Noob (to the forum and moving out) questions!

BannedBiker_2

Hi all,

Need some advice.

My fiancee and I currently live with our respective parents. Due to family issues we're going to be moving in together (to rent) early next year, a bit earlier than we anticipated.

I've worked out what budget I can put into our home, My fiancee is a student and will only be able to put a very small amount into our joint budget for the first few months, giving us a pretty small budget to start out on.

The trouble is I have no idea what I'm doing! I know what we've got to spend, but not exactly what it's got to cover.
One thing that would be benificial is a comprehensive list of household costs. What I can think of is:
Rent
Council Tax
Food
Water (and sewerage)
Electricity
Gas
Contents insurance
TV Licence
Phone/Broadband
Is that all?! Transport costs will be covered individually.

What I'm finding really hard, is how to work out if I can afford a place. Short of calculating the cost of living in every place that comes up in my search on rightmove or whatever website I'm on I dont know how to do it!
I dont know how much rent I can afford, as I dont know how much the bills for that property will cost me!
None of the websites seem to have a search criteria for inclusive bills, so I cant search for places that cover the main bills for say 80% of our budget.

Is my only option to wonder into a letting agent and trust them to help me out?!

Thanks in advance

BitterAndTwisted

BannedBiker wrote: »

Rent
Council Tax: Depends on the Local Authority and the size of the property. Mine is £100 a month
Food: £100 a month if you follow this: http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk. Double it if you don't.
Water (and sewerage) Mine is £7 a week unmetered.
Electricity £35 a month
Gas £100 a month in winter
Contents insurance: God knows
TV Licence: £12 a month
Phone/Broadband: Mine is £25 a month b/b, mobile is about the same.
Is that all?! Transport costs will be covered individually.

If you can't get the numbers to work budgeting for a self-contained one-bed flat perhaps you could look into renting a room in a shared property. Some of them are inclusive of utility bills.


Beware of over-committing yourselves with no savings safety-net!

Cookie1988

Hiya, something you may not of thought about.

1. Depending on your landlord you will need to put a deposit down of usually one and a half months rent in advance as deposit and then one months rent on top of that (a big hefty bill!)
2. You will have to pay estate agent fee if you go through one for a flat/house to rent. I had to pay £250 and then had to pay £80 6months later when i got the choice to move from 6monthly to monthly.

Your list looks pretty complete, i live in West Sussex and am renting a property for £650 a month with my partner. We end up going through around £1200 a month on all of our bills combined. This does include heating but most of the time we do not use heating as we cannot afford it !

Hope this helps somewhat!