Any tips to cut my outgoings?

windra

Ive just found out that because of my parents income i get £1000 less grant and £1000 less bursary from my uni this year, and my parents refuse to help me finacially other than my rent.

I currently live with my bf, but our bills are huge, £89 a month for electrisity and even more in the winter,water,£60 a month for phone/tv/broadband,£30 for mobile.
And because im trying to loose weight ive got a whole new lot of clothes to buy and helthy food is expensive.

With £2000 less this year, and £50 less income a week from extra rent, i'm not sure how i am going to cope!

My loan works out at £72 a week, but my outgoings not including clothes or going out,books etc come to £92!

Any tips would be welcome

shopaholicleo

Who does your phone/tv/broadband? £60 looks a bit much, and maybe you should cut down on tv as most stuff you can watch on the net for free. Virgin has deals for £27 a month. Maybe cut out the landline if you have the mobile as well, and just have freeview and broadband. Why don't you sell your old clothes that don't fit on ebay to go towards the new wardrobe.

Wiggynut

who's your mobile with?
I rang my mobile provider asking for the pac code (I think that's the right name) as I wanted to get the o2 sim card (600mins 1000 txt, free web bolt-on (they had other free bolt-ons too ie: extra mins etc) it was on special offer of £20 (incl VAT) but has now gone up to £25 but I told my provider and they gave me the same deal for £10 per month on a contract!!!
try ringing yours - try and look up other deals that are cheaper and tell your provider you want to switch over!
(just look up how many mins you use each month on one of your old bills first)

who do you pay line rental too? some other companies are slightly less than BT - get incoming landline calls too (use your free mins on your mobile instead - but people can still call you on the landline)

does your mobile provider do cheap broadband if you have a contract with them... my unlimited broadband is £7.50 per month - would have been £17.50 otherwise!!

do you really need to pay for TV.. I have a freeview box for £15 and find there's more than enough to watch.. and there are internet channels etc to watch now too.

do you keep your heating/on water on at all times... if it has a timer then you can get it too switch on at certain times of the day.
I did have a flatmate who left the heating on full blast all day when everyone was at work.. grrrrrrrrrrr and the hot water was left on too.. ( I kept turning it all off and putting it back on the timer... since he's left are eleccy bill has dropped)
also, if you do need heating I think you are suppose to keep it low and I've forgotten what that setting is as it saves you money but still keeps you warm!

(er... you say your parents are refusing to help you financially but then you say they are helping with rent!? so they ARE helping you...that's not really refusing!)

windra

Well the basic situation is that i live in a house owned by my parents so there is no rent, and as my bills were decided before i found out i'd get £2000 less to live off im in a contract for 12months,so i cannot change these.

The house doesnt have central heating, its storage heaters which is very expensive and i dont even use the hotwater tank,instead i use the shower.

My parents attitude is that 'you will cope' as they live very frugally and dont really understand how i cant eat 19p high fat sausages every meal,and 'buy a jumper' instead of having any heating.

I could probably cope by not having the heating on,eating pizza and chips every meal and wearing clothes 2 sizes too big, but i'd really like to find a more friendly solution.

Sneezy

Healthy eating doesn't have to be more expensive - just buy the supermarkets own brands....you don't have to buy clothes every week, go to primark, H&M, charity shops etc you'll get far more for your money.

Cut down on how much you go out, write down everything you spend so you know where to cut down further (i.e don't buy bottles of coke, buy one bottle of water and re-fill it)

Does your boyfriend have a job? Can you get a job? how many hours is your course pw?

Voyager2002

I suggest you visit the 'old-style' board on this site for some good ideas on living more cheaply. Electric central heating is very expensive, and a warm and comfortable jumper can be a very good alternative to using it.

Healthy foods that you prepare yourself can be very cheap, but you need to know how to cook, and it sounds as if that is something that you never learned.

As for clothes: what's wrong with Oxfam and the other charity shops?

Ytaya

The Old Style board will be able to help you out with ideas for cheap, healthy meals. I think there's even a weight-loss thread over there (if not, start one and people will give you ideas!).

