I'm realy worried

bellrooster

scope wrote: »

That cant be right? £60 for water per month?

Also, with the likes of 18185/1899, etc around £30 for a land line is very expensive, if you have Internet look into VoIP, you can call a number of countries for free, including UK. I rarely spend more than the basic £12 (or whatever it is) on my line rental, all calls are free.

Thought about getting a PAYG instead? £50 for mobile phone(s) isnt cheap. There are £10/15 deals out there with no tie ins and hundreds of free minutes included.

Just a though, and where I can see a saving being made.

hi, yes £60 a month for water shocked me too as was paying £30 at my previous address - i think this may need investigating.

As for the landline, I've just switched to Tiscali, (the hub thing arrived this morning) and it's £15.99 for the first 6 months then £19.99 but that includes free calls and broadband so that should make a saving.

As for mobiles, our contracts are just about to run out so I was investigating what to do there today, my currant mobile phone is just about knackered so I will need a new handset, so I'm not sure PAYG would work out, but I was looking and there's a few deals for £15 a month on contract with some free minutes, that will shave of a good chunk of that bill.

Keep all these suggestions coming! it's all helping.

I think I'm going to start writing out some of my recipes as I'm getting really good at making meals out of nothing and posting them somewhere on this forum as my way of giving something back!

RAS

bellrooster wrote: »

I think I'm going to start writing out some of my recipes as I'm getting really good at making meals out of nothing and posting them somewhere on this forum as my way of giving something back!

You need to post up recipes on the Money Saving Old style forum. Maybe put a link on here as well?

Re the water - at that amount a meter would probably save a fair bit.

Jesthar

bellrooster wrote: »

hi, yes £60 a month for water shocked me too as was paying £30 at my previous address - i think this may need investigating.

Hi Bellrooster,

I'm going to admit a dark secret - I work for a major water company (please don't throw things! ). Don't worry, I'm not in billing or anything like that, I'm an IT geek! But I do know a few tricks...

Water is one of the things we use every day freely without thinking about the cost, but if you are on a meter every time you turn the tap on you get charged TWICE - once for fresh water, once for sewerage. These charges are both calculated by the amount of water measured going IN to your house by your water meter - it is assumed that what goes in must come out. This obviously isn't strictly true or accurate, but there isn't really any better way of doing things unfortunately, as you can't put a meter on sewerage the same way you do with piped water! So (if you are on a meter), if you can reduce the amount of water you use, you will effectively make a double saving - well, a one and a half times saving, technically, as sewerage charges are around half that of fresh water charges.

First things first - are you on a water meter? If so - check your bill. Are the amounts you have been billed for based on an actual meter reading, or is it only estimated? My last half-monthly bill was estimated, and that estimate turned out to be more than my ACTUAL reading after 12 months! (With the result I didn't have to pay them a thing, and my account is still a few pounds in credit ) If it is estimated, and you can see the meter, compare the readings. If you can't find the meter in the house/garage/on the outside of the house, chances are it is a 'buried' meter, and may be in a nearby manhole/stopcock access flap. Not sure about the rules about requesting a reading if you can't find your meter, but if you can find it you can submit your own reading, and they will then have to re-bill you accordingly.

If you are not on a meter, the amount you are paying you should consider getting one!

If you ARE on a meter, the good thing is there are MANY simple ways of saving water, and I'm SURE you can get that bill down. I'm an adult living on my own, and I only paid for the whole of last year what you say you do every two months! And no, in case people were wondering, we don't get staff discounts. I'll give you a few of the most common tips - apologies if you have heard them before, but it's amazing how many people just haven't thought about such things. It's also amazing how the savings add up - even just a three litres a day means over 1000 litres a year (or a cubic meter, which is what we charge by.

- Reduce your toilet water use - put a save-a-flush or a water hippo or similar in your toilet cistern. You can pick these up for free, and they save you about a litre of water per flush. For a DIY solution, fill an empty 1 litre plastic bottle with something heavy (sand is good, or even water, as long as it doesn't float!) and stick that in the cistern. Don't forget to check the loo still flushes OK! Doesn't sound like much, but if you are flushing 10 times a day it soon adds up!

- Turn off the tap when brushing teeth or washing vegetables (use a bowl instead for the veggies/salad)). For a simple demo of how much water this saves, just leave the plug in one time and leave the tap running as you would normally do, and you'll not do it again!

- Use a watering can/bucket to water the garden/wash the car. You'll use anything up to 10 times less water that way. You can still use a hosepipe to FILL the can/bucket if you need to get water a long way from the house, just don't use it direct! Even better, get a water butt and use the water it collects for the garden. And don't bother watering grass - it will survive! If you wash the car or van a lot, might be worth considering doing that less often, too.

