Hi Lyndsay and welcome to the site. I'm sorry you are having difficulties. There was a temporary bug in the calculator which existed from late Friday evening until early Sunday morning when it was fixed. During this time, the SOA Calculator wouldn't fully load up and there was no "Calculate" button. Was that the problem?

If you managed to create the SOA without problem, then you should click on the blue "Make Sense" button to format it for posting here. This will open up another window with you SOA with all the correct control tags so that it formats fine when posted here. You might need to scroll down the window in order to select and copy the whole SOA.

Hope that helps.

Clariman

Hi Lyndsey. Well done for posting your SOA. Don't feel bad about how you got into this position. You are where you are. The important thing is that you are taking the first steps towards sorting it out. I'll make a few comments on your spending, but I'll also ask a couple of debt experts if they will take a look at it and advice you on the overall best course of action.

You currently have a deficit of about £1000 per month (Edit: although as Tortoise points out below this could be an error in your SOA)in order to meet all your outgoings. You need to get that sorted out otherwise you will continue to get deeper into debt. The good news is that you have sufficient income to meet the priority debts like mortgage and secured loan. My initial thought is that you should ask lenders to freeze interest on your unsecured debts and make an offer to pay them pro-rata what you can afford. Have a look at our debt guide if you haven't already seen it (under Guides from homepage menu).

You also need to look to reduce your outgoings. Here are some suggestion.

* Mobile expensive but you plan to fix
* Landline of £40 pm is quite a lot. Worth investigating why so much.
* Satellite/cable TV should be cancelled. Freeview gives many of the channels and costs nothing.
* Other travel £300 is a big drain on resources. What is it for?
* Buildings & Contents come to £612 per annum. That is a lot. Can you find a better combined deal for nearer £400 p.a.?
* Life assurance of £107 p.m. is a lot. Is there no room for improvement
* presents £42 pm could be cut down
* Entertainment £100 is a lot in the circumstances. Cut back to £40?
* Groceries £280 is a fair bit for 3 people. Scope for some savings there.

Hope that helps for starters, but they are unlikely to bridge the £1000 gap. (Edit: but deficit may not be that much if Tortoise is correct about the error)

Is your mortgage a repayment one or interest only? If repayment, you could consider going interest only for a while while you get your heads above water, but that should be a short term move.

Clariman

hi Lyndsey

you need to get your expenditure down.  Your mortgage and secured loan costs are a fortune.  If you don't want to sell the house and get somewhere cheaper (or if you actually cant sell the house) then you are going to have to have a very frugal couple of years where all spare money goes to the debts and no luxuries - the house is your luxury!

So:

phones gone - good

cancel sky/cable - i know it is a package, but you can get boradband for £15 a month and the rest you dont need

get the groceries down a bit - your hubby giving up smoking would really help!  have you shown him the SoA?  get him to the doctor to ask for help

halve the entertainment

halve the presents - you cant afford to wast £500 a year on those!!!

cut the emergency fund down to £30

get quotes for combined contenets & buildings insurance - it may well be cheaper

then the biggies - switch your mortgage to interest only if possible.  This is NOT a good idea in the medium term but will give you an extra £300 or so a month, all of which can be paid off the highest interest card  NB you need to find out the rates on ALL your cards

and think about that life assurance - how much is the insured sum?  even for a smoker it looks high.  do either of you have life cover through your work pension?  if you do, then you don't need extra cover

manz

Hi Lyndsay

Can you confirm that Tortoise was correct with saying that you had put your whole overdraft down as a monthly payment by mistake? That will make a big difference to how you SOA looks.

Regarding offering each creditor the same amount (£57), that wouldn't be the normal way to do it (and might be why you have not heard?). The normal thing to do would be to offer them a pro-rata amount. If you take a look at our problem debt guide you can see how to make a pro-rata offer and a sample letter that you can use to do so.

Hope that helps
Clariman