Immoral_angel's Debt Diary

A question about : Immoral_angel's Debt Diary

Hi, my name is Sarah and need to get our debts sorted out. I'm 21 and personally I have Ј3261 worth of debt from credit/store cards and a personal loan. My husband, Steve is 28 next month (november) and he has Ј2844 worth of debt to one credit card, a loan (Dell) and 2 debt collection agencies (He was naughty with money when he was younger and before I came along to whip him into shape!). We also have a joint car loan which is for Ј4995 but we'll end up paying around Ј7k (Damn you welcome car finance!).

We have a little girl who's 19 months old called Ashli, and are expecting baby number 2 in January and it's suddenly dawned that we need to sort ourselves out as at the moment money is tight every month. We're not at the stage of regularly missing payments at the moment which is why we want to start before it gets worse! I work 27 hours a week at a nursery school for pitiful wages and Steve works full time for HMV as a sales assistant. I'm starting my maternity leave on the 6th November so don't have Ashli's MASSIVE nursery bill going out anymore ( WAS Ј402 A MONTH!), and when we have the new baby our income will go up with extra tax credits and child benefit. Tax credits will go up to about Ј88 a week and child benefit will go from Ј69 4-weekly to Ј116! Can't wait as although we'll have another baby I think it'll make things easier!

Here's our SOA.

Debts-
Joint:
Car loan (Ј4995 but end up paying Ј7700) Ј160.50 p/m 24.1%

Husband's:
citi card - (Ј1500 limit Ј1464 owed) Ј45 min 27.9%
Dell - (Not sure how much left approx Ј400) Ј22 a month
Rockwell collection agency (approx Ј400 left) Ј20 a month
Capital One (passed back to them from previous collection agency, Ј580 but not paying anything yet as they've only just got in contact and are messing us around demanding full payment and not accepting any payment plan GRRR)

Mine
My citi card - (Ј500 limit balance Ј480) Ј15 min payment 27.9%
Capital One - (Ј600 limit, Ј436 balance) Ј21 min 29.9%
Barclaycard - (Ј900 limit, Ј872 balance) Ј22 min 19.9%
Dorothy perkins store card - (Ј1790 limit, Ј523 balance) Ј25 min 29.9%
Mothercare - (Ј600 limit, Ј500 balance) Ј25 min 29.9%
Black Horse loan (Not sure exactly how much, about Ј400 left) Ј22 p/m

Total Joint Debt: Ј11100
Total currently going out on debts each month: Ј382.50

Monthly outgoings (house bills etc)
Rent Ј286.83
Council Tax Ј99
Tv license - Ј10.54
Water- Ј24.15
BT phone + broadband (Stuck in 18 month contract ) - Ј35
Gas and electric - Ј65.50
Tv rental - Ј28 (Stuck in contract til March but have already reduced from Ј45! )
Car insurance - Ј33
House insurance - Ј2.20
Food - Ј150
Petrol - Ј60 (Will decrease probabaly by half as I start maternity leave in november)
Driving lessons for Steve - Currently Ј19 a lesson

Money in (as of November 06)-
Husbands wages - Roughly Ј850 min per month but he does get overtime
My wages (Based on maternity pay as I start my leave in 3 weeks) - Ј471
Child benefit - Ј69 4-weekly
Tax credits - Ј44 per week

All the credit cards have been cut up and I can't physically spend anymore on capital one as I've agreed to cancel the account as soon as I've paid the balance off as they want to up my interest to 34% from 29.9%! I HATE CAPITAL ONE SO MUCH.

Haven't even attempted to work out a realistic debt free date yet but I know the car loan will finish in 4 years so we're probably looking at 2010 unless we can pay that off early. Ideally we want to pay them off ASAP because compared to come we don't actually have that much personal debt each so I think we COULD pay everything off (Except the car loan) by November 2008. But we'll see how we go.

We've already got our NOVEMBER CHALLENGE in place. Which is basically, after working out our budget, that we must spend no more than Ј11.60 a day, save what we don't use out of that and then save every penny of the tax credits. Target savings are Ј176 but I personally think we'll save more than that as we don't spend Ј11.60 a day and I won't be working (less petrol used.. woohoo!). But I'll keep you updated with how we're getting on!

Apologies for the long ranting post! lol! You can see a picture of me and Ashli on my myspace... www.myspace.com/immoral_angel

Take care for now!

Sarah

Best answers:

