any ideas welcome

ashleyfae

Has anyone any ideas as to how me and my partner may reduce our outgoings.
We both pay £800 into a joint account from which the household bills come out from. The money we have left in our own account is for our food and personal spending i,e running our cars.( thats another issue!!!!)
Here is our monthly outgoings.
mortgage 757.13
council 114
water 25
me life 19.05
bt line rental 12.33
british gas cover for
heating pluming and
electrics. 25.00
me life 20
contents and
buildings insurance 30.91
mortgage protection
for both of us 34.10
sweb gas 40
sky 42
tv 11.07
partner life 43.11
joint life 32.51
electricity npower average 30.00 (only one we don't pay by direct debit)
cover for washing machine 6.00
childcare average 420


IN
800 x 2= 1600
Chilt tax 42
child bebefit 113

We only take home about 1,200 each a month so we really want to start making cuts somewhere. I have been getting tips already for reducing my weekly food bill and to pay off my own personal debts.

ANY ADVICE WELCOME

queenofthedump

Hi
Ring sky and cut your package - if you only canx sports you would save £6 per month which is £72 per year check to see if you can change your gas supplier, are you getting help with your child care costs ? Ie Working Families Tax Credits ?? The call to sky was the first thing we cut we had to weigh up sports or the disney channel and as our kids monopolise the tv the sports got cut. Small saving per month but soon adds up.

Good Luck if any of your tips for saving money from weekly food bill work let me know what they are.

loulou58

Could you not pay a visit to an independent Financial advsior to shop around see if they can get all your Lifes, Mortage repayment protector, and your buildings and contents insurance any cheaper anywhere else?

Id check see if your home insurance already covers what your paying British Gas insurance for, if they cover the same things you can cancel the British Gas one?

nic82

I just started writing a reply then closed the window by accident :mad:

A much shorter version of what I just typed is....

Can you change your British Gas Homecare to another option? I have the £16 a month option, which works out at £192 a year (whereas your £25 a month works out at £300 a year).

I know there is the argument that you might need to claim for some things that the most expensive option covers you for, but......

Say you make a claim every three years on the £25 option. Over the three years you will have paid £900 in premiums. If you had the £16 a month option you would have only paid £576 in premiums. It's not definite that you will need to make a claim, so the way I look at it is that if you do only have the £16 a month option but need to pay for something that you would have been able to claim on the £25 option, over the three years, you'll already have made over £300 in savings that could be put towards the repairs and it's probable that repairs won't cost that much.

I hope this makes sense. I know what I'm trying to say, but not sure it's come out quite right

nic82

Also, your buildings and contents insurance sounds quite expensive. For a joint policy, we only pay £19 a month through Esure, and this is for a comprehensive policy.

Also, why have you got four life insurance policies between you and your partner? From your list, it looks as though you've got 2 life insurances plus a joint one and your partner has got his own and the joint one. Do you need them all?

black-saturn

If it were me I would cancel all that insurance. Then put the money I was paying on it towards paying off debt and when it's paid off put it into an ISA. Better to be earning you 4% than the insurance company.

skintchick

You both put aside £400 each for food and personal spending!!

Food for one is £60 (that's what I live on), so how much are you spending on your cars?!?!?

I think you can find some extra cash there for sure.

Bestthingsinlifearefree

sky needs to go or down grade your package.

me and the wife got rid of sport and movies and cut the monthly cost from £42 to £21.

We kept all the other channels and I have to say we never even missed the movie / sport channels as we didn't really have time to watch them and you can always get sport / films on ITV / BBC etc etc

In the grander scheme of things its not a big sacrifice if you are serious about getting your finances under control.

So maybe review the channel you really want / watch.

ashleyfae

Thanks for all your replies.
The life insurance issue is because I originally had a house on my own and then brought with partner and then re mortgaged.Each time we had to add life insurance to cover increased mortgage. Our adviser said as they were good policies it was worth keeping them as we would loose out otherwise. I am not clued up on it so believed him!
We have discussed reducing our Sky to the basic package. My partner has agreed to cancel sports although he watches the football!!
I agree I need to look into how much we pay for our buildings and contents.
I am in a real dilema with the British Gas cover as as soon as we took it out our central heating broke and it would have cost about £300 to fix but we were covered!!! We have the plumbungs and electrics covered which includes unlimited call outs and repairs. We have had a pipe fixed and I think our electrics are playing up... so if all that is taken into account I reconed that we have saved this year. I worry that if we cancel, something else big will go wrong and we will be left with big bill. I think the cntents insurance only covers things that are damaged by flodds etc not the repair of something.I know that if we had more savings we would be able to pay for repairs as and when they happen. Ironically our cooker also broke last week and that wasn't covered!!!!You would think we live in an old house..it's only 5 years old.

I can't comment on what my partner spends his £400 on but a considerable amount has been going to shopping. I think I was spending about £100 a week in Asda! I decided that I would try to cut this to £80 but my partner went mad so after reading the other forums am going to try lower!! I get nappies and wipes still but do try and get those from Cosco.
I try and pay off £100 to credit card. The rest goes on Mobile phone and kids and me. I know I wast loads but am trying to stop!!
Obviously I have annual car tax servising etc that all come at Christmas when I haven't saved for them!!
We get all the help we can with childcare and I get vouchers via busy bees as well.

brummiebabe

I think you need to try and get your outgoings a little clearer - how much do you both spend on cars/kids activites/eating out etc etc..? Only then can you be sure what your ACTUAL outgoings are. Have you tried keeping a spending diary? Use Martin's budget planner (link at top of the page) as this will help you to think about ALL your outgoings!

Could you & OH not pool the leftover money to try and get debts paid off??

As for life insurance - the amounts seem huge! How much life cover do you have?

Rest assured though, you've come to the right place to get help!!!!

ashleyfae

You will probably be horried that I am not sure exactly what our life cover actually covers!! I did at the time and it all made sense. Our mortgage is 123k so wee took out enough to cover that if either of us dies or became critically ill.I will look into it though, thanks