Shellgirl's Smart-price Value No Frills budget

Fire_Fox

Welcome to diary-land! How come your energy bills are so high, are you in debt to them? We have a two bedroom electric-only flat and have a DD of £34 a month which covers everything. Obviously if you have two homes you'd be spending double, but that's still nowhere near £200 ....

shell_girl

Hi FireFox and thanks for reading!
Yes- I'm in debt to British Gas. Somehow my gas bills for the last two quarters jumped to £400 each quarter which I'm querying with them... I honestly don't see how we could have possibly used over £100 of gas per month... but they say we did. Until it's resolved though I still need to pay them :mad: . I've allocated £120 which I send them each month split between the two bills for home, at the moment it's about £80 per month on the gas and £40 on the electric, which I can adjust when the electric is at zero. The other tenants where we have our flat (shared bills for the building) have said that the bills seem to be pretty high, so I've allowed £20 each for gas and electric per month, so £80 gets put by so that we can cover our share when the quarterly bill comes for the flat. I'm hopefully overestimating the flat bills, and if so can chuck any spare at British gas. Eventually I hope that there'll be a refund coming from BG... but who knows OH once worked for an energy company so the fight with BG is his... he seems to know what he's talking about, but when he says 'kilowatts per hour' and 'average usage' my brain just seems to switch off I just pay them to keep it ticking over as I don't want to get home and find I've been cut off!

Fire_Fox

Have you read the meters at your old house and have you had the boiler serviced? Are you sure you are being charged for the correct meter (check the serial number) and for cubic feet and not square metres (or vice versa)? It was a very cold winter, how many months/ hours a day did you have the heating on? Is the house properly insulated?

What do you mean by shared bills?? Do you mean the energy bills for the communal areas as part of the service charge? Or do you mean you only have one meter for every flat's internal heating and hot water?? Do you have access to the meters and do you have say in which supplier is used? Are you sure that the energy is not being re-sold to you with profits (illegal)?

shell_girl

Haven't had the boiler serviced for ages should definitely look at getting this done. I don't think we had the heating on excessively, but the three of us living there at the time were working a mad pattern of shifts so I suppose other people (who will remain nameless lol) could well have been clicking the on demand button more than necessary! In total I think it was timed to come on for about 6 hours a day in total. Will ask OH to check with the more techie side of things (cubic v square etc). Thanks- I wouldn't have known about looking for that :T

In the shared bills house it's quite an odd set up. We have a flat on one floor, other floors of the house are divided into single rented rooms. The bills come for the whole house and are split between people living there- at present I think 7 including me and OH. The metre for the house is in our flat so we can access it. In terms of suppliers- I suppose we could all have a chat about shopping around, but would need everyones (and landlord's?) agreement to any changes?

Thanks again FireFox- you've raised some points I wouldn't have thought about.

Fire_Fox

You MUST get the boiler serviced especially as you are letting a room in the house. If there is an explosion you won't be insured and you could be sued by or even kill your tenant. :eek: If you were letting the entire house you'd be breaking the law just not having a valid gas safety certificate - not sure if this also applies to lodgers.

Six hours per day in a cold winter is an awful lot of gas - if you have an inefficient boiler and were using the boost button .... I think your bills are correct. In some ways that's a good thing as consumption is an area you can work on well in advance of next winter. :cool:

Even in the snow my heating was on two or three hours a day, and went off in the middle of February. The rest of the time I wore two fleeces and we have an electric blanket on the bed. Hence our bills only increased to £34 a month from £26 a month in January; we both also work shifts and live in the chilly North.

