FRUGAL LIVING CHALLENGE part 3, July - Dec 2010

pink_numbers

I was wondering if you lovely ladies and gents could help us. I know how skilled you all are at cutting cost down, and so I would be very grateful if you could cast your eyes on our budget and see if there's any room for further cuts. We've tried to tighten things down as much as we can, but I know there's always room for cuts!

So here is our annual budget - it's for 2 adults and 2 elderly cats, living in a 2 bedroom mid-terraced Victorian house. The numbers are per month, and numbers in brackets are the annual cost:

Mortgage - £150 (1800)
Council Tax - £88 (1056)
House Insurance - £31 (372)
Water - £15 (180)
Gas & electricity - £50 (600)
Mortgage insurance - £10 (120)
Food - £100 (1200)
Pocket money - £50 (£600)
Pet insurance - £26 (312)
Pet Savings (food & medical bills) - £50 (£600)
OH's life insurance - £5 (60)
BT & broadband - £40 (480)
Mobile (me) - £20 (240)
Mobile (OH) - £30 (360)
OH's contact lenses - £10 (120)
Car insurance - £45 (540)
RAC - £10 (120)
Cleaning & toiletry ingredients - (50)
Kitchen garden - (200)
Craft - (100)

Annual cost: £9110 :eek:

Things we do already to try and cut cost:

• grow some of our vegetables (north facing garden though)
• Make all our toiletry and cleaning products ourselves
• Gifts are always handmade gifts
• Line all windows with fleece & foil lined curtains
• Forage and make all our jams
• Buy cheapest cuts of meat
• Eat only little of that meat by eeking it out with veg and lentils
• Cook/bake almost everything from scratch (love baking bread )
• Walk whenever possible
• Limit the amount of 'disposable' product we buy to as little as possible
• batch cook
• menu plan (sort of)
• buy food in bulk then freeze
• Pay BT line rental 1 year upfront to save £30

I would really appreciate any suggestions on how we could cut cost further.

Thank you for your time in advance

(Actually, just making the list of outgoings have made me question about the contact lens costs, my mobile cost and OH's life insurance - that's £360 cut already! Now I just have to convince OH to give up contact lenses - not so easy)

cw18

pink_numbers wrote: »

Mortgage - £150 (1800)

not a lot you can do without paying it off or remortgaging to a better deal - and the latter would cost you money you may not then save enough to cover

Council Tax - £88 (1056)

nothing you can do about this one, unless you can appeal and get rebanded

House Insurance - £31 (372)

shop around at renewal time - I paid £300 for a combined policy on a modern (8 year-old) 4-bed detached last year, but area of country comes into play, so no way we can easily tell whether yours is a good or bad buy

Water - £15 (180)

are you on a meter? without knowing this it's impossible to make suggestions on how to save here

Gas & electricity - £50 (600)

There are several threads around with ideas on how to save on these, but I'm not currently subscribed to any so dont have any links to offer you. Main points are to not leave things switched on when not in use, try turning heating down a touch, and ensure you have decent insulation/draught-proofing (including curtains on external doors, which is something I want to sort out for this winter as I've discovered it's quite draghty by my front door due to the window pane alongside it). A lot of people use fleece blankets behind curtains to help keep heat in rooms.

Mortgage insurance - £10 (120)

not sure what this is? if it's redundancy/illness protection, then only you can decide whether you need it or not (something I've never had). if it's life insurance then you need to keep it

Food - £100 (1200)

sounds about right to me, although others (Frugaldom) could/can do it a lot cheaper. I work on £1.70 per person per day, so £103.41pcm for 2 people - and this is only possible due to the amount I buy as Whoopsies.

Pocket money - £50 (£600)

again, this is a personal choice. does it include clothes/shoes (nothing in your budget for those)? if so, then probably not unreasonable.

Pet insurance - £26 (312)

another personal choice one - some people have, some don't.

Pet Savings (food & medical bills) - £50 (£600)

I assume the medical part is for routine jabs/flea treatment/worming given you have insurance. As to the food side, can you/have you tried cheaper makes for them (if you can - I can't with my dog as he needs a special diet, so I stock up when it's on offer)

OH's life insurance - £5 (60)

see my note under your 'has made me look at' comment

BT & broadband - £40 (480)

shop around - I pay just over half that, but I rarely make any calls - and those I do are normally made in the evening/at the weekend (meaning they're free) or to my daugther (same company and free at any time)

Mobile (me) - £20 (240)
Mobile (OH) - £30 (360)

contracts or PAYG? how essential are these? if contracts, how long to run before you can shop around? make sure you're on the best tariffs for your own personal use whichever type you have.

OH's contact lenses - £10 (120)

no idea, having never used

Car insurance - £45 (540)

not a lot you do other than shop around at renewal time (or look at changing to a car that's cheaper on the insurance/running costs - which would cost a lot up front so probably not worth it until it needs changing)

RAC - £10 (120)

another one worth shopping around for

Cleaning & toiletry ingredients - (50)

mine's almost 3 times that - and that's just for me. can you really manage on so little?

