Expenditure should be based upon what you actually spend rather than standard industry guidelines, although the majority of creditors will look at the guidelines to see if what you are saying is reasonable. In my practice we have adopted the CCCS guidelines, but we never restrict someone's expenditure to this if they spend more, and merely disclose this by way of exception. So long as the expenditure can be justified, we very rarely have requests for adjustments or increased contributions.
Your salary should be based on your basic salary only. It is dangerous to take averages over a sample period, or include overtime, as this may not be typically representative of the complete picture. Most IVA proposals will now provide for 50% of any additional earnings to be paid over by way of additional contributions, so using the basic salary alone is the fairest way of assessing your income for the purposes of presentation.
If your son is due to leave school in the summer of this year, then personally I would not include the child benefit monies at all. Does he intend to continue to live at home? In which case you will no doubt be taking a board and lodge payment from him which will need to be disclosed as income.
And finally you are most definately allowed to have a savings account whilst subject to IVA proceedings, indeed I feel that this is essential for budgeting purposes and to lodge your contingency monies into. Things like the car service and tax are not payable each month, and if you do not put those monies away you may be tempted to spend them, leaving you to struggle when the actual bills do come in.
And as a personal favour to me - would you mind not typing in capital letters. It is quite difficult to read your posts, and we do want to be able to give you the very best advice we can!
Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner
