What do you earn, how much do you owe and how much are you paying off?

My partner and myself earn around £5,500 take home per month. We pay £1763 mortgage plus £900 overpayment - total £2663 per month. Also he pays £390 CSA and we pay about £500 towards unsecured CC's and loans.

Never have any money left at the end of the month as we like our holidays. We want to try and attack the unsecured debts.

black-saturn wrote:

I'm officially the poorest person on this thread.

Er, good for you?

Not enough.
Too much.
£1075 at least - more if we can. (me and hubby).

black-saturn wrote:

I only earn £7,200 per year which amounts to £150 per week. I don't claim any benefit and I have 2 children. I am mortgage free and now debt free. When I was paying my mortgage and debts I was paying about £90 per week out on them.

You should have a look at the benefits and tax credits you could claim.

You'll be able to claim £29.15 for the children if you claim child benefit. Everybody gets this regardless of circumstances, and I'm surprised that you are not claiming it.

You must be working over 16 hours a week if you earn that, so you'll be entitled to working tax and child tax credits. At a rough guess on that salary, this will be about £110 a week.

You should look into claiming both of these, especially after your post saying you can't afford to pay the childrens bus fares to school. Claiming this extra money will cover the fares, so you don't have to worry about them walking to school.

It's total working hours regardless of where you do them.

My work is a mixture of self employment and ad-hoc work for PAYE employers, so I don't have set weekly hours. I had to work out my average S/E and PAYE hours per week and as the total is over 16 hours I got tax credits.