- Have showers rather than baths - though be careful if you have a power shower, as if you stay in one of them a fair while, they'll use more water than a bath! Again, try the 'leaving the plug in' experiment on this one. I LOVE a good soak in the bath, but have them as occasional treats now, and showers the rest of the time.

- Try to only run full washing machine/dishwasher loads, you'll save money AND electricity. If you dish-wash by hand, don't leave the water running to rinse things, either, as the only thing you save there is drying time.

Anyway, I know this is all very basic stuff, so my apologies if you already know it, but I hope it helps.

~Jes

bellrooster

Hi Jes

Thank you for your reply! and I'm sure you feel better now that you're out of the closet!

Your water saving ideas are brilliant - with or without a water meter I think they'll well worth doing!!

What I think I'll do is give the water board a call and see if they're billing me correctly! and if it turns out that it does infact cost £60 a month then I'll enquire about getting a meter fitted.

You're post was realy helpful, thank you muchly!!

Jesthar

Hi Bellrooster,

You're welcome!

My apologies, I wrote last night's missive mainly from memory, but I've checked up on a few things this morning, and need to make a few corrections. I'll edit the post above shortly...

The most glaring one is the bit about prepayment meters - I actually edited that bit out initially, but then IE crashed and I had to revert to a version I copied and pasted to my desktop (from bitter experience after losing long posts before!), and I forgot to take it out. Prepayment water meters are actually banned, and have been for several years - rightly so in my opinon. You should still avoid pre-payment energy meters like the plague, though! Been there in rented accomodation - it's EXPENSIVE...

I got the water and sewerage volume charge ratio the wrong way round, sorry! The sewerage rate is HALF the fresh water rate, not DOUBLE as I originally stated. I got that mixed up with the fixed charge fee, where the sewerage fee IS roughly double the water fee, as the sewerage system is much more extensive than the water network because it also covers surface water drainage (roof rainfall etc.) and highway drainage (street drains). That doesn't change the fact you pay twice for the water you use, though.

Looking at my bill (I won't give exact figures for obvious reasons!), my base fixed charge for Water Services is around £24, and for Waste Water (the polite name for sewage!) is around £44; that covers the whole year. On top of that, I am charged twice by the cubic meter (1000 litres) for the amount of water I use, once for fresh water, once for waste water. The current charges per cubic meter are a little over £1 for fresh water, and just over 50p for waste, making the total cost just over £1.50 per cubic metre.

So, if I make changes to my lifestyle which save on average, say, 12 litres of water a day (which even one person could do VERY easily just with the toilet cistern water saver and turning the tap off when brushing teeth, assuming they brush twice a day for the recommended 2 minutes), the savings are as follows:

12 litres a day for 356 days = 4,380 litres of water = 4.38 cubic metres
4.38 @ £1.50 = £6.57 saved!

Multiply that by the number in the household, and easy savings grow! For reference, I chose 12 litres because it is the capacity of the infamous B&Q orange bucket - not much water at all, is it? In fact, if we're honest, we'd never even notice the difference because so far we've only stopped wasting unnecessary water, and not even begun to make any actual cut-backs. So that is only the beginning of potential savings.

One thing I forgot to mention - make sure you get any leaky taps or dripping overflows fixed, especially if the leak is constant and not just an occasional drop. I've seen some leaks which must have been losing litres a day...

~Jes

bellrooster

RIght I've been through EVERYTHING today and this is my new SOA

The unsecured bills, some of them are to be written to explaining the situation and I'm going to ask for lower monthly payments.

Although there is a surpless amount of money - I don't want to allocate it to anything as our income could drop depending on how much work OH does.

The council tax seems high because I need to make overpayments to catch up. I just hope the council will be ok with overpayments and not send more bailiffs!! - if I pay £230 a month I will be up to date when the next bill comes next year.

