Money, money, money

[stonybroke]

Hi there - could really do with some advice, opinions, experience! I have changed my name (what a wimp!) as I am too embarrassed to use my normal name. I am even nervous as I type, as I know some will wonder how we got in this mess.

Anyway... the subject is AGGGHHHHHH MONEY! We are in a major, and I mean major, mess and we have worked all weekend on figures trying to work out the solution.

I don't have the exact figures with me but the situation is:

We owe £30,000 on credit cards, personal loans, car loan.
We own our house through a shared housing scheme, where we have a mortgage for half and rent half. The equity is only around £8,000. Property prices don't go up very much where we live approx. £2,000 per year. Our mortgage is £31,500

We need a new roof, we only have two bedrooms and now need additional one with dd's arrival. We could convert our room into two bedrooms for 2 kids and we move into ds room. Our garden needs major work done - it is a big old concrete jungle.

We earn about £26,000 between us. I work parttime, childcare is £75.00 per week.

Anyway there lays bear the facts of the situation - scarey eh? We do not live lavish lives - don't buy many clothes, have had one holiday in 10 years, etc. I stayed at home with my ds for 3 years and that is where the problem began. We also bought our first house in the sticks which turned into a major mistake.

The figures this weekend showed that we get into debt every month just paying for our household bills and loan repayments. That leaves nothing for clothes, going out, christmas, birthdays, etc. No extras of any shape.

The option we think my be the one to go with (even though I am a avid watcher of Alvin Hall and he says never to do this) is to consolidate over 25 years (if we would even be accepted for this?) In theory this would reduce our monthly repayments from approx £750 to aprox £260 or thereabout. That at least would mean we would have some cash for clothes, school fund, christmas, etc.

Anyway, I think that is the details. I am shaking as I type this. Please Please any sound financial advise would be very much appreciated! I am off to the ladies to have a cry.

hi there - I just wanted to let you helpful souls who helped me through my massive panic attack in September, how we are doing.

Things are much, much better. We have a long road to go, but at least we are on the right road! In the last 2.5 months we have managed to pay off our overdraft. Oh what a happy dance we did when we got our bank statement with NO minus signs on it!! This has never ever happened before!! This month we hope to pay off our tv/video loan at 24.9% apr. (What were we like?!)

My thanks again to everyone who helped and I also wanted to let anyone who is in a similar position - it is possible to get out of the depths of despair and face it head on.... with a lot of help from your friends!!

That's fantastic!!

stonybroke, well done, what an achievement, congratulations!

Marvellous news, well done!
What are you doing differently now that has resulted in such a positive forward direction?

Fantastic! Congratulations. Just in time for Christmas too

Thanks for the lovely encouraging posts!

scoobysnax - in answer to your question, we are ENJOYING the whole 'living below our means' experience! We know that we are doing the best we can for our family for the future and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Practically we have budgeted and set it all out on spreadsheets. We have a notebook that we put our daily spending in to - I then transfer that to our 'Variable Monthly Spend' (each column has a target figure, so we know when we are starting to overspend in certain areas and have to cut back). Last month we overspent in the school column, so cut back in the grocery column.

We check our bank balance about 3 times a week on the internet and check off what has come out and what is left to come out. We always know what is in the account - bloomy 'ell this is a new one!!

At the end of the month I do a full statement of what income, expenditure and balance left over to put towards debt. So far we have managed to put nearly £1000 per month towards are debt repayments.

We shop in Lidl for the main shop - we did a monthly shop for the first time at the beginning of November (worked out in advance each meal exactly) the total came to £63.84!! dh and myself found it really hard to conceal our grins - we felt as if we had diddled money out of them!! We giggled in the car for about half an hour!!!! This shop did do us the month btw. We had to go to Tescos for bread, tuna, chocolate spread and a few other bits, which came to about £20.

Our 2 credit cards are now on 0% - I should say our balances are on 2 credit cards - we do not have a credit card anymore. This is saving us, wait for it..... £120 per month in interest - shocking or what?

We left our other loans as they are, as we would end up paying them interest (frontloaded) anyway if we moved them.

We have stopped (in the main! the hardest habit to break we have found! what pigs!) getting takeaways. We haven't been able to stop our Friday night drinks, but I now get the cheapest bottle of vodka (6.99 Tescos) and cheap lemonade and dh gets cider (what alcos). I used to get Smirnoff Ice, so we save quite a bit there.

We found out where to get the cheapest petrol in our area and fill up there (the AA website will email you with updates of this!!).

Anyway I have gone on and on I know, I could keep going, but I'm sure noone is reading this by now!! But I have been amazed by how much money we have been throwing away. As you may have noticed I have become quite evangelical about the whole thing and get a real buzz out of finding a bargain!

I read somewhere about 'Conscious Spending' - this means spending as little as possible on the things that you need, so that you have more to spend on the things you want. This is how I intend to spend in the future - even beyond paying off the debt. I must say our lifestyle hasn't really changed much - the kids aren't suddenly getting beans for dinner everynight!

