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Question of the Day: Will you be subscribing to the new Disney+ R49 streaming package?
Money problems have officially gotten..
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Pitbull
Verboten
Come to think of it
If I off myself, my wife nor my kids will ever have to work again
Now, just to get a way to make it look like an accident
If I off myself, my wife nor my kids will ever have to work again
Now, just to get a way to make it look like an accident
Now, just to get a way to make it look like an accident
That should be easy with a motorbike...
P.S. R50 if you can take out a taxi at the same time
What you need to do is clean up your monthly expsenses and throttle wastage.
What I do is every month start a spreadsheet. On the one side you put your expenses,
on the other your incomes.
Start off with your fixed expesnes, these are the ones you cannot adjust, car, house, etc.
Next list your mandatory variable expenses, this is stuff like Cell bill, petrol, utilities.
Leave it at that.
Then you simply do your income - your expenses. This will give you your disposable income. Divide this by weekends in the month to give you a figure you can comfortable spend per week. (since most spending is done on weekends.)
Now what you can do is to see how you can trim money. To create more disposable income you need to either #1: cut back on mandatory variable expenses, #2: Generate more income.
#1: Petrol. If this is a significant figure, consider busses, car pools, etc. calaculate your actual saving and adjust.
Cell. Curb your talking behaviors, and use an instant messenger instead of SMS's or go for bundles. Again, adjust your figure.
Insurance. Change your insurer. In general they want to attract new customers and so give good rates for new client instead of looking after existing. Loyalty counts for nothing. Go out and get comparitive prices, you WILL save 100's.
ADSL: Drop your bandwidth needs, make sure you rather run out than have left over. If you use both telephone and ADSL, consider a packaged offering from telkom, might work out cheaper.
Food: It is often worth the drive to another town/ suburb to do your shopping. Prices fluctuation can be related to the rates in the area believe it or not. Do monthly shopping.
Consider forming a meat consortium. Get mates together and buy meat directly from a farmer. We do this and the meat is of a much higher quality and costs close to half. We get from Kokstad, you can put in an order for 10K+ easily with a few people together. Charge a 10% handling fee on this to get some extra cash. Everyone will save and you get some extra pocket money. Also for a cheap meal: 2 tins baked beans, 1 tin chukalucka, on rice or toast. Lasts you forever, doesnt taste half bad either.
Whatever you do keep adjusting your spreadsheet to see how much disposable you have left, this fluctuates as the month goes on, so visit it at least once a week. Balance it off against your bank balance.
Medical Aid: All medical aids work off a principal. Hospitalisation + a savings portions.
They jig these around for each scheme, but it comes to the same thing. All hospital portions of the schemes are identical (again verify this based on your needs)
Now here is the stinger: The savings portion of medical aid is yours! You physically pay it. Except once you pay it you dont get it back. To add insult to injury, when presenting a med aid card at a doctor or chemist they automatically hike the price 20%. This is 20% of YOUR money. Further more, the medical aid will impose limits on this money in certain areas so you cant spend YOUR own money. Save HUGE money by doing this: Get a basic least cost medical aid scheme to handle those huge expenses like getting hit by a car or something, and to have a card so the ambulance people will actually load you into the ambulance. Then get a SEPERATE credit card!! Emphasis on seperate here. Every month deposit the same amount you would have under your normal medical aid into this card. This will earn you interest, if at the end of the year you dont use it, it is yours, take a holiday. If you fall sick early in the year you simply pay up the credit card as the year passes. Here is the biggie!! When visiting a doctor or chemist you can now NEGOTIATE a discount. Sometimes up to 50%. This takes discipline but it will save you thousands! I have done all the calcs and it is presently what I am doing.
What I do is every month start a spreadsheet. On the one side you put your expenses,
on the other your incomes.
Start off with your fixed expesnes, these are the ones you cannot adjust, car, house, etc.
Next list your mandatory variable expenses, this is stuff like Cell bill, petrol, utilities.
Leave it at that.
Then you simply do your income - your expenses. This will give you your disposable income. Divide this by weekends in the month to give you a figure you can comfortable spend per week. (since most spending is done on weekends.)
Now what you can do is to see how you can trim money. To create more disposable income you need to either #1: cut back on mandatory variable expenses, #2: Generate more income.
#1: Petrol. If this is a significant figure, consider busses, car pools, etc. calaculate your actual saving and adjust.
Cell. Curb your talking behaviors, and use an instant messenger instead of SMS's or go for bundles. Again, adjust your figure.