I've also gone through all catalogue and bank statements and we have been charged quite a large sum of money in 'charges' which I'm going to attempt to claim back, anything I can claim back I'm going to overpay the Jacobs and Eon bill. is that a good idea?

oh my head hurts, I've been at it since 8am

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1680
Partners monthly income after tax....... 0
Benefits................................ 470
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 2150

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 0
Secured loan repayments................. 0
Rent.................................... 550
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 230
Electricity............................. 70
Gas..................................... 70
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 60
Telephone (land line)................... 20
Mobile phone............................ 42
TV Licence.............................. 27
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 160
Clothing................................ 20
Petrol/diesel........................... 100
Road tax................................ 33.33
Car Insurance........................... 50
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 50
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 10
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 0
Contents insurance...................... 12
Life assurance ......................... 0
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 10
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 40
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1554.33

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 0
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 1000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 1000

No Secured Debt

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
jacobs.........................478.......50........0
cap one........................500.......25........29.99
vanquis........................500.......25........39.99
Howarth........................649.......30........0
littlewoods....................414.......10........0
BT.............................198.......10........0
Swinton........................40........5.........0
budget.........................147.......10........0
marisota.......................90........10........0
next...........................30........10........0
simplybe.......................20........3.........0
Eon............................843.......25........0
Total unsecured debts..........3909......213.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,150
Expenses (including secured debts)....... 1,554.33
Available for debt repayments........... 595.67
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 213
Surplus(deficit if negative)............ 382.67

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 1,000
Total Secured debt...................... -0
Total Unsecured debt.................... -3,909
Net Assets.............................. -2,909

Created using the SOA calculator at www.makesenseofcards.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission.

urg123

Hi Bell

This looks a lot more positive!

I notice that you are paying quite a lot more for CT - when you pay of the arrears there will be a lot more that can be geared towards your debts.

The electric has jumped up - look at ways in which to save electric ie. energy saving bulbs etc.

Is the TV license right - it should be about £13 per month if you are paying by DD.

Finally - pay off the small debts - you'll be feel so much better when they are gone. Then focus on the ones with the highest debt.

URG x

Jesthar

Hi Bellrooster,

Well, that looks a lot more positive - well done! If it's any consolation, I've also been doing a lot of paperwork sorting, and have a very similar kind of brain-ache...:rotfl:

Looking at that, the priority savings wise is to check your water payments, then see if you can get a better deal on your gas and electricity - they seem very high! Go though a cashback site for the switch and you should MAKE yourself some money, too.

If you have money over this month, you're probably better using a little of it to clear extra off your debts than saving all of it - even an extra £50 off a debt makes a good long term difference, and will also mean you'll be landed with a little less interest next month. Make sure you start with the debt with the highest APR, as that will be the one hurting you worst long term. Oh, and if you can find the APRs out for all your debts, somewhere out on the net is a 'snowball calculator' (I think this is it: http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx) which can tell you the most cost efficient order to pay them off - which to throw any extra money at first and so on.

Other than that, you mentioned in your first post Eon were sounding serious about going down the pre-payment meter route? You REALLY don't want to wind up there, as it is SO much more expensive than billed tarrifs (used to be in rented accomodation which had pre-payment meters, so I can vouch for that one personally...:mad:), so if throwing some extra money their way would would keep them at bay on that threat, then if they haven't backed down already I think that should be a priority. Unless you manage to switch suppliers, of course!

If the 40% interest rate is correct , I suggest Vanquis would be the next prime target, unless something else has a higher rate - I do hope not, though!:eek:

And urg is right, some of the small debts could be cleared completely, which doesn't sound like much, but it makes you feel good and at least you won't be getting any more interest on them. Suggest you see which of your under-£50 debts has the highest interest rates and perhaps pay off that one (my bet would be the Next one, looking at the monthly payments for such a small outstanding amount ) if you can afford it, then you can throw that money at something else next month - preferably the 'something' with the highest interest rate!

Keep up the good work, hon!

~Jes

bellrooster

Jesthar wrote: »

Hi Bellrooster,

Well, that looks a lot more positive - well done! If it's any consolation, I've also been doing a lot of paperwork sorting, and have a very similar kind of brain-ache...:rotfl:

It's awful isn't it - and as for my poor old shredder machine! at one point today I think it even started smoking!

Looking at that, the priority savings wise is to check your water payments, then see if you can get a better deal on your gas and electricity - they seem very high! Go though a cashback site for the switch and you should MAKE yourself some money, too.

I've looked into the water rates and I know why it's £60, for some reason we're only set up to make 5 payments a year! hopefully a quick phone call might straighten this out!

and as for Gas and Electric, I desperatly want to switch, but I need to clear my bill first and it's HUGE!!

If you have money over this month, you're probably better using a little of it to clear extra off your debts than saving all of it - even an extra £50 off a debt makes a good long term difference, and will also mean you'll be landed with a little less interest next month. Make sure you start with the debt with the highest APR, as that will be the one hurting you worst long term. Oh, and if you can find the APRs out for all your debts, somewhere out on the net is a 'snowball calculator' (I think this is it: http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx) which can tell you the most cost efficient order to pay them off - which to throw any extra money at first and so on.

