Budgets ~ 1 Person, 2 Bed House

determinedtodothis

Hey!

I just wanted a quick poll really (if you don't mind) i'm trying to so my budget for my next debt busting year, I live on my own in a VERY small 2 bed house.

How much do people in my situ pay for:

1. ELECTRICITY (i don't have any gas) my company want £70 a month to
"keep me in credit" :eek::eek:

2. CONTENTS INSURANCE at the moment I pay £14 a month I don't have
anything massively expensive - my mate thinks this is a lot - TBH i've never had
it before so I didn't know when I signed up and I think I was taken advantage
off

3. FOOD SHOPPING i want to cut it as far back as possible and I know I could
live on beans on toast but I do want to eat a bit healthy at the moment i'm
spending about £140 a month (inc cleaning products)

Thanks Gang x

Jedilibrarian

:hello:

For your electric it would be worth measuring what you are using for a month then getting back to your electricity company if it seems they are charging way over the odds. Also bear in mind that it you are paying a little extra in the summer this should cover you in winter. I'd also dig out old bills (if they were based on meter readings) and do some calculations on what you'd used each month.

For contents insurance for 2 bed flat I pay 11.34 per month, I get a bit of a discount through my professional organisation (if you are in a union they do discounts too). I guess what you pay will depend on what type of area you live in and how much (£) you want to insure.

I think £140 for groceries sounds resonable, I am trying (and failing) to get mine down to £100 at the mo

Good luck!
JL

jamesb1239

3 of us, 2 adults and 1 toddler spend

Electricity : £50-£60 per month Electricity (Prepayment so extortionate tarrif)
Gas: £10 about per quarter in summer (only put more in it so they dont think im stealing gas or something) and in winter its about £10 per month but first few months are covered by puting it in through summer.
Food: £50 per week for all 3 of us
Contents Insurance: £9.46 (2 bed house)

Hope that helps

Katgrit

I'm also one person in a 2 bedroomed house so i'll try to help as much as i can. So long as you bear in mind different energy suppliers costs, different insurance risk postcodes etc.

1 My Gas and electric WAS £30 and £34 per month respectively. However my old company Atlantic, going off THEIR calculations, wanted wanted more than this so i switched. If you're using comparison sites make sure you only put in your consumption in annual kwh as using your bill amounts isn't accurate enough. I've switched to npower now who reckon they can do it for £21 and £24 but i'm very sceptical about that so we shall see.

2. I just got my contents insurance for £53 with £49.50 cashback on TopCashBack, effectively £3.50 for the whole yr. Even ignoring the cashback its less than a fiver a month. I made sure i taylored the quote to my exact needs. I dont have much expensive stuff, nothing of value leaves my house and i could afford to replace the odd item with savings. My main thinking is i'd only claim if i came home to find the whole house ransacked by burglars with everything gone, or had a fire or flood and everything went that way.

3. Cant really help you with food as i eat very irregularly and i'm not hugely good at cooking. It depends what u want to eat. I find that a £4 pack of chicken breasts will cut up into 10 portions big enough to use in stir fry, then i just buy mushrooms and beansprout/carrot/pepper mixes and chuck it all together in a pan. I buy the sauces when they're on 2-for-1's. Very easy to cook and i'm AWFUL at cooking! Failing that most supermarkets do some sort of 5frozen meals for £4. Not ideal i know, just if all else fails! You'll also find shedloads of help over on the Old Style Money Saving board. Trust me, give it a week and you'll be using white vinegar and stardrops for EVERYTHING! :-)

Other things that might be helpful:
I get 25% discount on my council tax because i'm a sole occupier so that £73 afterwards.
My water (on a meter) is £14 a month. Of this roughly half is standing charges, sewerage charges etc so i cant cut down much more.
My building insurance is part of my rent as i am in a shared ownership property.
Dont know how much you could cut back on things like life insurances (i'm single with no dependants so dont care what happens if i die!) or mortgage protection policies.
I dont have Sky cos i'm never in to watch it, just freeview and a hdd recorder. I've just cut my broadband and phone expenditure from £40 to £17ish by moving to talktalk. Theres a loads of ways to cut back on things if you're prepared to do it. Cashback sites are a great help too, only been on them about a month but got over 150 already, mainly because all my insurance policies renew at the same time of year! I've also started walking to my friends houses in the evening if they are less than 2 miles away, rather than driving. Everyone thinks i'm mad and just cant comprehend why i'd CHOOSE to walk, or assume my car has broke down. But exercise does me good and its just nice getting out in FRESH AIR. love it. :-)

determinedtodothis

Thanks guys thats great!

