Any Advice? Breakdown included!

leni

I'm trying to sort out mine and my other halfs debts - this is our breakdown financially...


My wage 1364.49
Partners average Wage 1030

Outgoing

Electric 30.50
Gas 23.50
Partners car Loan 165.69
Mortgage Insurance 46.73
House Insurance 20.34
Mortgage 415.53
Council Tax 102.00
Telephone 20.00
Internet 24.99
My car loan 119.48
02 Mobile (average) 35.00
Partners Car Insurance 52.08
Sky 21.00
Water 19.00
TV Licence 10.49

Credit Cards

EGG* Balance 1308.74
Halifax* Balance 540
lloydstsb Balance 900
Partners LloydsTSB * Balance 820.93
ANOTHER CARD* Balance 1500
* = interest being paid

Total Income = £2394.40
Total Bills = £1106.33 (excluding food, petrol and credit cards)
Standing Savings order = £100
Petrol = £150
Food = £300
Personal Allowance = £200

Money remaining = £538.07 * credit cards still need paying!

Now this looks fine on paper but isn't working out like this! We've recently got a joint account so that money is easier to manage, and we both have our own accounts that £100 is depositied into so we can still do our socialing and hobbies!

We REALLY need to get our cards to £0 because we are planning for a wedding and then children soon after (probably 2007)

My partner will not agree to taking SKY Tv out or lowering our internet connection - I've downgraded from a 2ltr petrol guzzling jeep to a 500cc smart car :rotfl:

can anyone give us any pointers to keep our minds set and focussed? I'm going to try and get 1/2 0% interest cards and transfer the balances - the car loans finish at December 2006 and March 2007.

My partner would go mad if he knew I'd posted this but I want to get us debt free ASAP! :j

kindanice

Hello and welcome!

First of all - be positive this can be done.

Can you let us know the interest rates, minimum payments etc. on all your credit cards?

If you can get all or some of the debt on to 0% credit cards, then that would be great.

If not, you will probably be best snowballing your cards, ie. paying the one with the highest interest off first. You will just make the minimum payments on the other cards until the highest interest card is cleared. Then you start on the next card with the highest interest.

Saying that, sometimes it is an incentive to clear the card with the lowest debt - you feel a quicker achievement that way!

Have you checked out the Moneysaving Old Style board. They have some great ideas for saving money around the home. Your food bill is rather high at £300.00. Is this just for two of you? We have two adults and 1 child and are trying to keep it between £180-£200 a month.

Keep positive with this. It would help if your partner was involved in the debt clearing too. Can you not try to talk to him about it?

You can do this!!!

leni

EGG* 1.24% Balance 1308.74 - I pay £30 minimum payment plus £5
Halifax 1.26% Balance 540 - I pay £25 but minimum payment is £11.30
lloydstsb 0% Balance 900 - I pay £25 but mimimum payment is £18.00


Partners LloydsTSB * Balance 820.93
ANOTHER CARD* Balance 1500

Don't know these without searching his files but I know he makes the minimum payment!


Food bill can be reduced I can easily feed us both for a month for £150-180!

Plus I've £100 travel expencces and £100 I've made from selling old stuff off on ebay which will be coming off the egg balance!

Thanks Kindanice for the quick reply!

mountainofdebt

When did you get your egg card and when is your anniversary month?

Put the £200 you've got coming to you towards your halifax card as this has the higher rate. Make clearing the halifax card your priority so personally I would the bare minimum on egg and throw everything at halifax.

Then cancel the card and a month down the line apply for one of the 0% deals that are out there....then transfer the balance of your egg card to this 0% card.

Find out abut your other half's cards...find out what APR he's paying and limits etc. get him to reduce the limits so that he has say £200 over the current balance. This will make him more attractive to 0% deals so that he can - if its worth doing, ie non of his cards are 0% already! - and if accepted transfer his balances to 0%. Cancel the cleared cards.

Ok your other half may not want to throw the internet out of the window but what about changing provider? Get comparative deals to show him....figures always mean much more than just saying ' I'm sure we could get it cheaper' .

Is £20 your monthly phone bill? Are you with BT? If so, make sure you pay them by dd (£1 less line rental!) and sign up with 18866/18899.....that will slash that bill.

What about your car loan? How much longer has that left to run? What APR is that on? I noticed that you haven't quoted your car insurance...any reason?

If your other half won't cancel sky then make a mental note of the channels you both watch and see if you can ditch the others as sky now offer the basic package (which you've got) as a sort of pick and mix.....we reduced ours to the basic sky package and when sky offered this pick and mix we downgraded yet again, saving a further £3...would have saved £6 but son put in a case for the kids/music channel!!!

leni

Re Egg - I've had the card years, and think I got an interest free offer in July but I wasn't too fussed at clearly stuff until I added it all up a few weeks ago!

Re internet and telephone bills - we live in Hull - we are the only bloody city with our own telephone company - which means we are limited to only using their services for both broadband and telephone! We do pay both via direct debits and so get some line rental discount! £20 is the minimum telephone payment we can make (it's a stupid newly introduced scheme that people are complaing about at the moment!)

My car insurance was paid in one go with some extra money I had from ebay sales and a high car travel expence cheque!

The car loans finish in Dec 2006 and Mar 2007! I'll have to check on the interest rates on these but they were the best at the time of purchase (we didn't get car finance - we got loans)

Other half is away all day so I'll ask him later!

In the meantime I've just applied for a Natwest 0% credit card for the transfers of both Egg and Halifax - awaiting the agreement through the post!

Thanks for the suggestions though :beer:

leni

oh and thansk for the tip re sky - we can also save ourselves £3 a month because we don't watch Kids TV or the Documentary channels! I'll get the other half onto that tomorrow because it's in his name!

homersimpson_3

sorry to say this but you seem luckier than most - you have joint income of nearly 2400 and a lot of people live on alot less. alot left after essential bills payed.
1) shop around for cheaper gas, electric and mortgage insurance- all seem high
2) get rid of mobile phone- why it is essential?
3) 300 for food is very high if only 2 adults - you don't mention any children. even with child it's still high.
4) use £200 to pay debts rather than socialising and hobbies. you need to get priorities right.
5) get rid of sky and internet (if possible). put in your name and cancel it.
6) why do you need 2 cars? - get rid of them unless essential
explain to oh you don't want to start marriage in debt and oh needs to get their priorities right particularly if you want child- children are expensive and as parents you act as a role model for this child.
tell oh you can have internet/sky/hobbies etc back when debt is cleared and not before. lots of my friends did this- thought they would miss it- don't and couldn't care less now. by the time debts cleared oh won't want it anyway!

Penny-Pincher!!

Hey

Well done putting pen to paper, it may seem daunting but it will get better.

OH & I had 2 good wages coming in 18months ago but am now disabled and OH my FT carer-we live entirely on benefits but have cut back by over £700 a month. Looking at your basic outgoings, I would say you can cut back on:

Gas & Electric
Food-definitly £300 a month is a fortune-specially when you have debt
Car Insurance
House Insurance

Your debt isnt really that big to most people and if you could cut back on just the above-you should have it clear in a few months Its better paying off all your debt now than waiting till you have kids. I would look for a 0% credit card.

Good Luck-Im pretty sure your be OK.