Newbie - take a look at my SOA, please :)

Elinore

Hi my name is Elinore,

I am 37 as is my partner. We have been together for 10 years. sadly we have had some set back so we are not where we expected to be at this late stage in our careers/lives

For example we did not get married or buy a house as we never had the funds…. we need to change and I wondered if you could look over our SOA and give some advice.

We have an income of £2600 per calendar month.

Our outgoings are

£850 rent PCM (competitive)
£16 house ins PCM
£342 loan (covers both cars - sadly both essential as we now have long commutes to other offices, was that or redundancy!) PCM
£880 car ins yearly (cheapest available)
£150 car tax yearly
£660 fuel PCM
£270 food/ animals / cleaning (inherited 3 wonderful cats and a lovely small dog from a very ill relative)
£70 Gas (old draughty house LL wont do anything about)
£70 electric
CT £120
Water £26 (we were undercharged last year, so have upped) no chance of water meter LL will not allow.
£8 phone not used - only so we can have BB
£20 BB (needs to be super fast for job)
£60 for both mobile phones.
12 TV licence

We have about £600 on the CC (I have a year end bonus of £600 due today (yay!) which will clear this)

We have no savings.

Can you see where we can cut corners as we are just getting by month to month.

lvm

What's the APR on the car loans and how long til finished? Can you trade in for more economical cars? £660 a month on fuel is extortionate even for a long commute.

Have you shopped around for Gas/Elec to see if there are any cheaper options? Do you have timers set so the house is only heating up when you get home from work and before you wake up in morning?

Do you need a Blackberry and a phone? Can you not just have the BB and use for personal use as well? That seems like a quick win.

How much of the £270 is spent on your pets? 2 people could live comfortably on £100 a month but even £150 would be a bit of a saving (depending on how much the pets cost).

Although you say the rent is competitive...have you looked around? Can I assume you live in London? If not, it seems a bit high and with your current costs, you spend £10 more per month that you bring in (including the annual costs). Would you consider moving close to where either you or your partner work so only 1 of you have the car costs?

NeverAgain_2

Have you given up on getting a mortgage?

It's bordering on a crime to enrich a landlord by £850 a month, particularly as you have to work hard for every penny.

Age is not quite yet against you, a lender should consider a 25-year mortgage for a 40-year-old, which you won't be for three years.

The fuel bill is ridiculous given that neither of you can be earning a massively high salary.

it would probably pay you to resign the lowest paid/farthest away job and find something closer to home.

Sorry, got that the wrong way round, find the closer to home job first, then chuck the other one.

Tixy

I would consider completing the full statement of affairs on this calculator http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html
Your costs at the moment work out to just over your salary. And I would guess that there are costs that you have omitted. Eg if you are using £660 in fuel each month thats a heck of a lot of miles. So presumably you need to budget for servicing, new tryes, MOTs etc for your cars.
You also have nothing budgeted in areas such as clothes, medical & dentist, haircuts, presents, entertainment etc which I'm not sure is realistic.

If you are overspending slightly each month how are you funding this? do you have overdrafts? if so you need to include the cost of this in your SoA as well.

Your electric cost is horrendous. You should be able to more than halve this. Have you worked on reducing this? do you know what items are costing you so much to run? have you shopped around for better deals in terms of supplier and tariff? (eg online tariffs are usually quite a bit cheaper than the standard tariff).
Gas is also high - although I see this may in part be down to the property. But have a read on how you can cut these costs - things like draught excluders and draught tape for windows and door frames etc.

Why are your motor fuel bills so high - is this commuting? is it driving for work and if so is any of it re-imbursed to you? do you drive efficently and have you looked at the MSE article on saving up to a third on your fuel cost?

There should also be scope to reduce the £270 spent on groceries and pets. If you could start by working on reducing this to £200 that would free up a bit of money each month.

Have you looked recently to see if your broadband is still competitively priced. You might find cheaper with an all in deal so you don't pay for a phone line seperately. If you have to have the very fast speed for your work would your employer contribute to this? or the difference between a cheap connection and the one you have to have?

Can you work on increasing your income at all? better paid jobs? more hours? second jobs?

Marine_life

NeverAgain wrote: »

It's bordering on a crime to enrich a landlord by £850 a month, particularly as you have to work hard for every penny.

As opposed to enriching a bank with interest payments?

NeverAgain_2

...As opposed to enriching a bank with interest payments?...

At the moment the OP is doing both.

Despite the ups and downs of the property market, buying a house in the medium and longer term has always been a good investment.

You have to live somewhere, might as well get something out of it at the same time.

Renting could be justified if it were cheap, but for most people it is not.

The OP is paying £850 a month - enough to pay a large mortgage.