How am I supposed to do this without being in debt?

[orangepinkblue]

I thought I earned a decent amount. Take home is 3,200.

Mortgage around 1,000. This is far better than rent round here.
Car finance (yes I need car for work!), 290.
Childcare full times, 1,400.
Credit card payments (interest free) 80.
Travel to and from work, 150 a month.

Last year energy costs were around 250 a month in winter. I don’t know what I’m going to do? I have no partner and don’t seem to have any access to other support due to my income. Things like car tax, insurance for car and home, food, petrol, I don’t know how I will manage this?

Have your circumstances changed recently? Where is your child’s father - does he pay maintenance?

Some ideas.

Do you claim tax free childcare?

Can you get a lodger?

Is the £150 travel fuel expenses- can you claim any of that back if you do mileage for work, or is it just travel to work?

Can you work from home any days/more days?

Can you do compressed hours? or have you tried to figure out if dropping a day at work costs you less than the nursery fee?

Can you remortgage and extend your term so the monthly payments go down?

Again it’s the childcare costs ,How many children do you have when will they go to school ?So so difficult.I imagine the travel costs are by train so no saving there.Heating costs and food are the onlythings left to cut down on.Do you get child support??

Is the £80 per month for debt the lowest payment? What is total amount of debt on the credit card? As in will it be paid off soon?

Yes this is claiming the tax free childcare, still comes to this. Ex has never paid, he has huge savings but doesn’t work. Can’t compress hours sadly. I literally do not know what to do.

@Dessertinthedesert yes the 80 is the minimum payment. It’s not a huge debt but I obviously have to pay it and want to avoid interest.

Can you transfer credit card bill to free balance transfer and so reduce the amount each month. Credit cards have high interest rates.

look at money savings expert for a budget planner.

@Riverlee yes already done that, it is interest free

Both DH and I have car shared at various times over the years. I did give a woman a lift and she would chip in with petrol money for almost two years, she paid me a tenner a week but it saved her a tenner a week and she got picked up and dropped off. She worked on the same campus as me but there are lift sharing sites.

When are your car payments ending? plus how much is the car worth? You will be being charged at least 12% interest on that car deal. You could consider trading the car in and buying something cheaper, obviously that will be very specific to what you can get.

How old is your child? Everyone can get 15 hours childcare and it’s going up to up to 30 hours next year but it’s age dependant.

Do you get any CM from the Father?

I'm sorry you find yourself in such a difficult situation.

If you haven't done so already, I suggest you take a look on moneysavingexpert.com. Lots of advice and support on the forum from people in similar situations.

OP that sounds stressful. I’m not sure if any of this will be relevant but…

What I do is: condense hours (full time pay, 4 days per week).

Ask a friend to swap a days childcare with you (I do this, so they’ve mine one day a week and I’ve theirs so we each save a day).

We don’t use a nursery as they were too expensive, we’ve a local childminder instead. Whose been a brilliant support to us (and is £900 a month FT 8:30-6+, compared to nursery’s which are 1500+!).

Budget and meal plan - slow cooker is brilliant as it means we’ve something hot to eat together that’s ready when we get it.

Can you get: tax free childcare, CB, have you checked entitled to? When do you qualify for the additional hours? Even 15 made a big difference for us (meant one “free” day per week at miner even topping her up!). The intense nursery fees are short term. So even though I’ve nothing left at the end of the month it’s been worth TH me working as I’ve been promoted since having baba, am building my pension and…I like it!

We do a lot of local picnics with waterproof clothes in random playgrounds at the weekends (cheap but fun family time).

Sorry when posting you had already answered some questions.

Nobody really needs a £290 a month car. Is this lease or hire purchase? If it's leased, you can't usually end these sort of contracts early but if it's hire purchase you might be able to sell it and pay it off then buy something cheaper. Next time, get a used car from Cazoo or similar, you'll have loads of options for a used car for well under what you're paying.

Childcare: Is that nursery? I found my nursery came to about £10 per hour (per child) and have saved hundreds a month by switching to a childminder. If you get on a waiting list now you might be in by Jan.