There's nothing wrong with putting a jumper on, or watching TV snuggled under a blanket. If you can't afford the electricity, you have to cut back somewhere! Again, check the Old Style board for ideas.

Turn lights off if you're not in the room (a good rule of thumb: there should be no more light bulbs on than there are people in the house). Get energy-saving light bulbs (you can get them for about 60p from Lidl/Aldi). Be smart with the way you use your oven/cooker - bulk cook things and reheat portions later (it uses much less energy to reheat a portion of curry than to cook it from scratch).

Also look into getting a part-time job. Bar work is easy to get, fits around classes cos it's in the evening, and you can have fun doing it. Working in a call centre will pay more, if it's available in your area, so you can work fewer hours for the same money.

Can you sew? Take some of your old clothes in. Instant wardrobe!

I must say, your parents are being very generous, giving you a place to live rent-free during your degree. I don't blame them for not wanting to subsidise you further.

Edit to add: can you give us a breakdown of your weekly costs? Where is that £92 going? We might be able to give you more specific ideas on saving money if we know that.

Wiggynut

Primark clothes are awful, I did buy some trousers from them when I wasn't working (wasn't on benefits either) and they lasted a month as the fabric is so thin.
but I brought some very similar trousers from BHS for £4 more than primark and 3 years on I still have them!
does your electric supplier have different 'packages' etc? you then keep your contract but change the cost etc (do you ring them with your meter readings - do they just estimate your cost - you could be paying too much?)

also, can the storage heaters be turned off? and just use them if it's really cold out.. I never use heating unless it's biting cold - I just don't like heating that much.. I have several throws on the sofa so if it is cold I wrap myself up with that while watching tv. (I even crochet, lol... makes me sound older than I am! lol)

3plus1

Hello,

I read your above posts and had some comments. I've agonised over this a bit, because I'm aware that I might come across as being patronising and/or rude when I really do only have the intention of giving you some helpful advice for your situation. Before you get defensive, I only graduated last year, I live with my boyfriend and I am a student again (I'm working full time this time though), so hopefully you can see that we're not so different. I'm only 23. I'm not an older person who can't relate to your generation.

With that warning over...

My gut feeling is that you have a crap attitude towards money. Sorry, but if it's true, someone needs to say it. You seem to be critical of your parents for living within their means - it's not stupid to live on what you can afford; it's something to aspire to and be proud of if you can do it!

We like to save money where possible without compromising on the quality of our life. If you hop across to MoneySaving Old Style or the Debt Free Wannabees board, yes, you will find examples of people who take this to the extreme. Not us.

My boyfriend and I are not too proud to get free cinema tickets and walk to the local cinema to see the flicks for free, but equally, we won't buy cheap meat. We'd rather go veggie (and my boyfriend is a proper carnivore) that live off Tesco Value chickens. If the chicken on the shelf hasn't led a joyous life and hopped around in sheer happiness, my boyfriend won't let us buy it. You can cut back on costs without cutting back on your principals. We buy expensive meat, but we make it go further and we don't buy it often.

Putting on a jumper isn't a stupid suggestion.

If you're at home and it's cold, put on another layer. If your boyfriend is at home too, give him a cuddle. Snuggle up on the sofa. It makes you warm on the outside and warm and fuzzy on the inside. If that doesn't do anything for you, yes, then go put on the storage heater. Close the windows and the doors. Once the room is hot, turn the heater off. Storage heaters take such a long time to cool down once they've been on for long enough to warm up the room and it won't cost you anything extra in electricity whilst they keep ticking over. Plus the heat will stay trapped all night - we actually have single glazing and this even works for us. (Yes, we have the same nasty storage heaters you have. I agree they're expensive and I will add that they're ugly little things, but I don't agree than £90 a month is reasonable.)

Are you remembering to turn the lights off when you're not using them? Turning appliances off rather than leaving them on standby? You could even turn your router off overnight, although I must confess, we don't bother with that ourselves.

We don't have any gas in our flat and our electricity bill came to £40 last quarter. If you're paying £90 a month, you're using seven times as much electricity as us. Doesn't add up. Have you checked your meter recently to see if the estimated bill you're being sent is grossly out?