Jay WOW on the food shopping front & i thought I was thrifty!

Will def investigate the leccy & Contents

Katgrit

Whoops, just re-read you dont have gas!
I save electric in the small ways that all add up. By using low energy bulbs, a few years ago these were awful, lights had to be on for about a week before the bulb 'warmed up' enough to actually see anything. But they've improved loads over the past few years. I swore i'd NEVER use then and was stockpiling the worlds supply of normal bulbs in my attic incase they were ever phased out, but i'm converted now!! My radio alarm clock, hdd recorder, fridge freezer and wireless router are on constantly but EVERYTHING else goes off at the wall if its not being used. DVD player, surround sound, kettle, microwave, phone chargers, pc and monitor, speakers, outside light, ALL off at wall, not just the appliance. It might only seem like a little digital display but they all add up!

Hope this has been some help. I've just read this post back and realised how much i'm turning into my mother! :-(

Deep_In_Debt

I'm one person in a 2 bed house and I am paying £70 pm in electricity and I don't have gas either. This is the best deal that I can get. I had been paying a lot less for years and it seemed that I hadn't been paying enough so I am making up for it now. I use energy saving bulbs and make sure nothing is left on standby when not using.

Food sounds about right.

Insurance - not sure how much I pay tbh as it's included in my mortgage payments.

Horace

I live alone in a 3 bed flat.

I spend around £50 a month on groceries including things like loo roll and cleaning products (in fact where cleaning products are concerned I can be quite miserly with my spends).

I rarely shop in the supermarkets - I only use them really for big packs of toilet roll e.g. Tesco sells a 16 roll pack and sometimes Lidl do a 24 roll pack:eek: Meat I get from the butcher, veg from the greengrocer and I cook a lot from scratch. If you get the Daily Express this week they will have vouchers in there for Lidl - spend £30 and use their voucher to get a fiver off (you can stock up with all sorts of goodies - more than you would get in Tesco or Sainsburys).

Like you I don't have gas so I pay £39 a month to Scottish Power (this has increased slightly from £25 a month but I run my own business from home and so my power consumption has increased:rolleyes:).

To keep my grocery shopping in check - I write shopping lists - I look and see what I have in the fridge, freezer and pantry and only write down what I need. In fact now I have started writing the shopping list as soon as I run out of something it goes on the list in case I forget:rolleyes: Keeping a spending diary will help too.

Fire_Fox

Two people in a two bedroom flat: electricity £34 a month and food/ cleaning products/ basic toiletries £100 a month each. :T Heating is the biggest user of energy by a mile, followed by hot water and tumble dryers. We only heat the living area in winter, switch the heating off on milder days, electric blanket on the bed, short showers, laundry at 30 or 40C, air dry clothes.

Grocery-wise we could cut back harder as we spend a LOT on snacks and I use mainly 'green' cleaning products. Have already cut back loads by eating smaller portions of meat, having pork mince, turkey drumsticks, eggs, whole chickens, and reducing expensive meat such as lamb, bacon, quality sausages, chicken breast. Also padding meat out with extra veg, beans and lentils, pearl barley and paying a lot more attention to food waste (make soup or cooked fruit desserts, freeze bread and milk).

Beans on toast is actually very healthy, assuming wholemeal bread!! Other cheap and healthy meals include Spanish omelette, savoury bread and butter pudding (no butter, brown bread), homemade soups, bean and barley stew, Bolognese sauce (extra veg), Mexican fajitas (use turkey meat), cottage pie with sweet potato mash, lentil curry, stir frys, meatloaf (add red lentils), brown pasta with tomato sauce and a little strong cheddar. :money:

EZTutty

I'm single, and living in a 2 bed house on my own.

I pay £46.50 per month for Gas and Electricity, so as your only paying for Electricity i'd say £70 is very expensive! (the cost of mine is steadily coming down as i've built up a fair bit of credit).

I'm not sure what my contents insurance costs per month, as i pay for Buildings and Contents insurance together annually, just renewed with Tesco for £141 for the year :j, so again £14 a month maybe is a little expensive.

Food Shopping, i spend between £110 and £120 per month, including all toiletries and cleaning products etc.

Shoe_Gal

Hi

I live alone in a 2 bedroomed flat. I pay £40 per month for electricity with EDF and have no gas. My contents insurance is £6.40ish per month with Lloyds TSB

My food bills are my downfall (or the fact that I keep buying non-essentials in the supermarket ) so I'd be no help there