Any suggestions?

lady_fuschia

Hi, I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, so please feel free to move it!
I've only been posting for a week or so, and have had some great advice on little helpful ways of saving etc, but seeing as previous requests for help are mainly part of a bigger problem I thought I'd post the whole thing and see if anyone had any ideas (Does that make ANY sense??!)

Basically my OH and I moved to our current area due to my beginning a part time college course, not knowing a great deal about the place. We rented a tiny, yet reasonably comfortable, one bedroom flat for £550 a month- this is really more than we can afford, but still the cheapest habitable option we could find. Now we've been living here almost a year, we've discovered that we can find somewhere slightly cheaper (more like £450-500 pcm) in a town 5 miles away with a good train and bus link (we don't run a car) and would like to look into moving there. Only problem is that we would have to find a deposit from somewhere to secure anywhere decent, which we can't afford to do whilst simultaneously paying for the place we're in. I'd be really pleased if anyone could a) suggest a way we can get around this without making cutbacks b) if a) isn't possible, suggest cutbacks we can make so that we might be able to raise the deposit sometime during the next 5 months before we have to renew our contract with the current landlord. If it helps this is our SOA (hope I'm presenting this right!):

Joint Monthly Income: £1560 (Although this varies as my OH is paid by the hour and works shifts)

Rent: £550
Council Tax: Currently £200 as we're paying off old debts, but will hopefully drop to £100 in July.
Electricity: £65 (long story but not in a position to switch suppliers!)
Water: £25
Phone/Internet: £21
Food: £60
Travel: £200ish (variable, depending on whether OH works night shifts and has to take taxi home from work, which is about £10 a pop)
Loan Repayment: £89
Old Storecard repayment: £60 (will be paid off end of June!)
TV License: £11
Regular doctor's prescription (warfarin and painkillers) £13

That's everything that I'm aware of. We go to the cinema maybe once a month (about £6.00) but don't go out at all otherwise. On the rare occasion we buy clothes they come from charity shops, so its not a great or regualr expense. I do have to buy college materials occasionally, but really that's it- I can't see that there are many more cutbacks we physically CAN make. So any ideas will be much appreciated!

kar

My first thought is that you are getting regular prescriptions but aren't using pre payemnt.

Take a look at the following links:
http://www.ppa.org.uk/pdfs/ppc/FP95%200104.pdf
and
http://www.dh.gov.uk/PolicyAndGuidance/MedicinesPharmacyAndIndustry/Prescriptions/NHSCosts/NHSCostsArticle/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4049383&chk=k8woEO
I know its a pain to find the money upfront but you will save a fair bit on those regular prescriptions. First I would double check that yuo aren't entitled to free prescriptions by filling in a HC1 form but if your not definately go prepay.

lady_fuschia

Oh thanks- I didn't relaise that pre-pay was actually cheaper- is that always the case?

CLAPTON

is there a deposit on your present flat that will be returned when you leave?

your soa shows your spending adds up to 1,294 whereas your income is 1,560...maybe you could consider keeping a spending diary to find out where the 'missing' £254 is being spent.

have you worked out how travel costs will change when you move?

is there anyway either of you could earn extra money for a few months to save for the deposit

lady_fuschia

Presumably our present flat deposit will be returned when we leave- the problem being that we would need to put a deposit on a new place down before we actually leave. I'm reluctant to borrow more money to cover the "gap" as we've just started to climb out of the debt hole and I'm very wary about falling back down again.
Hopefully our travel cuts will decrease a little if we move, as the new place would be closer to my partner's work (although mine would increase slightly, I work more sociable hours, so we would still be saving)
Earning extra money sounds like a good idea in theory, although I'm not sure how we'd do it- I work full time and am halfway through a part time degree course, and my OH's hours are too unpredictable to be able to commit to a second job- is there some other way we could earn (maybe consumer testing or something?) that wouldn't need a regular time commitment? It would certainly help to bring in a little extra.
As for the spending diary: I kept one when I was living alone and found it helpful, I've tried again recently but found it difficult to get OH to commit to it. Ways of convincing cynical image-concious man that spending diary is worthwhile exercise would also therefore be much appreciated!! I suspect a good deal of that money may be going on cigarettes- I've got him to switch to roll ups, and cut down, but giving up may be a step too far at this stage.

