Getting back on track?

debtfreehusky · 5 July 2018 at 10:24PM

After browsing the forums for so long I thought that I would write down a diary to try and help encourage me to sort everything out, and It's always good to learn from other peoples stories.

So where do I start? Well I'll try with the basics. Myself and my Wife have been together for 18 years and married for the last 4. We had always been poor with money over the years and around 4 years ago we approached Payplan to get our debts sorted.

At that moment in time my partner was working and I was out of work with some mental health issues I was dealing with at the time. Payplan advised us to treat our debts as separate debts and enrolled me into a DRO (now discharged) and my wife into an Iva.

Around a year and a half ago we got into a bit of bother when my wife had to find another job and take a pay cut. At this point the IVA was put on hold. So this leads us to this point in time, where my wife is now in contact with Payplan to get things rolling again.

Here is our SOA:

[tt]Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 3
Number of cars owned.................... 1

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1500
Partners monthly income after tax....... 992
Benefits................................ 368
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2860

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 0
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 660
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 190
Electricity............................. 70
Gas..................................... 60
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 30
Telephone (land line)................... 17
Mobile phone............................ 172
TV Licence.............................. 24.5
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 43
Internet Services....................... 40
Groceries etc. ......................... 590
Clothing................................ 82
Petrol/diesel........................... 200
Road tax................................ 16.62
Car Insurance........................... 65
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 30
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 20
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 34
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 35
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 34
Buildings insurance..................... 0
Contents insurance...................... 0
Life assurance ......................... 0
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 30
Haircuts................................ 34
Entertainment........................... 70
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 50
Council Tax Arrears..................... 140
Total monthly expenses.................. 2737.12

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 0
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 1500
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 1500

No Secured nor Hire Purchase Debts

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
CC 1...........................200.......10........39.4
CC 2...........................200.......10........39.4
JD Williams....................1000......40........0
Loan...........................500.......80........0
Total unsecured debts..........1900......140.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,860
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 2,737.12
Available for debt repayments........... 122.88
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 140
Amount short for making debt repayments. -17.12

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 1,500
Total HP & Secured debt................. -0
Total Unsecured debt.................... -1,900
Net Assets.............................. -400

[/tt]

Notes:
- We do have 5 dogs

- The unsecured debts are all mine with the minimum payments listed. The car is my wife's however.

- A lot of the mobile phones are paid by me as I stupidly got contracts for all the kids and myself. 1 is coming to a close soon, the other 2 the next year.

So you can see after I pay my unsecured debts we are sat with just a negative, with things being really tight each month. Where do I start? Where would you start?

I've only just started repairing my credit rating so I don't want to fall behind with debt again myself, yet at the same time I don't want my wife worrying needlessly either. If I recall the old payments on the IVA were £140 per month, and our council tax arrears payments are due to run for another 8 months before being cleared.

Time to get some insight here on where I can start saving!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks in advance for any advice!!!

Scott-Weiland · 6 July 2018 at 12:48AM

5 huskies I take it do you race them???

Just there food bill needs to go in your soa and I doubt its there unless you feed them wagg :-( lol

debtfreehusky · 6 July 2018 at 2:09AM

Haha no and they are not all Huskies, don't think I could handle 5 lol. We have a Jack Russell, German Shepard X (Rescue dog) and then three huskies.

I should list it separate, I put the dogs food under the Groceries section. They generally eat better than me and my wife haha.

Scott-Weiland · 6 July 2018 at 2:48AM

Haha good as long as its accounted for lol

Me and the ex who I am still mates with have 6, we used to race them all over the uk and they were dry/raw fed. I don't know what you feed your dogs etc etc but we used to buy bags of kibble on ebay, we would use top cashback to get onto ebay to get a bit money back. We fed our guys arden grange and would bulk buy 6 bags of it at a time,

Then we had a couple of good butchers in the area who we would get offcuts/bones/trimmings and ox hearts/liver and kidneys etc

They ate better than we did at times

Can you not do anything to get that mobile phone costs section down a tad 172 is very steep. Say look at a sim only, or even ring your network providers and see if you can go to a cheaper tariff may. I did this with EE after being a customer a few months and they knocked I know its not a lot but they knocked 5quid pm month off my bill. Every little helps and all that.

Honeysucklelou2 · 6 July 2018 at 6:35AM

Definitely check the mobile price. I pay for a mobile phone contract for myself and 3 of my children and it comes to £50 a month. Another child is with a different phone provider and hers is an extra £23, so £73 a month for 5 of us.

debtfreehusky · 6 July 2018 at 9:01AM

Yeah this week I'm looking at tackling a few things to see if I can get them down that being the mobiles and our sky tv package.

Mobiles:
Mine - £65 (Thought it was a good idea at the time to get a contract where I could upgrade after a year, wish I hadn't now)

Daughter 1 - £35 this was an old contract that I passed to her earlier this year as shes starting secondary school.

Daughter 2 - £30 Got this one a while ago as at the time it was the cheapest solution to get her a phone as we couldn't afford to buy one.

Daughter 3 - £35 Same as above

Wife - Pay as you go £10

One of the £35 contracts finishes in November so when that's up I will be getting her a gifgaf contract "sim only" for around £15 a month.

All the others are due to end from the beginning of 2019 and end of summer, I will be doing the same with these. The amount I pay for mobiles is rather embarrassing

Sky:
We are giving them a ring this week as we rarely watch TV. We are hoping we can just get it cancelled or at least down to a lot less and just use something like netflix instead.

I'll make some progress somehow !!!!

Scott-Weiland · 6 July 2018 at 9:33AM

Give Now Tv a look debtfreehusky I have nowtv and my oh has Netflix we manage which just those. Sky and Virgin media are a rip off imo.

Giff Gaff is a good choice.

If you haven't done so already get registered on topcashback, you can order a giff gaff sim on there nearer the time. I got about 12.50quid cashback when I got my sons sim.

debtfreehusky · 6 July 2018 at 9:35AM

Awesome cheers Scott I'll have a look at Now Tv. Going to check out topcashback now thanks!!!!

Scott-Weiland · 6 July 2018 at 9:42AM

I got my son the 10quid one which from memory is unlimited data and unlimited texts and 3gig data.

Topcashback is definitely worth using I have used it a couple of years now, and I have had 660 quid off it. I can refer you if you'd like???

I say this all the time but if your going to buy anything online or for click and collect see if you can go through topcashback first.

Just eat
ebay
argos
superdry
asda
Tesco
confused.com

etc etc theres loads on there, we switched my other halfs broadband and her sisters broadband and clicked 120quid.

debtfreehusky · 6 July 2018 at 9:51AM

Sure is there a link I need to do it through ? Or need my email ?

madvicker · 6 July 2018 at 9:52AM

Your gas, electricity, car insurance, and internet (especially as you also pay £17 for the landline) costs appear to be high. When was the last time you did a comparison on them to check what the cheapest on the market is? PM me if you need some specific help :-)

Do you pay for 2 TV licences?

For groceries, all I can suggest there is try to shop at Aldi or Lidl if you don't already. It takes time to get used to what they offer, but it cut our grocery bill from about £90-£100 a week down to £70.

Getting back on track?

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