema = 5 average Have you got an orange Sim card which you could use for Orange Wednesdays?
haircut = 17 per month average for cut (25 every 6 weeks)
hair colour = 8 per month (25 every 3 months) Can you not colour yourself?
beauty appointments - rarely have these now
toiletries = 10
travel = cost of bus / train pass is taken out of my salary before net.
clothes = approx 150 per month?

This only adds up to approx £265, so nowhere near the £440 which is left after fixed costs.

This really shows me that I need to keep a spending diary.

Any tips on how to stop myself spending would be much appreciated!

Thank you very much for any help.

Ali x

PS I will post more detail on the joint account costs and the pressures on my budget coming up tomorrow (bed time now!). Hopefully I can get some suggestions on what to prioritise...

With regards to the spending, as its been mentioned, don't carry cash, this will stop you spending on pointless things, even if you only buy a few small things a day in cash, say under £1, it all adds up, and you will think twice about going to the till to pay for a 30p chocolate bar on a card :rotfl: :rotfl:

As you say, clothes shopping is your biggest weakness, maybe you could sell some of your old clothes on ebay to raise money to buy new ones, that way, you are not using any of your salary to do so....

falady

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your ideas.

I'll investigate dropping my mobile phone tariff to a lower level.

I have coloured my hair myself in the past but i want it doing professionally for the next couple of months as i am getting married in July and don't want to look a state if i mess it up! Same with beauty appointments.

APR on the virgin card is only 1.9%, so pretty good and i'm happy to leave it there. I need tostart paying off more than the minimum on both cards, but i'm not really sure what to prioritise in paying off the debts. Any ideas would be welcome.

Re meals out - we can't afford for this to come out of the joint food budget - i'm really trying to get it down (with the help of the old stylers) as prices of food have gone up so much recently. We used to have a lot of slack in the joint budget but with food and utility increases we don't have this slack any more. Our joint account is overdrawn too. :eek:

I have a lot of clothes, so don't buy a new outfit everytime i go out! I have started ebaying some bits and pieces and i'll look through clothes to see if i could sell any. Do you get high prices or is it just a coupe of quid here and there? most of my stuff is in pretty good condition. Not designer or anything, just Next, M&S etc.

I do puzzles on the train and in the evening and with the amount I do, it wouldn't be feasible to print them off the internet. I am looking at subscribing to reduce the cost a bit though.

I try to take packed lunches most days so will aim to get this spend down.:money:

Re cinema - i have just got a free orange sim card so can use that for 'orange wednesdays'. I've also signed up to get free cinema tickets from some sites.:money:

Re dentist - I don't have an NHS dentist (nigh on imposible here, as in most places!). The £13.50 Denplan includes all checkups, fillings, hygenist, emergencies etc. The only costs would be lab costs for crowns etc, so a pretty good deal compared to other plans i have heard of.

Thank you everyone for your ideas - it is much appreciated.

Next step i guess is deciding what to pay off first.

Ali x

IWantToBeFree_2

Are you sure that the Virgin is 1.9% per annum or is it 1.9% a month? I know my virgin statements only show monthly rates...

With regards to what to pay off first, the debts with the highest rates of interest are the ones you should focus your attention on first, which I imagine if what you say about your Virgin card is correct, the overdraft will probably have the highest APR.

What is the APR like on the loan, and can you make over payments?

As for the ebaying, I think you'll be surprised at what things sell for, especially Next & M&S as they are good quality clothes. Its not massive amounts, but when selling jeans mine used to sell for around £10-£15 a pair which I was pleased with... But then again mine were a plus size and sometimes find they sell better as people are less inclined to want to go to the 'fat' shops to buy them!!

Welshlassie

Check out http://www.whatsthecost.co.uk/snowball.aspx to help you decide which debts to pay of and in which order. I will also give you a debt free date and you may find that it becomes a mission to get that to reduce by throwing every spare penny you have at the debts (and every penny will really make a difference), you really need to be paying more than your min payments as your debts in real terms are actually going up even if you aren't actually buying more on them.

Mrs._Irwin

Definitely check APR on the Virgin card, as I didn't think ours was too bad, then discovered we were paying over 30%! :eek:

Mrs. Irwin
xx

falady

hiya,

The APR on the virgin card is definitely 1.9% per year - i negotiated as they wanted my business!

Ali x