Insurance. Change your insurer. In general they want to attract new customers and so give good rates for new client instead of looking after existing. Loyalty counts for nothing. Go out and get comparitive prices, you WILL save 100's.
ADSL: Drop your bandwidth needs, make sure you rather run out than have left over. If you use both telephone and ADSL, consider a packaged offering from telkom, might work out cheaper.
Food: It is often worth the drive to another town/ suburb to do your shopping. Prices fluctuation can be related to the rates in the area believe it or not. Do monthly shopping.
Consider forming a meat consortium. Get mates together and buy meat directly from a farmer. We do this and the meat is of a much higher quality and costs close to half. We get from Kokstad, you can put in an order for 10K+ easily with a few people together. Charge a 10% handling fee on this to get some extra cash. Everyone will save and you get some extra pocket money. Also for a cheap meal: 2 tins baked beans, 1 tin chukalucka, on rice or toast. Lasts you forever, doesnt taste half bad either.
Whatever you do keep adjusting your spreadsheet to see how much disposable you have left, this fluctuates as the month goes on, so visit it at least once a week. Balance it off against your bank balance.
Medical Aid: All medical aids work off a principal. Hospitalisation + a savings portions.
They jig these around for each scheme, but it comes to the same thing. All hospital portions of the schemes are identical (again verify this based on your needs)
Now here is the stinger: The savings portion of medical aid is yours! You physically pay it. Except once you pay it you dont get it back. To add insult to injury, when presenting a med aid card at a doctor or chemist they automatically hike the price 20%. This is 20% of YOUR money. Further more, the medical aid will impose limits on this money in certain areas so you cant spend YOUR own money. Save HUGE money by doing this: Get a basic least cost medical aid scheme to handle those huge expenses like getting hit by a car or something, and to have a card so the ambulance people will actually load you into the ambulance. Then get a SEPERATE credit card!! Emphasis on seperate here. Every month deposit the same amount you would have under your normal medical aid into this card. This will earn you interest, if at the end of the year you dont use it, it is yours, take a holiday. If you fall sick early in the year you simply pay up the credit card as the year passes. Here is the biggie!! When visiting a doctor or chemist you can now NEGOTIATE a discount. Sometimes up to 50%. This takes discipline but it will save you thousands! I have done all the calcs and it is presently what I am doing.
zamicro
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This made my day! Thanx Killove.
Geriatrix
Executive Member
Slappy's got some good ideas there.
Also, what car are you driving? Can you get rid of it and get a cheaper one, like a second hand Tazz or golf or something? CAn you carpool with someone to save on petrol?
Also, do you have a spare room you can rent out to a student?
I also read something on news24 a week or two ago, where one of the suggestions was to walk through your house and look for things to sell to make your debt payment a more manageable. Like a PS2(or 3 or whatever), camcorders, jewelry, old cellphones, a big TV and stuff like that.
Do you have DSTV that you can cancel? What about other subscriptions?
Lord Anubis
Expert Member
.. worst case you could always go back to dial-up with infinitcall and only dial-up on weekends....remember the good ole 90's heheheSeriously. Talk to you bank. If you bond is really high see if they will allow you to skip a payment or two. Use that cash to buy "bulk" foods that will last long e.g. big bags o rice, soups, soya mince, tea, sugar, powdered milk, soap, dishwash liquid, washing powder, etc etc etc at cheap food places like maybe "general dealers". If you can buy enough grub and scrub like with a bakkie and trailer trip to say a farm community deep in central free state and ride back say to where you live ?jhb?? you can save a fortune and have enough for a year. If you can get say R20K together you can get at least 12 months stocks. Yes you will eat cr@p, and yes you will rasp you @ss on cheap newspater toilet paper but at least you won't stress.
Dude, its about survival! Not about the luxuries you lost. You can always get it back...oh yes, buy lotsa condums..like double strength ones. You will get bored! You will get horny! The last thing you need is more kids!
medicnick83
Paramedic
Become a drug dealer 
haha.
Joking, but you get the point that you need to prob get another income.
haha.Joking, but you get the point that you need to prob get another income.
i have seen it and it does help, but how do you have the positive thoughts when pretty much everything is bleak?
kaspaas
Expert Member
When everything looks bleak, work on Quick Wins.
Every Quick Win is something to feel good about.
Set yourself small targets, and when you meet a target, cheer! I does make one feel better.
Surviving a debt crisis depends on doing lots and lots of small things - and recognising that every small step is an achievement. Getting up in the morning when the alarm clock goes is an achievement. Being 5 minutes early for work is an achievment. Both essential for getting out of the mess. And both easily achievable to feel good about.