Kitchen garden - (200)

depends on what you need, but a good investment if you can get your own crops growing

Craft - (100)

assuming this is your hobby, then what about your OH? does he not have a hobby, or does he fund his from his pocket money? (only asking in case this should be part of the pocket money one, or you need to add on something else for him)

Annual cost: £9110 :eek:

As long as you have that much coming in, it doesn't strike me as unreasonable - especially given you're including your mortgage.

(Actually, just making the list of outgoings have made me question about the contact lens costs, my mobile cost and OH's life insurance - that's £360 cut already! Now I just have to convince OH to give up contact lenses - not so easy)

Sorry, but to me life insurance is essential - especially with a mortgage. Unless this isn't intended to clear the mortgage in the event of the unspeakable (ie. you have other plans in place to pay it, which I don't see in your budget), then I wouldn't cancel it without being 100% sure it's a terrible plan - and not until I replaced it with a better one.


And I don't see any budgets for road tax, petrol/diesel, servicing, MOT, or general car maintainance (new tyres, exhausts etc) - you should be including something for these as you own a car.

pink_numbers

Thank you SO much for taking your time out and helping me in such a detail! I really appreciate your view.

Mortgage - OH does put aside a lot more than this into savings account so that he can pay off his half in 5 years (I've already paid my half off). This is just the minimum payment per month. OH throws almost all the money he gets into paying off his debts at the moment.

Council tax - Our house is band A, so you are right, nothing I can do. But I do try to maximise my use of this money by going to the library lots!

house insurance - Thank you for telling me how much you pay for yours, it's so useful to get a ball park figure.

Water - no we're not on a meter - I was concerned that if we come to sell the house, it might put buyers off? or is that just an urban legend?

Heating - I highly recommend the fleece blankets behind curtains. What works even better is fleece-emergency foil blanket-curtain combination! The curtain is always warm to the touch when you do this.

Mortgage insurance - yes it's redundancy/illness protection while OH is paying the mortgage. He wants the protection in this uncertain times, and I don't think I would be able to budge him on that.

Food:

cw18 wrote: »

sounds about right to me, although others (Frugaldom) could/can do it a lot cheaper. I work on £1.70 per person per day, so £103.41pcm for 2 people - and this is only possible due to the amount I buy as Whoopsies.

I admire all those people that do so well but spend little money on food!

Pocket money - yes this includes clothes, shoes (although can't remember the last time we bought any), going out (rare), books (library mostly), anything that isn't budgeted for.

Pet costs - I've been umming and erring about pet insurance, some of my friends say it's not worth it if you have older cats. I'm really not sure what to do about this one. I would love to hear opinions on either for or against pet insurance. I do have a large emergency fund that I can fall back on on er, emergencies
I wait till the cats' dry food goes on half price and buy a year's worth. I wait for their wet food to go on sale also, although it's never as good as half price!

Mobile phones - you're right, I really must go on to PAYG. I will do as soon as the contract runs out (end of this year). OH has just reduced his by £5/month and he's able to reduce it again by £5 in January, but he does need a contract phone for work.

Car - we want to move onto something like a toyota yaris which will be cheaper to run all round. But as you say, not worth it until it needs changing, so I've just been saving up the cost of buying the car until it's needed.

cw18 wrote: »

mine's almost 3 times that - and that's just for me. can you really manage on so little?

Toiletries & cleaning - it's normally £100 per year, which does cover us for everything - we really don't use that much. Soap (home made), bicarb, vinegar, olive oil, bees wax, washing soda - that's pretty much all we need. However, I do have a large stock of them at the moment, so we will probably only need to top up by £50 for the next 12 months.

Garden - yes, we've just started to grow our own crops, and it has been such a great experience. I think it's worth the money to a) get great quality food, and b) to have something to do that is very relaxing.

cw18 wrote: »

assuming this is your hobby, then what about your OH? does he not have a hobby, or does he fund his from his pocket money? (only asking in case this should be part of the pocket money one, or you need to add on something else for him)

His current hobby is tackling his debt He's done really well and he's nearly at the end of dealing with consumer debt. His main (real) hobby is reading, which is easily covered by going to the library.

cw18 wrote: »

As long as you have that much coming in, it doesn't strike me as unreasonable - especially given you're including your mortgage.

Thank you - it's great to know that we're not living unreasonably. We do have more than that coming in, but as I said, every penny he earns goes onto his debt and I save every penny I get to build a future for us.

cw18 wrote: »

Sorry, but to me life insurance is essential - especially with a mortgage. Unless this isn't intended to clear the mortgage in the event of the unspeakable (ie. you have other plans in place to pay it, which I don't see in your budget), then I wouldn't cancel it without being 100% sure it's a terrible plan - and not until I replaced it with a better one.

I do have other plans if the unspeakable happens already that is set in place (i.e. doesn't need to be budgeted now). However, I do see your point. I also respect that OH wants to have this.
You're probably wondering "well if you can pay off the mortgage now, why don't you?" - simply, OH would like to pay his own half of the mortgage. I respect this, and so I support him in other ways (by cutting down on out goings so that he has more money to throw at the mortgage) and he knows that I am more than happy to step in if he runs into any troubles.

cw18 wrote: »

And I don't see any budgets for road tax, petrol/diesel, servicing, MOT, or general car maintainance (new tyres, exhausts etc) - you should be including something for these as you own a car.