When it comes to clothes, can I suggest that skirts are the way to go? I know what it's like to be a girl on a diet and on a budget. Promise. If you buy a gorgeous skirt, you can wear a very plain top and you will still look great. Tops can be bought for £2 from Primark. Invest in a mid range skirt that fits snugly on your waist and when you lose a bit of weight, it will fit comfortably on your hips and it will still look fab. Trousers are bloody unforgiving of weight loss. You don't want to wear trousers with the crotch hanging down because you've lost weight, but skirts? They cope with weight loss very well. Also, don't forget to accessorise. Scarves and necklaces fit you no matter what your size.

What sort of size are you? If you're big enough to be larger chested, don't compromise on buying a bra from a decent shop like Bravissimo. I would encourage scrimping on tops and shoes, but I would never recommend buying a cheap bra if you need the support. Far cheaper to buy a decent bra every six months than to pay for physio when your back gets done in. (Again, this goes back to my comment about cutting back where you can make savings and not reducing your quality of life.)

For your basics, shop at Primark. The clothes there are cheap and cheerful. For more interesting bits and pieces, check out your local charity shops. Get a feel for them. I used to volunteer for Cancer Research UK - if anything came in that looked tatty, my manager sold it for rags. She refused to have it in our shop.

Where I live, to give you an example, Cancer Research UK is great for quality clothes and British Heart Foundation has really fashionable stuff but it always needs fixing before wearing, as the staff in that shop let things through that need ten minutes with a needle and thread. You'll find this varies from city to city. Go rake through your local charity shops a few times and you'll soon get an understanding of which ones to avoid and which ones to visit regularly.

Don't be too proud. You're a student. You're not exactly rich. I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm saying that to be realistic.

I understand that you are tied in with your utilities, however I wasn't sure if the same was true of your mobiles? My boyfriend and I both have Orange Pay as You Go phones. It's much cheaper for us than having contracts. I can call anyone on Orange after 7pm for free, provided I top up my phone with £10 that month. If my boyfriend tops up with a tenner, he can call me any time for up to an hour for something silly like 25p. My mother has the same deal, so my parents can call me for cheap during the day and I can call them back for free during the evening. (Both my mum and my dad are on Orange.)

For phone calls to people on a different network, if I'm in the house, I can make use of VoIP technology and call via Tesco Internet Phone. It's 10p a minute and unlike SkypeOut, the credit never expires.

As for healthy food - it doesn't have to be expensive. Healthy pre-prepared meals like the Weight Watchers ready meals and M&S Count on Us are really expensive for what they are, yes, I will agree with you on that. However, if you cook from scratch, you can achieve a healthy meal with fewer E numbers and for fewer pennies.

Make sure you buy fruit and veg that is in season - if it's not in season, it will cost a fortune and it won't taste nice. If you buy something healthy out of season, it's going to put you off eating it and that will not help you with your willpower in your diet.

Grapes have been cheap lately - with all that natural sugar, you shouldn't go wild, but they're lovely as a snack.

Takeaway pizza is expensive - but you can make your own pizza with some yeast, flour, water, honey, passata and all the vegetables in the world. It'll taste very different and be a much healthier version. Losing weight is not about cutting out all the yummy food - it's about replacing what you currently eat with food that still tastes good, but doesn't have as much sugar, fat and salt. You can find tips and recipes for homemade food all over the MoneySaving Old Style board.

Meal planning can help with deciding what healthy food to buy and when to use it up to avoid food spoiling and thus to avoid wasting money. Again, tips on Old Style.

Learn when your supermarkets start reducing food (usually late in the day) and go shopping then!

Where do you go out? Are you and your boyfriend going to expensive pubs or cheap ones? When we were at uni, alcohol was ridiculously cheap in our student bars. I think it was something like £1.40 for a spirit and a mixer at mine. Now that we have to pay adult prices, we go to Weatherspoons as often as possible. Also, I drink less alcohol. I'll have a glass of wine with a nice meal if we go out, but if we're just in the pub, I'm quite happy to have a soft drink. (My boyfriend is a beer drinker and that will never change, but that doesn't mean I can't cut down and mitigate our combined outgoings that way.)

