Managing your finances wisely is crucial, and our Budget Planner is here to assist you every step of the way. This is page is a help and support of questions to guide you in filling out the budget planner.
If your income and expenses vary by month or by year, try to work out an amount that is most applicable for the duration of the payment plan you'd like to consider. Capital Resolves payment plans can have durations between 3-24 months, depending on your preferences and your financial capacity to make payments.
Try to be as realistic as possible. There is no benefit in using optimistic or pessimistic information as the Budget Calculator is intended to help you by guiding you to the most suitable payment plan.
Only if you're comfortable with it and if you've done the assessment in the last three months. While, we still need some information from you.
Older assessments may not reflect the most recent information or changes in your circumstances. Therefore, it could make sense for your to complete a fresh one.
This is an important exercise with several parts and it may take anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours depending on the availability of information. The good news is you don't have to do it in one sitting and you can save your work to continue later. It will be waiting for you as you left it. If you feel that you've provided a wrong answer, you can go back and correct it. It is important that you invest due time and diligence into this exercise so that any arrangement made on the back of it is sustainable. Please also use all this guidance and help available to you to complete the exercise.
Cash: Any cash available in the household budget except or monies to be used for essential outgoings or priority debts.
Discretionary investments: Any investments that are not part of a pension or long-term investment plan. These may investment money market funds, investments in crypto-currency assets or foreign exchange. You must also be careful about tax consequences of liquidating any assets.
Contributions from friend/family: Any funds that may be available to you from immediate family or close friends, who may have excess funds in place to help out.
Other disposable assets: Any marketable assets you may be in the process of selling. These may include anything from selling a bicycle, silverware or unused electronics on an organised market to a more substantial asset like property.
Frequency: On this and other sections, you can enter amounts as weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or annual figures. Resulting totals will be calculated as a monthly figure as most payment plans will be considered on the basis of monthly disposable income.
The 'Earnings' category includes take home salary or wages (i.e. net amounts) and your partner's salary or wages if you are doing a joint budget. The amounts should be after all routine deductions direct from pay have been made, such as auto-enrolment pension contributions, childcare vouchers or healthcare schemes.
If there are any automatic deductions from your salary or income related to priority debts please do not take into account these deductions and declare your income without these deductions. We will account for these deductions later in the Debts section. Examples of such deductions include Direct Earnings Attachments, Deduction from Earnings Orders, Attachment of Earnings Orders, Conjoined Arrestment Orders and Earnings Arrestment.
For example, in a household earning £2000 per month, paying £200 tax and £75 national insurance, and with a priority debt of £800 with a £40 attachment of earnings.
Your Earnings:
(2000 - 200 - 75) =1725
In the Debts section:
Priority debt balance = 800
Monthly repayment related to this debt (via attachment of earnings in comments) = £40
To avoid double counting, the deductions should not also be included in the Outgoings sections.
Benefits and tax credits: Please include any child benefits, child tax credit, working tax credit, universal credit, housing benefit or allowance, employment and support allowance or statutory sick pay, income support, disability benefits, jobseeker's allowance, council tax support, carer's allowance and maternity benefits. You should include any other income (i.e. any contribution towards household costs by a non-dependant ) not listed elsewhere on the statement in this section under here.
As with earnings, where deductions are being made direct from benefits, you should only state the final amount paid, with an accompanying note to explain the circumstances if appropriate.
The frequency of different earning types are different. Please express earning on a weekly, monthly or annual basis depending on your situation. Resulting totals will be calculated as a monthly figure.
It is important to account for fixed and flexible costs separately. In essence, fixed costs are essential costs you have very little control over. Flexible costs are costs incurred at your discretion. It doesn't mean they are less important. However, the important point is that you have some control over how much you spend on flexible costs.
Your fixed costs would typically include rent, mortgage, other secured loan payments, council tax and rates, other home related costs (e.g. TV license, appliance rental/lease), gas, electric, water and other utilities, care and health costs (childcare, adult-care, child support, prescriptions and medicines, dentistry and opticians), transport and travel costs (e.g. public transport, hire purchase payments, motor insurance, road tax, MOT and maintenance, breakdown cover, fuel, parking and toll road charges), school costs (e.g. uniforms, after-school clubs and school trips), pension payments, insurances (e.g. life insurance, health insurance, home contents insurance) and professional costs (e.g. training costs, union fees, professional fees).