beanielou

Great news that your store card will be paid off by June.Thats really soon.
Prepayment for perscriptions i9s usually cheaper for anyone getting more than 1.5 items for month

lynzpower

Hello love

One thing I would suggest is, 60 a month for food for both of you? Cor blimey, Id love to know how. I do 100 a month for both of us, and it takes some serious planning, are you sure you are only spending this? If not this is likely to be where your "extra" money is going.

Aside from that, is there no way you could borrow the deposit, albeit temporarily, as you will be getting it back anyway? I know this is dfw and all, but we are talking a few weeks max of borrowing?

In_Search_Of_Me

Pressumably you get the old deposit back from this one when you move so it would be a temporary measure?

nadnad

lady_fuschia wrote:

Joint Monthly Income: £1560 (Although this varies as my OH is paid by the hour and works shifts)

Rent: £550
Council Tax: Currently £200 as we're paying off old debts, but will hopefully drop to £100 in July. so by July you can save this £100
Electricity: £65 (long story but not in a position to switch suppliers!)
Water: £25
Phone/Internet: £21
Food: £60
Travel: £200ish (variable, depending on whether OH works night shifts and has to take taxi home from work, which is about £10 a pop) can he pay someone a bit to leave him home? ie another work mate
Loan Repayment: £89
Old Storecard repayment: £60 (will be paid off end of June!) so this can be saved
TV License: £11
Regular doctor's prescription (warfarin and painkillers) £13

basically in June you'll have £60 which you can save and by July another £100 - i take it that the deposit would be a months rent. If you can save that £160 then you'll have your £500 in a little over 3 months.

chevalier

Hi there
You have not included any payments for contents insurance, do you not have any?
If you really need to see new films, then how about signing up to some of the free dvd trials that are on the web? You get x number of dvd's free and then cancel the subsciption.
Also do you not have mobile phones? I didn't notice this on your list.
Do you have sky? If so could you cut back there?

Definitely seems that a spending diary might be a plan if DH is not all that committed, maybe he has some debt to hide?
Best of luck

lady_fuschia

Thanks for all these suggestions everyone. I've had a little bit of a forward-move this weekend- I wrote down our SOA (as known) and showed it to my OH, pointing out the amount of "missing" money, and he readily admitted that probably a lot of it is down to him and confessed that once a note was broken he was liable not to see the change as "real" money- apparently a fair bit goes into fruit machines which was something I didn't know. Although he's still not keen on the spending diary (he says he'll forget, or not have time) we've reached a compromise with a special envelope for receipts (unfortunately fruit machines and tobacconists don't give receipts but its a step in the right direction!)
Yeh £60 a month is pretty much what we spend, sometimes less in fact- we don't eat meat, fish or processed stuff so that helps, and buy our veg at the market- I will be monitoring the receipts more closely though, I can't see many ways of cutting down in that area without us going hungry unfortunately!
No we don't have contents insurance! I know this is really bad, but we made a concious decision that we couldn't afford it when we moved in. We don't have sky or digital (can't pick it up where we live anyway!. I have a mobile that gets topped up with about £5 a few times a year, but its only really for emergency use, so I didn't count it- maybe I should have.
I'll definetely look into the free DVD trials- can you recommend any sites?
I suppose borrowing the deposit could be a solution, but obviously, as I constantly feel like we're living on the very edge of our income the other advice is perhaps more helpful from a long term point of view. My OH has sworn to me he has no more debt to hide- the store card debt was one of his from before we met that I didn't find out about until relatively recently. Personally I'm almost allergic to credit cards of any description, I find being in any form of debt unbearably stressful- sorry this is more of a vent than anything else! Thanks for the advice everyone!!