Whoever is named on the utility bill can change the supplier, I would have thought the others would agree if you show it will be a cheaper tariff. It's ten minutes work and you can get up to £100 for switching through a cashback site (Wepromiseto/ Quidco)! :money: Don't forget to clear your cookies before you switch.

shell_girl

Well it's day two in the small budget house (insert north east accent as desired!). Spent £2 last night on a pub quiz (Mum bought the lemonades) and so far today spent nada :j
Haven't actually withdrawn the budget yet, as had £8 in change in my purse from the £10 Mum gave me, also had a petty cash claim back from work at £13.90. So... the plan is to make that last until at least the weekend and then adjust the budget a bit (as in take less out of the bank to last the month).
I've done the sums about six times and each time I get a different answer... worse case scenario is we're £20 short for the month , best case scenario in we're £65 up. Will go back to it tonight:mad: and try and make it balance. Spends today will be washing up liquid and some scrubbery things to go with it from home bargains- so will keep the day's spends under £2 I hope.

Am going for 10 NSDs for July- would've liked to have my first today but I can't not buy washing up liquid... last night I used a manky old handwash that's been lurking round the sink since we moved in - bleurgh.

shell_girl

Does anyone else get quite disproportional rage when they log in and type a post... then when you click 'submit' it tells you to log in again? :mad::mad::mad:

Note to self- copy before posting lol! Will try again in a minute...

shell_girl

Ok... and breathe... (and copy before submit lol)

Went slightly over budget last night in Home Bargains. Spent £6.07 but managed to get enough foody bits that I should be able to feed us until Monday/ Tuesday only buying fresh veg :jStill have over £13 in the budget pot and haven't taken anything out of the bank yet. We've found ourselves adding little extra bits in to the challenge- now we're on 'how long before we HAVE to take the rest of the budget out of the bank'!

Woken up with a stinky cold, but will struggle on as I'm so new in my job I don't get paid for sick yet :rolleyes:

In happy news, have finally got OH to accept jacket potatoes as an acceptable meal. For the last four years all I've had from him is 'they're not food' (I think what he means is not substantial enough) but he happily wolfed two down last night and said he'd really enjoyed them... so that's a nice cheap meal we can now do a couple of times a week. Lucky really- as they're one of my favourites

Something is eating my rocket and chilli plants :mad: I can't see any creatures, but mam said I could have 'nemotoads' (spelling?!) which sound pretty unpleasant. I really want my plants to work as we eat such a lot of chilli that I would save money... if the little blighters would leave them to grow. Any ideas anyone?

shell_girl

:jYay

Today is my first NSD of July- I won't be going out again and so I'm calling it now. I've put myself down for ten of them this month, so it's good to have one down. Which means still over £13 in the budget pot and no cash out of the bank yet.

Have started transferring the odd amount over the £10 from my current account into my overdraft, today the balance was £xx27.31 so transferred £7.21 onto my OD to keep the figures nice and round. Each time a DD comes out my OD should get chipped down a little bit further.

Picked up some pies reduced last week down to 39p, am defrosting them now for tea. Tomorrow and saturday meals could be a bit eclectic... might have to pop over to OS and see what they suggest with what I've got.

shell_girl

Morning all!
Would've managed a NSD yesterday but for the stinking cold turning into 'man flu'. Lovely OH was in the shop before half eight buying up their own brand versions of medicines etc. We also needed to put petrol in the car for the week- so total spend yesterday around £13 which had to be done. Still feeling a bit bleurgh today but will soldier on...
Have done a meal plan for the week so will need to face the supermarket later on, plan is to keep it under £20 and then not spend anything until Thursday when we're going home:j:T and will need to put petrol in the car. Freezer at home has at least two days worth of food, so with a bit of restraint no need to spend too much. Feeling quite good that the budget has been in operation since Tuesday and still haven't actually taken it out of the bank yet, am considering dividing it into weeks and doing it that way as we've been a bit sad in our obsession with stretching the cash we had as far as we could... I'm thinking that we could do that each week and possibly push it back a day each time... OH has got some games selling on fleabay both with bids so that's a little bit of money coming in, and I plan to empty my attic this weekend to music magpie all old CDs and either amazon or green met all books. Sounds good when I write it all down... now just need to tear myself off the sofa...:rotfl: