Newbie looking for some helpful hints!?!?!

donna-dan

Hey all!

Am a 19 your old lad who is living with my 18 year old partner. We were directed to this site my my brother (some may know him as xlt hunter), over the past couple of days we have been reading some of the posts on the site but it is hard to relate the information to our life. I thought that the best way to get this information is to post the status of our life on here and see if anyone has got some advice, tips or hints to make life better.

As I said I'm 19 and my partner is 18. We moved into our first house June 2005, one of these part own part rent schemes that seem to be popping up everywhere!! We both have good jobs, I'm a trainee accountant on 10k a year and Donna (my partner) is an admin assistant on about 8.8k a year (depending on overtime etc).

Below is a list of our monthly outgoings.

Mortgage - 275
Rent - 199
Home Ins (Content ONLY) - 19
Tv Lic - 19
Loan - 156 (7.4% Apr, 9k over 6 yrs)
Mortgage Payment Protection - 20
Council Tax - 91
Life Cover - 25
Water - 13
Gas - 22
Elec - 20
Car ins - 55 (rising to 130ish in feb)
Mobile - 56
BT - 20 (line rental only??)
Internet - 15
Sky - 21

So around 1026 a month.

Everything like petrol and food is purchased using a 0% apr credit card. (the money that would of been spent placed into an isa)

There are a couple of things that i would desperately like to sort out, like finding a cheaper car insurance (crashed car, explaining the rise)
BT, £20 being the minimum that was allowed to pay. Home insurance (brought with the mortgage) also the payment protection for us both!!

If you have any advice or tips please let us know!! :rolleyes:

Thanks

D & D

fairylights_2

BT are swine for making you pay over the odds. I have finally bartered them down to £12 a month payments although they wanted more. There are two options: 1. Keep ringing and bringing it down by a bit each bill until it's where you think it should be OR 2. Every time you know you've overpaid, access their accounts over the phone and ask for a refund. You can do this without talking to anyone, and it takes about a week (If I remember rightly) to get the money into your bank.

I finally switched to just dial in the last few weeks, so my £12 a month should be more than enough.

I'm assuming you've been through the car insurance section on the site already?

donna-dan

BT haven't been all that bad to us. When we first connected in July time there was a mix up with the connect fee not being split over the first few bills so they waived it and we got the connection for free. We get our phone calls through one tel as we get both gas an elec from brit gas we get free calls. It is only the line rental which we pay bt, supposed to be 10.50 but we pay 20??
As for the car insurance. i have read it through a couple of times but i dunno if i have the confidence to haggle with the companys!!! i dunno what to say to them and end up getting tongue tied and ever increasingly confused!!!

leni

Hi, sorry, I'm abit confused in what you want to achieve? Is it just bringing your monthly bills down? If so, then maybe you could ring sky and reduce your package - we used to pay £21 a month but then released we were paying for channels we never watched like the cartoon channels and the documentary channels, by cancelling these, we now only pay £18 a month - small saving I know but it means in theory you get 2 months free because you've save £36 a year!

Re Car Insurance - just spend ages trying to find a cheaper quote, try everyone - it takes time but is often worth it, and buy online, it's cheaper!

change your mobiles to pay as you go - 02 sim cards are always on offer for free and require £10 top ups each month and you get 300 free text messages with this!

I'm currently looking into all my mortgage insurances/contents etc so I'll let you know if I find anyone good!

donna-dan

leni wrote:

I'm currently looking into all my mortgage insurances/contents etc so I'll let you know if I find anyone good!

Thanks

Our goal is to bring our bills down.

Ref sky. we have our brothers and sisters over as we babysit alot so the cartoons have to stay. and i do like to watch them myself!! :-)
ref phone. we are currently in a contract till October with 02 we do use what we pay for so that isnt a major problem

southernscouser

Sorry, I'm a bit confused by the line rental thing! Thought it was a flat rate of £10.50! Why do you pay £20? What was the reason BT gave for charging you £20?

Regarding your car insurance it is normally alot cheaper to do it online. Try somewhere like confused.com who search loads of different companys for you. Then go back to the one which is cheapest and do the search yourself. Quite often it is £20 odd cheaper!