OH MY GOODNESS! How on earth did I miss that!!:eek: Thank you so much for pointing that out, I will go and fix it now - it's a good thing you were here!

Again, thank you SO much for taking the time out and giving me so many good advice. It's so nice to be able to receive objective help without being judged (which I would worry about if I tried to discuss money issues with friends). I'll take your advice on board and discuss it with my dear OH

cw18

pink_numbers wrote: »

Again, thank you SO much for taking the time out and giving me so many good advice. It's so nice to be able to receive objective help without being judged (which I would worry about if I tried to discuss money issues with friends). I'll take your advice on board and discuss it with my dear OH

You're welcome

And it sounds like you've had a good think about most of your budget areas already, so I'd take it slowly tackling one area at a time (like your mobiles)

With regards to water meters, the general rule of thumb seems to be that if the household occupancy is less than the number of bedrooms, then it's worth being on a meter. Not sure about when occupancy=number of bedrooms (as in your case) though.

My parents have *finally* changed over to a meter (my Dad was resisting) as there's only 2 of them in a 4-bed - and my Mum says it's saving them a fortune. I didn't have a choice as my property came with a meter (new build), but I'm currently paying £14.16/month as I was slightly in credit on the latest bill. But my useage has almost halved since DS2 moved out at the start of last month (meter was increasing by about 0.7/week, now by about 0.43/week), so I expect to see a bigger credit - and hopefully lower monthly payment - when the next one comes in the post

NualaBuala

Pink, your budget looks pretty good to me ... between you and Cheryl you seem to have it sorted! I used to wear contact lenses every day, and they were quite dear so I switched brands to Daysoft. They are good quality and a LOT cheaper than my old Accuvue ones. The optician checked and they are fine, better if anything than what I'd been using before. So depending what kind your OH is wearing, he might want to check them out. Here's a link to Martin's article on it although it might be out of date. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/Cheap-Contact-Lenses

pink_numbers

Thank you for the rule of thumb on water meter. I've vaguely heard about it, but never tried to apply it to our house. As you say, in our case, it is occupancy = number of bedrooms. However, I do have the veg patch to consider, which sometimes (only about a month this year) takes a bit of watering from the hose. Unfortunately, I don't have a DS that I could move out to reduce the water usage

I agree with you, just deal with things one at a time...

pink_numbers

oh brilliant, thank you for that infomation NualaBuala I know nothing about contact lenses (I just wear my glasses...) so it's great to have someone point me in the right direction. Obviously, it will be so much easier to negotiate with my OH if I know a little bit about contact lenses to begin with!

Thank you

NualaBuala

pink_numbers wrote: »

oh brilliant, thank you for that infomation NualaBuala I know nothing about contact lenses (I just wear my glasses...) so it's great to have someone point me in the right direction. Obviously, it will be so much easier to negotiate with my OH if I know a little bit about contact lenses to begin with!

Thank you

You're welcome! I was highly suspicious at first, convinced they must be inferior quality but they are definitely not (I have a wonderful optometrist and he thinks they're great too - but doesn't stock them regularly as they are sold direct from the Daysoft website) and I have saved a fortune ... all thanks to MSE! I seem to remember a thread on the Health and Beauty board about contacts and glasses too.

cw18

pink_numbers wrote: »

Thank you for the rule of thumb on water meter. I've vaguely heard about it, but never tried to apply it to our house. As you say, in our case, it is occupancy = number of bedrooms. However, I do have the veg patch to consider, which sometimes (only about a month this year) takes a bit of watering from the hose. Unfortunately, I don't have a DS that I could move out to reduce the water usage

I agree with you, just deal with things one at a time...

Anywhere you can install a water butt (or two)?

This is what I've done to save using metered water on the garden/crops - and it also stops any complaints about watering during a hosepipe ban (have heard whispers that - locally - one chap was reporting his neighbour for watering the lawn using a watering can..... and I have to agree that's more of a waste in my eyes than watering food plants with a hose as long as you don't over-do the latter)

pink_numbers

NualaBuala - I can understand your suspicion, you don't want to put anything dodgy in your eye do you? OH is just about recovering from an eye infection, which meant that he's been wearing glasses for a week. maybe this is a good time to talk to him about the lens cost?

cw18 - unfortunately, the way the pipes are done, plus the small surface area of only one side of the roof (front of the house is right on the pavement, and mid terrace), and limited space in the back yard (we have 80% of our small yard covered in square foot gardening beds!) means it's very impractical to have a water butt... I would've LOVED to have one, but I shall put the money away to buy them in the next house we buy, and I'm going to make sure it's 'water-butt-able' (does that sound rude or is it just me?)
I agree with you that watering the lawn is far bigger waste of water than watering vegetables. This year, we were fortunate that all through the hose pipe ban, it rained almost everyday here.