Thanks for that link! I'll have a look! and I agree the highest APR's should go first, I might need to re-jig where the money is going, but I'm prioritsing paying council tax arreas at the moment.. (horrible old baillifs)

I've just applied for a new credit card and been accepted, it's got balance transfer rate of 6.6% so that should help.

Other than that, you mentioned in your first post Eon were sounding serious about going down the pre-payment meter route? You REALLY don't want to wind up there, as it is SO much more expensive than billed tarrifs (used to be in rented accomodation which had pre-payment meters, so I can vouch for that one personally...:mad:), so if throwing some extra money their way would would keep them at bay on that threat, then if they haven't backed down already I think that should be a priority. Unless you manage to switch suppliers, of course!

oh yes, I heard about the meters and how awful they are, but apparently you can refuse to have one fitted, which we have done once but they're still chomping at the bit. I think anything left over from paying the council tax arreas will have to go to Eon.

If the 40% interest rate is correct , I suggest Vanquis would be the next prime target, unless something else has a higher rate - I do hope not, though!:eek:

And urg is right, some of the small debts could be cleared completely, which doesn't sound like much, but it makes you feel good and at least you won't be getting any more interest on them. Suggest you see which of your under-£50 debts has the highest interest rates and perhaps pay off that one (my bet would be the Next one, looking at the monthly payments for such a small outstanding amount ) if you can afford it, then you can throw that money at something else next month - preferably the 'something' with the highest interest rate!

Keep up the good work, hon!

~Jes

Oh well.. phase 2 starts tomorrow, I'm going to get lots of letter templates to write to the banks/catalogues see if I can get the charges refunded, then thats going to help shrink the debts.

thanks urg and Jes for your brill advice.. :T :T :T :beer:

Jesthar

Hi bellrooster,

Your poor shredder! Mine jammed a few times, too - and why is it paper seems to explode in size from a neat two inch stack to a bin-bag full after shredding, no matter HOW much you jump on it? :rolleyes:

Well, that's better news on the water bill front - though I'm puzzled by your being billed five times a year, it seems a very odd number! I've heard of annual, twice yearly, four times a year (quarterly) and monthly, but never five times a year! It's also still a pretty large bill a 5 x £60 = £300 (or even if it's 4 x £60 = £240) - did you manage to find out if you were metered or on a flat rate? If you're metered, I'm sure you can get it down under the £200 mark without enormous sacrifices or effort, and perhaps even lower.

Annoying that you can't switch gas and elec until you've paid Eon off, but those monthly amounts still seem very high - are overpayments/repayments included in that? If not, the same applies as with the water - check your bills for esitmated 'readings', as these can be rather wild. My supplier had to pay me back about £120 on my Gas bill this year... :mad: If paying them off sooner means you can switch sooner, you might be wise to go for it - check out what you could be switching to to motivate yourself!

If the readings are (unfortunately!) correct, check your useage patterns, especially those things which eat energy. Electric heaters and fires, for example, eat money, as do most things related to heating (such as non-energy saving lighting). Electric hot water immersion heaters or gas systems which use a hot water cylinder, too - if your hot water system works that way (mine does), try lowering the amount of time you leave it on for until you find a happy medium. Mine just fires up for half an hour in the morning and half an hour at night currently, and if I want an indulgent bath I just put on for an extra half an hour beforehand. And good thick curtains and draught excluders are your friend for lowering your heating bills; that's next on my 'to do' list now I have my double glazing in (which has already meant I haven't had to put the central heating on yet ). I also only set the thermostat to 17/18 degrees C anyway, as it's so much cheaper to just put a jumper on and snuggle up on the sofa.

Excellent news about the credit card! Get the Vanquis card transferred ASAP, and the Cap One and any other cards too if you can (I don't recognise some of the names, and have NO idea how this works anyway, having never used a credit card for credit, only purchase protection! :rotfl: ), and that's a whole extra boatload of interest you'll be avoiding! :T Does the 6.9 rate last for the whole life of the transferred balance, or just a fixed period of time?

Definitely worth trying to get charges back - again I've never had to do it, but I think any credit card charges you can reclaim straight away (with a bit if a fight), though bank account charges are currently on hold pending the final outcome of a court case to prove they are unfair, which the banks have already nearly lost. You can keep tabs on that in the 'Reclaim 1000s' section of this site, as it should be sorted in January sometime. You can still start the process now, though! No idea on catalogue charges, personally, but it's worth a try!

Keep this up, you're doing really well!

~Jes