When are you going out? Where we went to university, going out on a Tuesday was quite cheap. On a Friday, everything cost three times as much. Are you taking advantage of student offers?

Are you sleeping with your boyfriend? Are you paying for your contraception? The pill is free on the NHS and condoms can be collected free of charge from GP surgeries (particularly ones in student towns). Alternatively, your university welfare people will have a drop in for free condoms.

There are so many little ways to save money. I think Martin suggested 'going down a brand' for everything to see if you notice or not. What I mean by this, is if you buy a luxury brand, swap it for a supermarket's finest, then the next one down would be a normal own brand and the next one down would be a value brand.

Cheap sausages taste horrible in Tesco, but for the same price, gorgeous in Waitrose (bet you wouldn't expect that of an 'expensive' supermarket). Always and Tampax can be replaced by Boots own brand sanitary towels and tampons for a big saving over the course of a year's worth of periods and there's little difference. Try dropping a brand for everything you buy and figure out for yourself which cheaper options suit you.

Do you and your boyfriend work? I didn't work during my terms because I couldn't have coped, but I did work every single day outside of term - summer holidays, easter, even Christmas. I temped right up until the offices shut down because everyone else had taken leave. I have lots of friends who worked during term time - in general, they found it more flexible and better paid to work for university run organisations, e.g. college bars, university library, open day tours, etc. University jobs tend to have better hours for students than jobs open to the general public.

As long as you earn below your personal allowance (which is about six grand), you'll only have to pay National Insurance Contributions. No tax. A few hours here and there could really add up. If you're worried about a job ruining your social life, get a job in a university bar. You'll be able to chat to your mates whilst working and your boss won't mind.

Course books - are you buying too many? It depends on your degree, but often, you're told to buy books you don't actually need. And the ones you do need, are in your university library and easily photocopiable. I fell for the book list in first year; by the end of my fourth year I bought hardly anything. Still left with a 2:1.

Do you really need television? BBC iPlayer is great for people with broadband. I believe 4oD does a similar thing, but we don't personally use it. For every unused quarter, you can get a refund of your TV licence by cheque.

I hope some of the above is useful to you and that I haven't offended...

kr15snw

Probably already been said...

Mobile: You can easily get that down. I pay £20 with orange for 3000 texts and 1000 minutes because I told them I was leaving.

TV / Phone / Net: If you cant afford the £60 then drop the TV and go to virgin for a £15 net/phone package. Most tv programmes can be found on the net or just go without.

Clothes: Only buy whats neccessary. I only bought clothes with birthday money and christmas money as I just didnt have the spare cash. I scrimped if I needed something for work (this was the only neccessary). Ive been recylcing the same trousers / tops to go out with for 2 years! And my christmas present from my boyfriend / his family was clothes as its the only way I could get it. When I got my first full time pay packet well you can guess what I bought

Do you work? Everyone can work up to 16 hours a week (sometimes more) meaning you can bring near £400 a month into the house. This is what I HAD to do so that I could afford to live. Yes I used most of my holiday at the end so I could finish course work but it had to be done!!

And please please please do not say your parents are refusing!! Your getting your house rent free! This is a hell of a lot more than most people get!! I ended up moving out from my parents as it was cheaper for me to live with my boyfriend. (Had to pay £250 - £300 a month at parents as they simply couldnt afford to 'keep' me but I understood this!) Throughout uni I didnt see a penny from my parents and I didnt complain, and you know why? It was MY choice to go to uni so I paid for MYSELF. There is nowhere that says 'Parents must pay for children to go to uni'.

angela110660

Have just read this thread - and the 2 previous comments to mine are both great so well done. Being the "parent" of a uni student I fully appreciate your words of advice and the last sentiment from kr15snw There is nowhere that says 'Parents must pay for children to go to uni'. is very true but unfortunately these days parents are pressured to feel they have to - even if some people's kids are really not up to the mark (IMHO).