That way you don't have to "haggle" with them and to be honest they aren't much likely to reduce it just by asking. Perhaps if you have a cheaper quote else where they might match it.

Personally I have found, elephant.co.uk, admiral, and Tesco to be the cheapest insurers for myself!

Everything like petrol and food is purchased using a 0% apr credit card. (the money that would of been spent placed into an isa)

Could you also explain the above! I assume you just mean that you put for example £200 a month on it. Put £180 in an ISA to get the interest then make the £20 minimum payment!

Keeval

Okay I'm going to take a rough guess at your total monthly income (taking tax etc into account):

Income : 1170

House
=====

Mortgage - 275
Mortgage Payment Protection - 20
Rent - 199
Home Ins (Content ONLY) - 19

Total = 513

Utilities
=========

Council Tax - 91
Water - 13
Gas - 22
Elec - 20
Mobile - 56
BT - 20 (line rental only??)
Internet - 15

Total = 237

Misc
====

Tv Lic - 19
Loan - 156 (7.4% Apr, 9k over 6 yrs)
Life Cover - 25
Car ins - 55 (rising to 130ish in feb)
Sky - 21

Total = 276

Total Outgoings = 1026
Leaving = 144

What are you spending on food and petrol etc? If you could itemise that it will help us here see where you can save money. The problem I see here (from my figures) is in Feburary you will only have 69.00 left to live on for a month.

If you can provide your correct incoming amounts we can refine things a bit further.

I'd look at the following:

1. Reduce your SKy package to the basic, approx 12.00 or cancel completely.

2. See if you can reduce the BT rent (as in the above posts)

3. Have you seen if you can get a council tax discount? I understand this can be done, but never done it so I dont know the procedure (can anyone else assist?)

4. Do you need the life cover at the moment?

5. I'd enquire to see if you can change the Loan provider and get it at a lower rate than the above. There may be penalties associated with moving it though so you will need to check into it.

6. Reduce your car insurance (sites listed by others above).

I'd be careful about using the 0% card for bills etc, as you could find it might spiral out of control.

-Keeval-

donna-dan

southernscouser wrote:

Could you also explain the above! I assume you just mean that you put for example £200 a month on it. Put £180 in an ISA to get the interest then make the £20 minimum payment!

The way that we do it is, whatever we spend on the credit card we place into the isa less the minimum payment to get the interest.

I thought to save time i would sort out my direct debt online and £20 was the minimum that i could pay. i was thinking about moving to one tel for line rental as it is 9.50 a month instead of the 10.50

I was think about trying the pay as you drive scheme, has anyone had experience with this scheme??

*Sparkle*_3

donna-dan wrote:

Everything like petrol and food is purchased using a 0% apr credit card. (the money that would of been spent placed into an isa)

I really dont understand the logic of this, please explain?

You prob buy lots of foods and things you dont need and cannot afford on that card, how much do you spend on food and petrol a week?

southernscouser

donna-dan wrote:

The way that we do it is, whatever we spend on the credit card we place into the isa less the minimum payment to get the interest.

All I would say about this is be careful. When the interest free period comes up make sure you pay it off in full! Iy's all to easy just to pay the minimum payment and have a holiday instead or something or one month not put enough in the ISA to clear it! I'm just talking from experience and I don't want you to go down the same path!

donna-dan wrote:

I was think about trying the pay as you drive scheme, has anyone had experience with this scheme??

I don't have any knowledge of this I'm afraid! The only thing I can suggest to reduce your premium is to opt for a high voulntary excess! Although if you do have another claim it will cost you!

donna-dan

The amount we spend on food and petrol is:

25 food per week for us both
10 for petrol

As for income mine is 833.33 before tax without fail each month and my partner is paid 4.6 per hour and she does on average 42 hours per week.

ref sky. we are tied into a contact for another 7 months, how could we go about reducing it tho?

ref bt. see last post.

ref council tax, i wouldnt have a clue how to go about doing that.

ref life cover. got to have it for the mortgage.

ref loan. that was changed last month, we was paying 186 a month, which was about 15% apr i think.

ref car insurance best i have found is 100 a month tpft.