25 Feb 2015

A question about : Meltdown =LBM

hi all

I have been a lurker on here for a few years but had my LBM on the weekend,
my car is in need of some repairs and I just cant afford to have it fixed atm so spent the whole weekend in tears and feeling sorry for myself
I only have myself to blame and someone told me if you change nothing, nothing changes so today is a new day and I will be starting my diary on here later, there is no more burying my head in the sand its time I faced the music!

so if anyone has any tips and advice I would be extremely grateful

I am about to start my budget, can anyone recommend a good budgeting tool or app? want something that is easy to access when out and about.

Sorry for the waffle

Sal

Best answers:

  • Step one, prepare a SOA and post it here.
    Step two, prepare for a lifestyle change. Can you live without your car? Will save you loads if you can, how about a bike? I avoided debt and interest payments by using a bike.
    You may be able to as well.
  • https://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php
    Link to the SOA calculator lots of people use on here.
    Be honest with yourself than you can plan the next steps.. good luck
  • The only other advice I would say is be honest with yourself. Whether it's that u smoke 40 a day but when u put it in the budget looks yikes or ur tv package is Ј100 per mth but u only want to put Ј20 as it looks better.
    Some people do use apps but for me a good old spreadsheet and a little notebook and I'm sorted. I have my own plus due to family illness in looking after my parents accounts and both managed ok xx
  • Hello Sal
    The biggest thing for me was admitting I was in serious financial trouble and burying my head in the sand. Once you can do that (and it sounds like you have) moving forward will be that little bit easier.
    First of all find out where you stand financially. Work out what you've got coming in, what's going out and any debt you owe.
    Once you have a complete picture of your financial situation, you can then start to fix things.
    For me the hardest part was contacting everyone we owed money to. I remember having a list of around 30 creditors to call and it took me a good few hours to pick up the phone and make that first one.
    Slowly but surely I contacted everyone and set up an arrangement. Although we were in a large amount of debt (almost 40k) we decided not to enter a DMP but deal with it ourselves.
    Most of the creditors agreed on a repayment plan straight away but a few took a little more convincing.
    The main thing was that we decided not to live like this any more. We were in debt but instead of hiding and pretending everything was OK, we decided to face it head on.
    We didn't want the debt to define our lives so we took back control. It wasn't easy but we started to cut back on our spending, look for ways to increase our income and manage our money better.
    Good luck with your budget and sorting out your problems. You have definitely made the right decision to sort it out and as long as your determined and focused, you will get where you want to be.
  • One of the things that I suggest when the LBM comes is a huge audit of everything that you own because you need to cut your spending as well as increase your income. NOW!
    1) Do you have clothes, shoes, belts, bags that you could cash in at a cash 4 clothes style organisation? I recently made more than Ј30 doing this with stuff that I never used. They even take old bras! That money could stock up your cupboards so that you don't need to buy much food at all for a while except fresh stuff
    2) Is there anything that you could sell on ebay? Excess furniture etc?
  • As others above have said, the first thing is probably to do a SOA so the good people on here can advise where you can make cuts.
    In terms of budgeting apps, I use YNAB (You Need A Budget) which is a software that has phone apps. It works on a zero budget method, and has a free trial so you don't need to commit to it without trying. If you decide to have a look at it, I recommend the free classes as they really make it clear how to use the apps, and there is also the chance to win a free copy of the software!
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