Single mother needs to clear loans

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While you are spending 1.5/2 k a month over your budget, you are keeping your discretionary spending quite high. I don't know how you can spend 1000 a month on grocery with only the 3 of you considering how young your children are. We are 3 adults and a teenager and our spending would be in the region of 750-800 max and I am not counting. We don't spend 200 in clothes and 300 in coffee and events and once again we are not on a budget. What your holiday plans this year for 2.4 k. Have you budgeted and planned for them yet? I personally would not necessarily do without as holidays are one of my priorities. But their cost vary.
Yes you have a short term debt issue. But after that you are still spending 800 to 1000 more than your income. Childcare will decrease with time though it might still be a couple of years. Then children do become more demanding in terms of activities, toys, presents and entertainment. So while it's cheaper until at least secondary school, expenses don't just disappear. Life is expensive. I think it is very important to make a distinction between your needs and your wants and then prioritize your wants. I would also advise you to consider a money diary.
I would not touch your pension because it's quite low for your age. Considering your current contribution and the fact that you're in the company for 8 years, you must have started contributing quite recently. I would be concerned that a few months became a few years and your expenses have to fit your income.
 
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- the movies thing sounds very vague to me.
- the rent a room scheme sounds like your best bet, you do a working man who does Dublin Monday to Friday, the type that is out working all day and eats out too, sometimes arrives late on a Sunday or you only see them after work on a Monday as they drive straight to work and they are gone by Friday morning heading home to their family. Give him the en suite. Put up with it for a year, maybe 2. Ideal time now while 2 kids are young.
- I know nothing about tracking apps, sounds like a gimmick to me. Get out your grocery bills and see what you are spending the money on.
- About fun and pleasure, no you don't need to pay for a coffee out for that, you get fun or pleasure out of bringing in a hot flask, making your own sandwiches and thinking about how quickly you are paying down the debt
- re the kids shoes. You are seriously not spending €200 a month on them? Have you no siblings to give you their kids shoes. Dunnes have pretty good school shoes for the 6 year old.
- - You don't sound frugal to me

The possible redundancy is pretty serious. Surely the thing to do there is to proactively get a different job.
 
michaelm said:
I would be tempted to ask PTSB for a three month mortgage payment holiday and use that to clear the AIB loan.
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Not a good idea if she doesn't reign in the other spending first. Currently she says she's spending 2K over her 5K salary.

She's also on a very good cheap fixed rate, no point messing with that when her job is precarious.

insurance3750
utilities5700
health3000
car3000
kids15240
eating out, coffees, events3600
house maintenance3000
groceries12000
clothes, toys, beauty2400
holidays2400
contingency bill4800
58860
Mortgage €918 X 12 = 11,016
Loan 1 €607 x 12 =7284
Loan 2 €570 x 12 = 6840

Total Expenditure €84000
Total Income €63360
Overspend € 20640 (only 14K of that is the 2 loans, so there is already an overspending problem. )

So only if OP is really serious on sorting this out it is entirely up to her. But I'd suggest one year of hell.

Holidays 2400, coffees/eating out 3600, half the grocery, 6K, utilities looks crazy to me. toys/beauty 2400, contingency which is clearly nonsense 4800 and the 2 insurances health 3K (is this normal in Ireland) so what's the other insurance of 3800?

Add 2400+3600+6000+2400+4800 gives 13K in one year. but that won't work because of the 20K overspend. But come October Loan 2 is paid off give nearly 7K. So now close to the 20K needed. Which becomes 13K shortfall when loan 2 is paid off.

Take in lodger for one year at rent of 1K maybe = 12K to throw at the Avant loan. I've to go now hope this makes sense.
 
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OP, have you also heard of the concept of loud budgeting? Sometimes there can be pressure to spend as we don't want to say that we don't have funds for something. So by saying out loud, no sorry, we are not doing x,y,z because we are saving for holidays or a home improvement project etc it becomes something we control rather than a thing we are trying to hide. This can be helpful in managing expectations of others. And it teaches your 6 year old that there is no magic money tree...so when they ask for this that and the other, you could point to a chart or whatever for the holiday and at the top it's your destination.

I think only you know what you can live with or without and that will be different to to others. But you unfortunately can't have it all so need to make choices on something - I could not live without an annual trip abroad, even in our leanest years we managed something, and the only thing that kept us sane during young kids years was a cleaner. So in your position as others have said, try to tackle the expenses where you can and try to look at this as a positive thing. When we were attacking our mortgage for eg I always had the mantra in place, I have to earn twice this to pay it off, and then I would incur x by interest on top of that, it 100% helped me focus on what I could live without.