• Had a horrible argument with Steve last night over money AGAIN. It always comes down to him being the spender and me being the saver and it all blew up because he wanted to buy a xbox 360 camera on his credit card when we've already agreed to get our heads down and clear the debts. He just couldn't see sense that what's the point clearing off the debts if all you're going to do is spend on them again? He always makes me out to be controlling and forcing him to do this and that with them money and we always end up arguing as he says it's all we ever talk about.
  It ended up with him cutting up his credit card (hurrah!) and like he says now it's out of his hands and things are calm again for the moment. We have such different views of money it's hard to get him to see common sense sometimes.
  Oh well. Things are calm for the moment. We've agreed to pay off the debts in balance order rather than interest, as we both though that we had too many seperate debts and we want to bring the number down before tackling the big ones and emotionally it'll be better for us to get rid of as many as possible in least amount of time as well us helping us cut our monthly outgoings out. I know this isn't the way most DFW's would do it but we don't mind paying a bit extra in the long run if it saves our sanity!!! LOL
  November is the beginning of a massive change though so watch out debts!!!! Our plan is to save as much as possible at the end of every week from our strict £77 p/w budget, plus the £44 tax credits we'll get every week (Also In november we should get the surestart maternity grant of £500 so will save as much of that as possible!) and then put that into savings until the end of the month. Then we'll put it all towards a debt so we can get them paid off ASAP!
  Anyway, take care for now all, haven't managed to save much money because we're still struggling until the end of this month because of me being off sick last month and losing nearly £100 of my wages and still having to pay our nursery fees.. .
• Forgot to add that today is a 10p listing day on Ebay so we've got TONNES of stuff lined up tonight to put on, so fingers crossed we make a killing! LOL! Will keep you updated..
• your partner needs to look at it from a different angle once u have paid the credit cards off, the aim isnt to spend on them again :rolleyes: only use them if u have an absolutle emergency im sure other people will be on here soon to offer some more advice and to see if they can help getting ur outgoings down as well
• Well.. I've spent the past 3 hours putting things on ebay.. I'm so glad it's done though and there's now 23 things on there all ending this time sunday. Have even got Ј10 worth of bids already from travel vouchers we put on that we were given for wedding presents! Woohoo! Haven't put our sky+ box on yet though as it's not cancelled until the 15th Nov so may as well make the most of it!
  Will keep you updated with how we're selling!
• Helloand welcome. My 1st thought was crikey, you're the same age as my daughter - and v young to be saddled with such a burden! Well done on tackling it, and getting OH (semi) on board. I'm sure once you make progress he'll step in line!
  A few points on SOA - sorry hon, it's not all there.....
  Xmas, birthdays, haircuts, clothes, car tax, MOT, probably lots more. You need to account for these - these are the 'hiddn bills' that cripple.
  Food - try old style board, you can get this down. Do you have a slow cooker, if not go on www.freecycle.org.uk and ask for one. (This is a great site in general)
  Spending - register with all the cash back sites - quidco, pigsback, freefivers to name but a few. At insurance renewal time check out cheapest quotes (try Martin's guides) then see if company is on quidco etc, may be worth paying Ј20 more to get Ј55 cash back.
  Mystery shopping - check out boards on here, you could do this while on maternity leave.
  You're right - the 'correct' way to do things is in order of APR, however you both need a 'quick fix' at the mo so you're probably right to clear a few to give some 'quick wins' and also make the situation less complicated.
  Driving lessons - can you teach him (maybe that's a saving too far ).
  TV rental - this really is wasted money. Ask family for money for Xmas and buy yourselves one in March.
  gas & electric high - time to swap or are you in arrears@ If so i think EDF will still take you?
  TTFN & good luck!
• Hi ali.. thanks for your reply.. just wanted to make a quick comment about the gas and electric.. we've been on uswitch etc and our supplier has always come up cheapest by far... not sure where else I could try though?
• 24 hours since I listed everything on Ebay.... we're at £76.05 already!!!! Woohoo!!! Looks like we'll be able to pay a decent amount off a debt if it keeps going this well!!! Fingers crossed! Everything's finishing sunday evening and saturday/sunday are prime selling days!!!
• All the ebay listings have ended except the sky+ box... and without postage we've made £283!!! I can't believe it!! Looks like a debt is going to be cleared off sooner than we thought!!!! I love ebay!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're hoping for around £50-£60 for the sky+ box so we're looking at around £350 pure profit from stuff that's just been lying around the house gathering dust!!!!
  WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
• Just make sure you do pay it off, and aren't tempted to use the money for something else.
• Well done on the ebay sales, nice tidy sum
• Wow that's fantastic. Well done on getting so much on the ebay front.
• Its amazing how much money you can raise by selling stuff you never use anymore. I'm nearly Ј200 up on selling old mobile phones that have been sitting in drawers for months/years
• well done on your e bay sales. You will soon have that first debt paid off.
  sophiesmum
• Looks like we're going to be paying Steve's Dell off first with the ebay funds. He called them up today and to settle it today would be £317! Much less than we thought! Also considering we've got our normal payment going out on the 28th by the time all the ebay money has cleared and is in the bank ready to pay the final figure will be even less! Woohoo! Once that's paid off we look at paying off another one soon as (Not sure exactly which yet as we have another company (debt collectors) to call to negotiate a final settlement .. so we'll see... but at the moment it just feels great knowing we'll be able to pay a debt completely off and save ourselves £22 a month in the process!!!
  Feeling much more positive about clearing off our debts now!
• Well done on your ebay sales!!! Any more stuff laying round that you could list towards another debt?? Gets pretty addictive doesn't it?!
• Well done on taking such a positive step towards your debts and thats a great total !! It feels great to finally start taking control of the debts rather than being controlled by them.Well done to you both
• Well done Sarah on your fantastic eBay sales! I bet you've got more stuff in your house that you could list now... it gets addictive doesn't it.
  I'll be keeping an eye on your diary as a fellow preggie lady. Good luck!
• Great result from your e bay stuff. It will feel great when you pay off that first debt And you will free up the money each month that you used to pay on it so you win twice.
  keep up the good work Sarah
  sophiesmum