Outgoings: 2665
Income: 2596 (salary) + 487 (child benefit) = 3083
You need to do everything you can to increase your income and reduce your outgoings, putting all excess into your borrowings until they are paid off. (Stating the obvious!)
Income:
Social Welfare support:
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/c...amilies-and-children/family_income_supplement
- FIS (268/month for three children and an income of 599/week)
- Back to school allownace (€200/ year per child at school)
- Medical card - would cover medical expenses and also mean that you won't have to pay the health levy (€117/month)
- Fuel allowance - €17/month
Tax credits:
- Check that you are claiming for medical expenses, environmental charges (bin charges) and that your mortgage interest relief is being applied correctly.
New Income: 3502 (added FIS, BTS, Fuel allowance, removed Health Levy)
Outgoings:
ESB/Gas: Change ESB to Airtricity or Bord Gais and change Gas to Flo Gas to save at least 10% on these. (€25 / month)
Phone: Get rid of home phone if this is included here and make sure you're both on the cheapest PAYG option you can get.
Bins: This is very high. Make sure you are recycling, composting and reducing this all you can.
Once you have your black bin volume down, you can trade down to a smaller black bin which will reduce your annual service charge.
Car: This is costing you more than €600 a month, nearly as much as your mortgage! Could you use public transport instead? If that's not an option, you need to sell the car and buy an old one for 2/3k.
There are great deals out there now, you will be able to get a reliable small car.
Shopping: This is very high - look to reduce it. If you look at the price on anything you're buying, multiply it by your highest interest rate as this is what you're really paying for it!
New outgoings:
Just reducing by €25 as the rest may take a little while to pay off:
2645
This gives you €444 extra a month which would pay off your credit card bills in under 3 years. (move them to 0% now) If you sell the car, use the money to pay off the highest interest rate borrowings first. You really need to sell the car to get on top of things.
Make sure to eliminate any other outgoings (the rest of your money is going somewhere if things aren't balancing at the moment). Put any holidays, expensive gifts etc. on hold for the moment, you can't afford them.
A further option might be for your partner to look at minding other children at home?
Best of luck, I hope everything works out and you are soon looking at a steadily reducing amount of debt!