Please note that you may have items deducted directly from their salary, wages or benefits. Common examples of deductions from salary include pension contributions, childcare vouchers and insurance contributions. Common examples from benefits include arrears of rent and council tax. To avoid these outgoings being counted twice, they should not be listed in expenditure but simply reflected in the take-home pay. If you have expressed your earnings net of these deductions, please do not account for them again in costs as this would lead to double-counting.
Your flexible costs would typically include communications (e.g. home phone, mobile phone, internet and TV content packages), leisure (e.g. hobbies, sports activities, gifts purchased, newspapers and magazines as well as pocket money), food and housekeeping (e.g. groceries, pet food), nappies and baby items, school meals and meals at work, laundry and dry cleaning, alcohol, smoking products, vet bills and pet insurance as well as house repairs and maintenance) and personal costs (e.g. clothing and footwear, hairdressing and toiletries).
Please note that you may have some discretion over the magnitude and timing of spend related to some of the flexible cost items mentioned above.
Some bills are classed as priorities because the consequences of not paying them are greater than the consequences of not paying others. Priority payments are the ones that could leave you homeless, without essential services, or where the creditor has extra powers to enforce the debt.
For example, if you don't pay your rent or your mortgage you could lose your home. If you fall behind with some payments, bailiffs or Sheriff officers can visit you and take goods from your home. There are some debts that can be collected by money being taken directly from your wages or benefits. You should prioritise Priority Debts over Non-priority Debts. Please seek advice on how to prioritise your debts if you're unsure how to do it. Please see our Help & Support page for guidance from money advice agencies.
Individual debt listings should be made in the corresponding priority or non-priority section. The outstanding amount owed, and the repayment offer (what you agreed to pay on a regular basis), should be entered in the corresponding columns as appropriate.
Arrangements to deal with any priority debts the client has must take precedence ahead of non-priority debts. In some cases, it will not be possible to obtain agreements with all priority creditors immediately. You may use discretion to calculate and make offers on non-priority debts if it is considered that reasonable offers are being made on priority debts. As with other changes in circumstances, if arrangements are subsequently refused or fail, the offers on non-priority debts may need to be revisited.
Arrears on hire purchase and conditional sale items are sometimes treated as priority debts, depending on whether the client wishes to keep the item. In these cases, only the arrears amount should be included, rather than the full amount outstanding, as the usual contractual payment should be recorded in the outgoings section.
Amounts entered for non-priority debts or any priority debts that are not considered above this debt will not affect the maximum amounts you can pay for this current debt as they do not take priority over this debt.
Please also see notes in the Income section about repayment of arrears on priority debts made through direct deduction from earnings.
To avoid double counting of payments towards priority debt, only the arrears amount should be listed in the 'owed' column in the debt section, along with any payment plan that may be in place. Any ongoing liability should be already recorded in the outgoings section where appropriate.
Non-priority debts are debts where the creditor hasn't got extra powers to make you pay (for example, they cannot usually take your home). They are often called non-priority debts because of this. They include credit cards, overdrafts, unsecured loans etc.
You should still plan on paying any outstanding non-priority debts after making sure you can pay priority debts.
The maximum amount you can pay today is based on the liquid assets and priority debt balances you provided and is the maximum amount you can consider using for payments towards your current debt. If this amount is bigger than the balance of your debt, you should use these funds to make a full payment today. If not, you may consider making a partial payment or consider a payment arrangement.
Monthly amount you can use towards a new payment plan is the maximum monthly payment amount you can use towards a payment arrangement for your current debt. You must consider any increases in essential outgoings of any one-time essential costs you may face before deciding on a monthly payment amount. You can choose a monthly payment lower than your maximum payment amount but remember that it will take you longer to clear your debt with a smaller amount.
If you think the results are not accurate, you may go back, revisit your inputs in each page and make necessary changes.