Another angle here is that you are a single adult household. Doing all this alone is hard work, and not just the parenting, but running a home, budgeting for a family. It is far far easier with two heads rather than one. But also this means you are in full control, your kids are too young to be spending your money, you don't have a partner who is not aligned to your spending and ruining any efforts you make. So again try to look at this perspective, and apply the skills that you earn your great salary on to this project. You can 100% do this.
 
Bronte said:
Not a good idea if she doesn't reign in the other spending first. Currently she says she's spending 2K over her 5K salary.
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Agreed, it won't help with the underlying issue. Unless spending is reined in it's just moving the deckchairs. It is however a temporary cash flow boost. You have to give a generic reason, "defray the cost of necessary dental work" or some such.
 
Parazard2 said:
I double checked the suspicious categories but I will check again. Any other apps that are good? I wouldn't mind something that links up overall budget to individual categories and tracks them
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Excel is the best. You should be able to download your bank transactions as a .CSV file that you can work with in Excel.
 
Lots of good advice. I'm getting the feeling rightly or wrongly that while the op would like to cut spending there is a reluctance to really let go of the excessive spending.

I think you earn a great salary.

As someone said, it's a cash flow problem, not a huge debt problem. Increase/redirect the cash flow, reduce the debt.

I can't quite get my head around why you would cut your child's swimming lessons (an essential life skill in my opinion) and not the Coffee or meals out. I understand you need something for yourself but with the amount you are spending on groceries alone, could you not invite friends around for a casual dinner instead of eating out?

There would appear to be so many ways to cut your spending, you just need to bite the bullet and do it.

Best of luck. It's a short term pain for a long term gain.
 
Groceries should be no more than €600 a month. Shop once a week in Lidl or Aldi. Never just drop in to get stuff in the local Supervalue etc.
Coffee and eating out should be zero; you can't afford it.
You can't afford a cleaner. Get rid of her.
You can't afford a €2400 holiday.


All these things are nice but they aren't essential and you shouldn't spend money you don't have on things that you want but don't need.
 
DannyBoyD said:
Disagree with this; like childcare, household help keeps things on the road.
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Childcare is necessary to allow the OP to work. Cleaning can be done in a few hours at the weekend. It takes about 30 minutes to vacuum a house and wash the floors. The children are 3 and 6. There's plenty of time in the evenings when they are in bed to clean bathrooms, do the ironing etc. It's a completely unnecessary luxury.

A few years ago (for about 8 years, ending around 4 years ago) when I was living on a very tight budget I had €50 a week, maybe €70 at todays prices, to feed a family of 4. It can be done quite comfortably. There was no cleaner (there still isn't), no eating out, no takeaway food or coffees, no Sky movies or sports, no holidays etc... because I couldn't afford it.
 
DannyBoyD said:
Again, I disagree.

OP has a decent income, clearly needs to adjust spending.

How that looks will differ for everyone; but at this point I think the OP has plenty to chew over & make decisions on.
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Agreed. The OP has to cut back on spending but does have enough income to have some discretionary spending . It’s not our decision which things are high value and which she can cut with less impact
 
A few bits to add:

In a nutshell, you are seriously overspending by at least 1.5 k per month, and i’m ignoring the loans, mortgage,In addition, you have a short term cashflow issue with the Avant & AIB loans, Changes are needed and compromises to be made to rectify this
Some relief is enroute on the AIB loan which will be cleared by around October, but the Avant loan is around 3 and a bit years to go, and you've made good progress in reducing it, but leaving the loans aside, your biggest issue apart from shorterm cashflow crisis, is overspending.

Tackle the Avant loan as a priority # 1,
i’d be slow to cease pension, as Employer makes a decent contribution, and stopping it will only save you circa €200 per month. but you may not have a choice. I’d put every cent you are paying to AIB once cleared, against the Avant loan, that would clear it before the end of next year, if you stopped
Pension, and went interest only
On Mortgage. at which time you would be €1,177 better off cashflow wise per month.

You have a very good rate on the mortgage, >50 % LTV, all very positive on that front. Its still something, i’d review after that fixed rate ends in 2027, by which time variable rates should have reduced

However, there still is a serious underlying issue with spending, irrespective of the loans being cleared, so thats priority #2 once both loans cleared, but you should tackle some of the over spending areas now.

Monthly groceries are very excessive @ 1,000 per month. we have 2 adult children and we do it for half of that per month, albeit a lot of home cooking, you might want to maybe look at some meal planning, so you are going shopping with a list of items to buy for specific meals, rather than randomly buying items, this always leads to excessive food waste. Some of the meal prep be done in advance, to ease time pressures during the week. Check Aldi & Liddl for grocery basics, and many have money off coupons for regular shoppers.

Loose buying t/a coffees - completely

Cut back on meals out, amount doesent look particularly excessive, but maybe swap, some going out, to a takeaway night in

Cut back on some of the kids activites/classes, maybe substitute some with pre arranged play dates etc.

