My SOA

black-saturn

Your outgoings don't actually seem that bad but I have a couple of pointers for you:

Mortgage - £462
Council Tax - £96
Gas - £20
Electric - £31.50 - Plan what your going to watch on TV and only have it on when theres something on you want to see. The rest of the time read or listen to music. Have candlelight in the evenings. Measure out the water you need to boil for drinks so your not boiling more than you need.
TV License - £21 - 2 licences?
Internet -£29.00
Phone - £15.00 - This is good but do you need a mobile too?
Food - £200 - This is high for 2 people. I will give you 2 useful links at the end of this post.
Car Insurance - £56 - Do you really need a car?
House Insurance - £50
Petrol - £50 - Do you really need a car?
Life Insurance - £20
Patner's Mobile - £35 - Do you really need a mobile?
Water Rates - £14
Contact Lenses - £13
Cinema Pass - £11
Gym - £31 - Take a brisk walk or go swimming instead.

Also have you thought about selling some stuff on ebay? A quick sort out round the house will make you lots of money. It's amazing how much you can get from dvds you never watch anymore, cds you never listen to anymore, clothes you never wear anymore, books you never read anymore etc etc. It's possible you could clear your Provident Loan (which IMO you should pay off first) with just 1 or 2 weekends work on ebay.

Also £200 is a lot for food just for 2 people. Theres 3 of us here and I spend £42 per month on food.

Heres links to my menu planners:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=2340412&posted=1#post2340412

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=157526&highlight=black-saturns+menu

scottishspendaholic

Hello,

Welcome to DFW - great to see you here.

I have just cancelled a direct debit to Specsavers for £13 a month - I know it doesn't sound a lot but I have just ordered contacts from https://www.getlenses.com for £53 for 6 months - a saving of £4.67 a month for exactly the same lenses.

Every little helps!

Good luck with following all the advice above. Why not join the DFW Grocery Challenge this month to help with food costs?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=229933

scottishspendaholic x

justanothermuppet_2

Thank you for the welcomes, and the good advice so far.

Since a lot of people have picked up on the TV licence...it's because we've only recently started paying for it by direct debit and you have to pay double for 6 months apparently. It then drops down to the usual amount and if you cancel your DD then you've still got 6 months left on your licence.

The food shopping, I guess I should have really put that down as Supermarket shopping because it does include all our toiletries & cleaning products too. I'll have a look at some of these cheaper shops though, maybe I can save quite a bit!

Unfortunately my OH is very picky about his contact lenses, but I'll definitely suggest it to him to swap, I think a saving of about £55 per year might persuade him

I'm going to start a spending diary, as you've suggested, and hopefully I'll be able to see where the money is going to. I also join the DFW Grocery Challenge and try to sell some stuff on eBay.

Thank you for the ideas!

Is it possible to transfer some of that debt onto zero % or low interest credit cards ?

Unfortunately our credit rating is quite bad, we got the loan to consolidate our credit card debts because we couldn't cope with the minimum payments each month. I know our wages seem quite good but up until a while ago, our combined income was only £1400. Things really have improved since then (passing through the bad period when all the credit cards were maxed out )