University Challenge x 2

beanielou · 19 August 2017 at 11:10AM

Animals will need up to date boosters for day care & catery.

Scott_Weiland_2 · 19 August 2017 at 3:17PM

We use to put our huskies in daycare and kennels if we went anywhere

Kennel cough thing was 20 quid and a yearly booster was 32 with our vet, i am not in favour of yearly boosters as my post said. Needs must when it comes to holidays etc

Vets flog these plans and some not all vets are iffy, i was 2-3 weeks late with a booster one year a franchise vet insisted i did the fully puppy course again ie 60-70 quid. They got told where to go once i chatted with our breeder.

louby40 · 19 August 2017 at 5:32PM

Hello and welcome

Luckily I think we might get away with the university thing. My 17 DS is doing an apprenticeship and my 14 DS is thinking of joining the RAF.

£500 on food can be halved I think. We are a family of 3 (sometimes 4 or 5 with various kids/step kids staying at weekends) and I allocate £60 a week for food. We shop in Aldi with a top up in Morrisons. We cook 95% of food from scratch - my DP do s most of the cooking.

I always think the supermarket shop is something where you can make a big saving.

Do you do a weekly meal plan and shop with a list?

Louby

Plain_Jane · 21 August 2017 at 4:55PM

Sorry Louby

I thought I had replied to this.

We do a weekly shopping list yes - now we do anyway. This week we are eating out of the freezer as it is 4 days until pay day.

I always fancied going into the Armed Forces but was never fit enough.

So today the accommodation for DT2 came through - it seems everything is loaded into 7 months, the payments in are in 3 instalments from Oct to May and so are the payments out. Really hard to budget but in October she will get £1309.33 but will be paying out £2711.50 - great. So she will be £1402.17 down on her first week. Silly me thought it would be worked out monthly. So she needs to get a job asap and I need to work out yet another budget.

DT1 is still waiting to hear but I am guessing hers will be about the same.

At least I now know to save from May to September next year in readiness for Year 2.

Just about to cancel my Gym membership.

British Gas have emailed to say my fixed tariff ends on 3rd October so I need to find a new one or hike up a great deal. Checked with :money:and he has a lot of new companies on there which scares me slightly. Has anyone gone with these? I also had a smart meter put in by BG a few months ago - would that be changed again if I change providers? There is a warning on Iresa though about complaints which is a shame.

I'm going to ring them tonight and see what tarrifs they can offer.

:cool:

beanielou · 22 August 2017 at 8:19PM

Oh yes the joys of the hall's bills

Elena_Handcart · 22 August 2017 at 10:02PM

Hey PJ,

congratulations to the DTs on their exam results. Hopefully when they leave for uni, it won't be too upsetting to see them fly the coop.

I thought I would give you my thoughts regarding your SOA. The first thing that I thought was that you seem to be rounding (up or down?) your debt payments.

I know my MBNA cc normally charges me 1% of the total balance for the minimum payment. On your current balance figures, that would be monthly payments of £57.39 & £18.61. so you seem to be overpaying by about £50 per month.

Normally it is great to overpay these pesky CCs - but in your instance, these are currently at 0% - so I would move the £50 overpayment directly onto the Virgin card which is charging you interest. The sooner you pay off Virgin, then the sooner that the £100 (you are currently paying them) can go to another debt.

This is the same for any 0% offer you have. If you are currently overpaying these - then switch to the minimum and move any overpayment to the interest charging debt.

So my order of overpaying would be
1. Virgin (I would pay this first as it is a smaller balance and easier to fully pay back)
2. Aqua (Some would prioritise this debt as it is the highest APR - but paying Virgin first will be quicker)
3. the CC which has the shortest 0% offer ( the objective being to get it repaid before the 0% runs out)

Elena_Handcart · 22 August 2017 at 10:08PM

Also, I thought you are currently putting aside £350 for emergencies. Well I would consider the fact that you are overspending by nearly £600 a month a bit of an emergency. So I would ease up on the emergency fund a bit, so that you aren't overspending at the current rate.

I see you said that you have cancelled the gym payment - so that is a good start. I would also challenge myself to see if I could get my grocery bill down - say challenge yourself to £450 next month and once this becomes achievable challenge yourself to £400 the next month.

Look out for money off vouchers, but only use them if you actually need the items.

Try batch cooking and freezing so you get more groceries for your buck. This may help when visiting the girls as you will be able to take down loads of pre-frozen meals and they get to enjoy home cooking from a microwave :-)

Elena_Handcart · 22 August 2017 at 10:14PM

Only me again - I also wondered how long you are tied in to your current mortgage rate? It seems that you have a great LTV value of about 65% - so you could shop around for some cheaper rates. However I don't know all your circumstances to guarantee you would get a better payment rate.

Other thought - can you pay your storage rebate directly to Virgin? that would pay off a large chunk of the outstanding balance.

Also - get out of those £75 phone contracts as soon as you can :eek:

Finally (I think) -is your water rate figure correct? I only live in a flat, so my water rates are £23 per month.

I think I will close now - but if I think of anything else that may help - I'll let you know.

All the best

Honeysucklelou2 · 22 August 2017 at 10:43PM

Have your DTs got to pay a deposit for accommodation? Just found out my DD1 does, despite me asking in May if there was a deposit and being told yes for the halls she didn't get into and no for the halls she has been offered a place in.

Plain_Jane · 23 August 2017 at 7:08AM

Hi Elena and thanks for the fb advice.

You're right I do round up the payments on the cc's so this weekend I will do as you say and round them back down again to the minimum payments and put them to Virgin. I need to put up a new soa as I've brought down the groceries and tweaked some other bits.

I've also changed the uni payments round to accommodate for the 3 instalments of accommodation - on the worse case scenario. It's not pretty and the DTs are going to have to chip in or we can't do it. Will post new soa at the weekend.

I've dropped the EF to £100 per month but want to get this to £1k as per Dave Ramsey - he certainly says it as it is doesn't he???

Bad news re British Gas - phoned up to see if I could change tariff and found out we were £357 in debt from the winter before the meter came and before the new boiler. I couldn't cope with it so put it on a 0% interest card. I need to change suppliers as soon as the tarrif ends in October but who to?? So debt has gone up not down at the moment.

Hi Honeysuckle yes deposits on accommodations of £250 each. Saving grace here is that I got a PPI payment so managed to put this by - one has already gone out so one more to go.

Have a lovely day - it's cloudy and miserable here.

Off to read Martins email x

University Challenge x 2

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