Review your Insurance needs, i initially
Thought the €3,720 per annum for Insurance, included Health Insurance, but you have that listed seperately for €3.6 k per annum. More than 7k per annum combined looks quite high. Review your insurance and healthcare needs annually, shop around.

Is “Utilities” @ €475 pm just for Gas & Electricity ? Thats more than 5.7 k per annum, something seriously wrong here, mine would be less than one quarter of that on average over a 12 month period.
I suspect, you are only taking the most recent bills which would be high in Jan to March.
Review your utility tarriffs, shop around, as there have been a few price reductions in recent months, and more are expected. It only costs €50 - per fuel, to leave a utility supplier if you are still in contract.

There is no magic wand here, only real changes to spending and planning habits will make a difference here. Change isn’t easy, but some tough choices needed here.
 
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I think again on a broader scale we have to appreciate that the OP is a single parent working a pretty much full time job (while it not might be the intention, parental leave usually means you are full on performing for the 4 days and achieve a full time workload without any of the small respites that you can fit into a 5 day week). And that leaves little energy/time for doing some of the things that seem obvious - like meal prep and cleaning. So that means increase in costs for food and requirement to have help with cleaning. There is a trade off, they can work less to do those things and have less income. And run the risk of falling behind in career, losing out on % of pension contributions etc.

I applaud the OP for doing all that they do and for having the where with all to come on here and ask for advice (of which they have gotten plenty of and very high quality too).
 
So looking back through the posts the following is you income and expenditure

Income Monthly
€5575 - salary - higher than you said so are there other deductions.
€280 children’s allowance

€5855 total

Outgoings Monthly
918 Mortgage
607 Loan 1
570 Loan 2
1270 Childcare
1000 Groceries
400 Contingency spend
310 Insurance, is the house, health, life, car?
300 Personal spending
250 Health, is this medicines, doctors, insurance?
250 Car. Is this loan, petrol, repairs, maintenance?
250 Gas and Electricity - is this winter or summer or average over 12 months
250 House maintenance.
200 Clothes, shoes
200 Holidays
100 cleaner
100 pet insurance
45 Sky/Netflix/wifi
30 Subscriptions
30 bins
15 mobile phone

Total expenditure per month 7095, an overspend of 1240

For the next 6 months can you try to reduce your spending to match your income until that loan is paid off? As people say you have a cash flow problem not an income problem.

Can you try any or all of the following?
Shop your wardrobe - buy no new clothes or shoes for yourself
Not spend the contingency money?
Meal plan and prep
Do click and collect groceries (after the meal planning) to stop discretionary spending.
Figure out if you are over insured
Stop house and car maintenance until the first loan is paid off
Review your insurance - are you over insured?
Drop the kids health insurance
Consider no heating upstairs - wear more clothes
Minimise the use of hot water and heating hours
Shop in second hand shops for kids clothes, get hand me downs from friends and family
Reconsider holiday plans - day trips maybe
Any cash back from revenue on health spend?
Don’t go shopping with the kids, in fact avoid going to the shops at all if you can help it.


Do pick out what is important to you for your own personal happiness but be mindful of the spend for it.

In some ways you are doing great, excellent salary for a 4 day week. Very impressive mobile phone and broadband bills. But separation and divorce leave people worse off overall and it will take some time to reach a new normal.
 
Stress of doing the job of 3 people. OP is Mother, Father, and corporate worker all at once. Time poverty leads to badly thought out spending. The alternative might be to crack up. Some great practical financial advice given in all these posts. But it's a case of 'walk a day in my shoes'. OP is under huge pressure and self care (what ever that looks like for her) should also be prioritised. If the wheels come off her mental health, then all bets are off.
I would be ruthlessly pursuing the Dad for a contribution. That's the obvious gap here. Mind yourself OP and enjoy your kids and your life as best you can. You'll get this situation sorted out in no time at all.
 
I'm was a single parent of three kids and worked fulltime, but nothing excessive, maybe 45 hours a week. Meal prep can be done at the weekend. Batch cooking and freezing should take care of at least two meals a week. A dinner for a family should cost no more than €5-€8. I usually cooked a double batch and froze half of it. I'd a thread a few years back on meals for around €5. There's absolutely no excuse for not cooking proper meals. It doesn't take that long, it's cheaper than processed food and it's healthier. If you feed your kids pizza and processed rubbish it's not because you're poor or busy, it's because you are lazy and/or inadequate.
The same goes for keeping the house clean. If you've time to watch TV then you've time to keep your house clean.
If you're a parent you have a responsibility to provide for your children. That's your responsibility, not the States, not your family's, not your neighbours.
It's hard but life can be hard, tough luck.
 
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