Well I better go - off to research the most cost effective (not necessarily the cheapest!) life assurance options!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Take care everyone.

S

That's inspiring Stoneybroke, well done!

Wow Stoneybroke that's inspired.

I must say the anal part of me would quite enjoy all that monitoring of expenses and research of bargains in a funny sort of way (although I do appreciate that it is also frustrating - having to account for every penny). Might try this conscious spending approach!

Stoneybroke, that sounds fantastic, I really feel DH and I nned to 'live within our means'. We are lucky, we don't have huge debts, the odd bits on credit card (about £600) and a smallish overdraft at teh end of the month. But I like the idea of how much you have saved by being organised - I'll have to find my nearest lidl and plan a months meals. I know that is our biggest overspend. We could so easily have loads of spare money, but we don't!

Congrats, Stonybrooke, you've done brilliantly getting to grips with it all.

Congratulations - I followed your thread back in September and I was wondering how you are doing.

Please couild you let me know what sort of meals you eat - 63.00 for a months shop, I am genuinly interested. I plan a week in advance for food and I know I still overspend and could cut right back in this area if I tried!! - I'm inspired!!

Well done again and also for inspiring the rest of us!!

Concious spending - what a brilliant spending philosophy!
Stoneybroke, thanks for the details - I am going to try a bit of this out for myself!
Merry Christmas!
Scoobysnax
xxx

Sonnet - I know its hard to believe, we were sniggering away to ourselves afterwards! Although this month only cost us £58, so it must have been right. This included washing powder, etc.

You ask about meals - well neither dh or myself are slender people (unfortunately), so a family with smaller appetites could probably do better. I forgot to put in my original post a spend of around £15 in Iceland also. Some of their offers are amazing. This month I have bought a half leg of lamb, a large chicken, 6 turkey breasts and 4 salmon fillets for £10.

For meals generally - toast or porridge for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch (dh is the king of sandwich makers!) and then dinners are: tuna, sweetcorn, onion and pasta in mayo (delicious honest! - from my dh student days), baked potatoes and beans/cheese/tuna and sweetcorn/coronation chicken, rice and chilli (mince 99p, sauce @ 69p, tin of kidney beans, mixed peppers and sweetcorn - does about 4 meals / 8 portions), pasta and bolognaise sauce (again bulked out with veg and does about 4 meals), cottage pie (ditto), cheesie beans on toast, chicken curry (well turkey at the mo, as is on offer! bulk out with frozen mixed veg - very tasty - usually get 2 meals out of this. The offers in Iceland usually make up another 5 days meals minimum. The chicken I bought this month will probably make 4 meals - roast, sweet and sour, curry, sandwiches, coronation chicken, etc. I also make up a mean veg soup, which we would have with bread for dinner once a week.

I could probably keep going, but I'm sure you get the idea. my dd is 10 months and I make up all her food and freeze it, so for a month I will probably use 1 chicken/turkey breast, 1 salmon fillet and potatoes and lots of veg. I also make up some of Annabel Karmel's lentil dishes and cauliflower gratin. Also puree up loads of apples and pears (before she had mangos and papaya and blueberries! She hasn't complained yet!! Although I will buy what's on offer). She has ready brek/weetabix for breakfast. She also eats puree versions of our food.

My ds is a fussy eater - he eats pasta, peas and fish fingers, chicken dippers, apples, sandwiches. He will not be swayed from this terrible diet!!

I love to cook and before our diet was a lot more extravagant and exciting but we are getting plenty of veg and a varied diet. I do miss opening my Nigella and browsing for what I am going to cook at the weekend!!
Anyway there you have it! You did ask! Hope that gives you some ideas............... whats that I hear?..... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....!!!

No stoneybroke - no zzzzzzz from me.

This is fascinating stuff. We are comfortably well off as a family, and I am aware how lucky we are. However, I do worry that we squander money right left and centre and this really has made me stop and think. We could be saving more which would let us do more of the things that we want, or even allow us to give more to charity. Surely better than throwing out half the contents of the fridge every week!

Well done - I'm going to put my thinking cap on now and try and come up with a more sensible approach to spending!

jmg,

I'm the same - a 'lazy' purchaser and food goes off in my fridge before its used. Scandalous really.

I am terrible I never plan meals. I bet I could save a fortune if I planned, even weekly meals would help. Problem is dh and I always eat different things (I'm veggie, he's not)

No zzzzzzz's form me either - thanks for replying stoneybroke ( or not so any more )

I could have written jmg's post a few months ago - I am trying and I do plan meals. "Padding out" with veg is a good idea as we eat alot of bolognese, shepherds pie, casseroles etc...I'm impressed with 4 meals out of a chicken - I get two and think i'm doing well!!

Well done - plenty of food for thought!!

stoneybroke - thats brilliant. You are an inspiration to all of us who need to do the same!