{"id":444,"date":"2013-12-12T12:41:59","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T12:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/?p=444"},"modified":"2019-01-25T12:51:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T12:51:11","slug":"priority-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/priority-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"Priority Bills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the current recession many of us are faced with the dilemma of what bills to pay when we have insufficient income to pay everything. Debt Problems<\/a> are a common occurence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

We tend to pay the creditors who send us the most threatening letters or phone us most frequently or aggressively or who call to our home or who shout the loudest. We make pressurized decisions but are they the right ones? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Food<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The answer is to prioritize debts under the banner of food and \nshelter. Everybody must eat and drink, have somewhere to live and have \nclothing, heat and light. Everything else should have a lower priority. \nIt follows then that payment of the mortgage or rent, payment of \nutilities such as heat, light and water and payment for food and \nclothing for our family must rank ahead of all other bills. These are \nthe \u2018must-pay\u2019 bills because they are for the \u2018must-do or \u2018must-get\u2019 \nitems. We cannot afford to lose our home and be put out on the street. \nWe cannot afford to have our utilities cut off. We cannot live without \nfood, drink and clothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about the bills that we cannot pay?  The first thing to do is to\n look at the household budget. Write down the items with a \u2018must-pay\u2019 \ntag and the monthly cost of those. Write down the household income. This\n provides the bones of an Income and Expenditure Statement (I&E). \nNow we flesh out the I&E by filling in the cost of the less \nessential living expenses. We also list any additional benefits we \nreceive on the income side \u2013 such as tax credits, child benefit, housing\n benefit, rental income from a lodger and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may seem simple but this is how we work out how much money is \n\u2018left over\u2019 to pay off our loans, credit cards, overdrafts and other \nunsecured debts. We call this \u2018money left over\u2019 our family disposable \nincome (DI). If our DI is big enough to service our unsecured debts \n(paying the contractual monthly amounts of course), we have no problem. \nIf it is insufficient, the tricky bit is firstly to split it up fairly \nbetween all the creditors and secondly to reach agreement with these \ncreditors on the amount of our monthly payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we cannot do this then the next best step is to obtain \nprofessional advice. A reputable Insolvency Practitioner (IP) will \ndetermine if we are insolvent or not and assist in compiling an I&E \nStatement so as to calculate our DI, at no charge. Furthermore, all \noptions explained. Options could include Bankruptcy, an Individual \nVoluntary Arrangement, a Debt Management Plan, a Debt Relief Order, an \nAdministration Order, Debt Consolidation or some other financial \nsolution. We can make up mind if we want to proceed further. We have to \ncommit to nothing at this point and can walk away and \u2018sort out\u2019 our own\n finances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the current recession many of us are faced with the dilemma of what bills to pay when we have insufficient income to pay everything. Debt Problems are a common occurence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-debt-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}