Prepare financial statement
It is essential that you now prepare a statement of your actual current financial position. Your statement must include all income received from whatever source and all money going out and to where. When completing this form use either weekly or monthly figures, but don’t mix them and mark clearly on the statement which basis you have used.
• To change weekly figures to monthly, multiply by 52 and then divide by 12
• To change monthly figures to weekly, multiply by 12 and then divide by 52
Annual payments such as TV licence, road tax, insurance premiums etc. should be divided by 12 to give the monthly amount or by 52 for the weekly figure.
Also allow for irregular, and often unexpected, expenditure such as car and house maintenance, repairs and replacements.
It is important to take everything into account, but don’t include payments for arrears or secondary creditors at this stage because you need to know the total money you have available (if any) to make offers to them.
Before finalising your statement you must review your Income to see if it can be increased in any way and consider your expenditure to ascertain if any savings can be made.
Your financial statement will need to be constantly revised to reflect changes in your income and expenditure and to incorporate subsequent agreements for payments to be made to your creditors.