Energy: Why is it going up to £250 a month? What is your bill usually? We're paying about £75 a month for a family of four in a two bedroom semi. We only put the hot water on 30 mins before bath time and we all bath/shower every two days. I don't know if that's helpful but it's the only thing I can think of that we do differently to other people as we aren't careful with anything else.

Edited to delete the bit about the credit card as you'd answered this in the time it took me to get my daughter Weetabix in the middle of typing. 🤣

The car payment stood out to me as well. Is there any flexibility on this? For context I've had the same old banger for a decade, and even with a few hundred quids work here and there I reckon it averages out to no more than £70 per month. Cars are so much more reliable than they used to be so an old banger's a safer bet nowadays.

That does sound incredibly stressful, OP. Regarding your car, is there any way you can reduce those payments?

I should add that the cost of living is ridiculous nowadays and it's rotten that the wages of decent job just don't stretch far anymore.

Yes definitely. You shouldn't be having to make these changes/decisions OP and it's shit that you are.

It's very hard for the few years when childcare costs are so high.

The blunt answer to your question is that you were "supposed" to have done the calculations in advance and saved up enough to help you deal with these years, but obviously real life doesn't work like that and most single parents don't plan for things to be this way in advance.

Once your children are a bit older and chilcare costs are much lower, you will be comfortable. Until then you may just have to accept going into debt, and have a plan to pay it off once you have more disposable income.

Check benefits calculators here: https://www.gov.uk/benefits-calculators

You may be able to get some help with childcare costs via Universal Credit.

Write your ex a letter detailing that without any financial contribution from him your children will be cold this winter? Any way that might prick his conscience?

@Ragruggers he would ignore it. I asked him last year if he would contribute and he didn’t respond but then wished me a merry Christmas weeks later. I’m not putting myself through it again.

Your car payments are high, why do you need a £290 a month car? Can you send it back and get a cheap one instead? that would free up at least £100 a month.

Both parents are also 'supposed' to pay towards the cost of raising their children and also do some of the work of doing so, so there's the option of working different hours to reduce the required childcare for example.

I don't know if there is any way to compel a non earning, but well off parent to pay child support. If he has 'huge savings' these will be paying him an income in the form of interest and investment growth, but unlikely to count as income for child support purposes. TBH, if he is not contributing, I'd be telling his parents that their grandchild is suffering due to their son's negligence in the hope that they'd help instead. If they're wealthy themselves and have any conscious at all, it might work.

You probably will be entitled to some child benefit as your income after pension is unlikely to be above £60k, so claim it and do a tax return to pay some back via PAYE. It doesn't take long and every little helps.

But apart from that, yes, try to not borrow to run a car, to reduce the ongoing cost. When does the contract end and will that be the car paid for so you can run it for a while without payments?

Has your mortgage gone up yet, or is this another increase in cost you'll have to cope with?

But if it comes to it, it could be that you can't do this without getting into debt, and you might instead have to focus on limiting the amount of debt and cost of it, live the minimum lifestyle possible, maximise 0% credit cards, and just keep rolling it over/pay off gradually as your expenses drop when your circumstances improve and/or your DC starts school and the childcare bill drops.

I’d do a claim through CSA on your children’s father - he ultimately needs to be paying towards their care and childcare - that’s a really big childcare bill. Might take time but at least you would get something.

I feel for you, I really do. Been there as a single mum and it feels simply impossible some days but we get through it day by day.

@orangepinkblue, If ex gets income from savings CMS might be able to act

If you really really need to cut down your outgoings then relook at your credit card.

It might be interest free, but some cards have a higher minimum repayment than others. Eg, OH has an interest free Capital One card, but the minimum repayment each month is 3.25% of the debt. He's going to switch this to Natwest as their card is interest free but their minimum repayment is only 1% of debt.

This is not ideal. It means the debt is being paid off much much slower, but needs must, and decreasing the outgoings payments are priority at the moment.

Off the top of my head the cards with low 1% minimum repayments are...
Natwest
Santander
Virgin
Nationwide
TSB
Yorkshire Bank
Tesco Bank

The ones with higher min repayments are..
Capital One
Lloyds
M&S
PostOffice
HSBC
Sainsburys
Barclaycard

Please don't just take my eyes for this - if you're looking to swap check each cards 'summary box' which gives you the legal info. Might only gain you £55 ish each month but better than nothing.