Congratulations! for taking the plunge to Face the Debt Head On!

Creating your own Personal Financial Statement is the most important step in the debt management process. We are sure you have already tried to work out your income and expenditure and have probably torn your hair out trying to make it work or make sense of it!! Or maybe you are unsure of where to start, or what to put in your Personal Financial Statement or both!!

This Personal Financial Statement step is absolutely vital for you to understand exactly and accurately the up to date picture of your exact personal financial situation.

If you ultimately find you are in a position where you need to get additional proffesional help with your Debt Management the Personal Financial Statement spreadsheet is the first thing that you will have to do. So if you have already created a Personal Financial Statement Spreadsheet, any organisation you approach will recognise that you are serious about handling your debt. You can't properly plan how to move on if you do not fully understand the circumstances you are in.

So What goes in a Personal Fiancial Statement?

You are going to create a list of all the things you have to spend money on and all your sources of income. This will show you exactly what you have left over to offer to creditors or work out where you can make savings. This is your Personal Financial Statement spreadsheet and is vital for tackling your debt problems either once your in debt or just as an aid to manage your finances more efficiently. It is vital that we include everything.

In order to make life easier "Manage My Debts" have created a very straight forward Personal Financial Statement Spreadsheet
 (suitable for all currencies) that will do all the calculations for you based on the figures you input. 

We will explain every section to you so you get an understanding of how it works.

MONTHLY INCOME

This section requires all the money coming into the household. We are only interested in the figures after Tax and National Insurance has been taken out.


MONTHLY EXPENDITURE

This is probably the section that will take you a little bit of time to complete - but dont give up yet as there is a tremendous sense of achievement and satisfaction when this is completed. 

Itemise your monthly expenditure. The GREEN  fields are for you to enter your figures/ details and therefore you can rename to personalise it for yourself, anything in BLACK is not editable.

The 'Calculation of Details' section is where you may have several outgoings for the same item. For example you may have 2 cars and therefore there will be 2 car insurances, or MOT's, or 2 mobile phones. Here you can enter the amounts to give you one figure for them month





FLEXIBLE EXPENDITURE

There are some areas that are not so easy to define the exact expense. So in the spread sheet, Manage My Debts have created a table so you can enter your flexible expenditure on a daily basis for things like food, child expenses, entertainment etc 



This can be done over a 5 week period if you like. The figures entered will automatically be collated into another table to give you the period total. You can then update the expenditure on the Personal Financial Statement



INCOME EXPENDITURE SUMMARY



Once the Income and Expenditure is completed you will then end up with the bottom line day to day living costs. This will automatically update as you enter the figures - Please be honest with your figures, the only person you will be deceiving is yourself.

However, you will probably have  already figured out it doesnt include payments to your credit card debts, this is intentional and Manage My Debts will be coming to these next.

CREDIT CARD/OVERDRAFT/LOAN SUMMARY



Enter all your credit card, loans, and overdraft details. We can then sort this by 'percent' into the Largest to Smallest figures which will help us to determine the best way to settle these debts.

WHICH CREDIT CARD/LOAN/ TO PAY OFF FIRST



This screen above works out how long it will take to settle your Debt based on the information you have entered. It will also suggest which credit card/Loan you should pay off first.  By paying the card off with the highest interest rate first - this will reduce the overall interest you are accumulating and also enable you to pay more off on the next Card/Loan thereby reducing your debt quicker.

LUMP SUM CALCULATOR

You may be in the fortunate position to be able to make lump sum offers to your creditors - whereby they will take a full and final settlement for an amount less than the full debt




You will see by this Personal Financial Statement Spreadsheet it can really help you get to grips with your debt, keep you better informed and placed in a postion to decide on the next step.

THE NEXT STEP

Evaluation
1. Download the Personal Financial Statement Spreadsheet from Manage My Debts 
2. Evaluate your own  Personal Financial Statement Spreadsheet
3. Make some decisions in the areas you can cut costs
4. You can copy the spreadsheet and use the copies to have a play with the figures to see how the savings can affect your whole financial situation

Decision Time
1. Are you able to make the savings to manage your own debt?
2. How long is it going to take to pay off your debt?
3. Do you need to consider a Debt Management Company?
4. Do you need to stop the interest accruing on your debts?
5. Do you need to consider a Debt Management Plan?


Stopping interest accruing?
The best way to handle this is to talk to a Debt Management Company  - please check out  CAP

What is a Debt Management Plan?
A debt management plan (DMP) helps individuals or households manage their debts, when they are unable to maintain their contractual payments to their creditors due to financial difficulties. Please see Debt Management Plan

Arranging a Debt Management Plan

You can arrange a DMP yourself but a third party can also arrange this on your behalf if you are not able to. (A third party acts on your behalf as an intermediary between you and your creditors). Many debt management companies provide debt management plans as a service and some will charge a fee. Check out a very reputable company we can recommend - CAP