Been there, know the gloomy feeling!
And know the battle to get rid of that feeling, and how essential it is.
PS: If you feel gloomy, you won't have the guts to tell the creditors they have a choice: Either they accept you are doing your best (back up your claims with a decent budget and payslips and bank statements) and they will get their money eventually, or they can take your assests and make a loss now.
Years ago when I was almost down, all the creditors accepted my proposals when they saw on how little money I fed myself. Remember, in general debt becomes "bad" when one is more than 3-months in arrears. It takes a looong time to hit 3 months arrears if you pay every month as much as possible. And when one does present the creditors with a detailed sensible plan on paper, they will often be prepared to stretch 3 months to 4 or longer.
Kim_Webchick
Expert Member
If this helps you not the only one is this boat there are a lot of people out there struggling, but you have to hang onto your car and house can't let those go and just ride it out!!!
Pitbull
Verboten
Guys, think about it this way.
The increases are good for us all.
The higer it goes, the less loans are being taken from banks, this forces them to drop their rates on new loans, this forces the car dealers to drop their prices, House prices drop and so forth. We just need to stick it out for the while being. I personally feel it's about bloody time the banks are forced to drop their rates.
House prices are rediculous.
This is a war, and like anywar you will have your cassualties. I feel sorry for them, but it's in the greater good. I'm in a lucky possition not to have so much dept. So currently they can increase the rate by 10% I'll still be fine.
And I want to buy a house but the prices are insane, I will never pay R 1.2mil for a normal 3 bedroom house. I'll just buy the repo's once the rate drops again
The increases are good for us all.
The higer it goes, the less loans are being taken from banks, this forces them to drop their rates on new loans, this forces the car dealers to drop their prices, House prices drop and so forth. We just need to stick it out for the while being. I personally feel it's about bloody time the banks are forced to drop their rates.
House prices are rediculous.
This is a war, and like anywar you will have your cassualties. I feel sorry for them, but it's in the greater good. I'm in a lucky possition not to have so much dept. So currently they can increase the rate by 10% I'll still be fine.
And I want to buy a house but the prices are insane, I will never pay R 1.2mil for a normal 3 bedroom house. I'll just buy the repo's once the rate drops again
@pmh
Sorry to hear your predicament.
Not nice to be up to your ears in debt.
We are also in a cyclical cash flow squeeze with winter upon us. Wait for Spring and you will see things will look up.
Back in 1998 when interest rates rose to 25% I swore never to loan money in this country again as the Reserve Bank cannot be trusted. Other than an odd vehicle or two and the one small bond I have, I have kept my borrowing to a minimal amount.
There was a stage back in the mid to late 90's where I virtually gave up from the pressure of month to month bills, so much so that I gave up inside myself and simply said fcsk it all. It was only then that things started to turn for the better. Weird. Like a test almost?
I recall not having enough money for my end of month bills and lo and behold the Bank Manager cleared all my debit orders and cheques. Not only did he clear my bills he gave me more overdraft and I had asked for nothing.
I think it was a case of the Banks had all the liquidity and were sitting on Billions of Rands in excess cash and were trying to find people to lend it to.
I doubt that is going to happen again any time soon with FICA and all the other obstacles in our way to "financial freedom", it that is at all possible considering inflation.
Have you considered planting a vegetable garden?
Sorry to hear your predicament.
Not nice to be up to your ears in debt.
We are also in a cyclical cash flow squeeze with winter upon us. Wait for Spring and you will see things will look up.
Back in 1998 when interest rates rose to 25% I swore never to loan money in this country again as the Reserve Bank cannot be trusted. Other than an odd vehicle or two and the one small bond I have, I have kept my borrowing to a minimal amount.
There was a stage back in the mid to late 90's where I virtually gave up from the pressure of month to month bills, so much so that I gave up inside myself and simply said fcsk it all. It was only then that things started to turn for the better. Weird. Like a test almost?
I recall not having enough money for my end of month bills and lo and behold the Bank Manager cleared all my debit orders and cheques. Not only did he clear my bills he gave me more overdraft and I had asked for nothing.
I think it was a case of the Banks had all the liquidity and were sitting on Billions of Rands in excess cash and were trying to find people to lend it to.
I doubt that is going to happen again any time soon with FICA and all the other obstacles in our way to "financial freedom", it that is at all possible considering inflation.
Have you considered planting a vegetable garden?
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