New recruit: First steps (advice appreciated)

BaconandEggs

Boiler service today - the penultimate preparation hopefully for staying warm this winter. Just waiting for the roofing to be done now.

Going to sort out a pile of paperwork that I've been putting off doing tonight and make some in-roads into doing this year's tax return.
I will save me faffing around near Christmas doing it and should also tell me if I've been putting enough away for this purpose.

I'm going to set myself a bit of a challenge in relation to use of petrol:
I've already said I'll be cycling in more, but in addition to that, I'm going to try and increase my fuel economy. I know that I am getting around 30mpg (not great). I will fill up this evening and see if I can increase that by changing my driving style and getting rid of some of the rubbish in the boot (there are some things I've fixed for friends in there that I keep forgetting to drop off).

BaconandEggs

Last night didn't go to plan. The boiler needed some work doing to it (although it didn't cost any more than the service price) but it took longer than expected and I didn't get chance to sort the paperwork. On to that tonight.

Have been driving economically (I hope) since filling up. MOT next week - so hopefully it will pass ok.

Once I've worked out how much the exact amount it for last years tax bill, I'll ring the mortgage company and ask them how much I can adjust my monthly OP's to ensure we OP by the maximum amount permissable this year (hopefully saving me the hassle of sorting this out in Spring next year and also saving a fair amount of interest.

I just got a text from O2 about the rugby breakfast offer. They say that they will contact me on Thursday to arrange delivery. Free pies and beer to go with the rugby then! Everything in moderation

Bufger

Your mortgage is far from large OP. You're pretty much the same age and have the same income as me and the wife and we have a little one and our mortgage is £820 per month and we manage to overpay £300-400.

When you have a little one you dont need £145 each month towards a holiday as its a nightmare taking a baby abroad. That offsets alot of the child costs (you miss out on a decent holiday for a few years but you wont mind as going to butlins is just as fun with a comical little'un!)

Whilst you dont have kids and you're both young pros get that overtime hammered in where possible, streamline all your bills by comparing constantly and get every penny into that mortgage, you could be mortgage free really quickly in your position if you had a couple of frugal years.

BaconandEggs

Thanks for posting Bufger, I really appreciate it.

I agree that our mortgage is not huge, and that our overpayments could be higher.

We are allowed to overpay 10% per year and the current overpayments we are making of £500 pm fall much shorter than this amount. We decided not to over pay 10%/12 each month for a few reasons. First, we have not long moved in and we have spent some money on making a few changes/improvements. Second, we wanted to build our emergency fund (which we have and we continue adding to it). Finally, we recently got married (very frugally mind you).

I am confident we will be able to overpay the full 10% this year - as per my plan in the previous post.

What you say makes sense and if we were to apply ourselves fully we could potentially overpay the amount allowed next year and still have money to save and make a large payment at the end of our fixed term. Again, I agree about the holiday money budgeting - a luxury and something that is overestimated in the SOA (we certainly won't be spending that this year). It was budgeted for as we have family abroad and that is the amount that it would cost to visit. On top of what you mentioned - there are plans for a family and there will be a reduction in money coming in when that happens.

I know I could get more overtime (I need to check if the SOA includes our overtime) but I'm a bit wary of getting the right balance. I could get the overtime such that I was working 7 days. I've just finished a period of working nearly 7 days a week and doing a course - and there is only so long you can do it before you need a rest. I'm currently doing about 6 days a week and appreciate the day off! I think what I will do is work out how much we could overpay (and how much we would reduce the term by) if I did no overtime versus MAX overtime and see where on that scale we should be aiming for based on how much downtime we need.

Apart from maximising income in this way, and money on the holiday side of things, can you see any other areas we might be able to save? Apart from on household bills, pertol and food we sometimes go weeks without spending any money and I am struggling to find areas that we could save on - so any help is welcome.

BaconandEggs

My earning on our SOA do not include overtime. With overtime it comes to 2400/month. I think you're right - there is the potential here to blitz this. As I say - I'd appreciate any suggestions about how to minimise our outgoings - have you an SOA on any threads that we could look at and see where we might be able to cut back?

Courgette

if you google 'makesenseofcards' there's a template for an SOA on there. You can fill that out then post on here and we'll be able to suggest some cut-backs I'm sure

Good luck!

BaconandEggs

Thank courgette. There is one on page one of this thread that I did a few months back and I am about to post some more upto date spending figures.

BaconandEggs

BaconandEggs wrote: »

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 0
Number of cars owned.................... 2

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 492
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 124
Electricity............................. 36 15
Gas..................................... 10 15 Gas and Electric DD changed to 30 pm at request of provider
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 36
Telephone (land line)................... 15
Mobile phone............................ 30 22.5 By changing from O2 to giffgaff
TV Licence.............................. 12.2
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 9.99
Groceries etc. ......................... 200
Clothing................................ 25 20 we don't even spend £20pm on this really.
Petrol/diesel........................... 100
Road tax................................ 23.83
Car Insurance........................... 63.75
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 30
Car parking............................. 5.12
Other travel............................ 50
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 24
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 18.82
Contents insurance...................... 10.53
Life assurance ......................... 70
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 41.66 25 This should be doable (200 on others (largish family) and 50 on each other)
Haircuts................................ 23
Entertainment........................... 70 50 We are currenly spending closer to 40
Holiday................................. 145.83 100 Previous figure was excessive and no plans to go away any time soon
Emergency fund.......................... 20
Total monthly expenses.................. 1449.23 (STILL SEEMS ALOT!)

I've had another look at the SOA and the orange changes are things that I believe that we can implement before the end of the year.

I will go through each on over the next few days to see if this is realistic (it should be as that monthly expenses total comes to over 17K per year and I find it frightening that I would need to year 22K gross to accommodate that).

That figure is also interesting as it would theoretically mean a potential amount of 2k per month that could be overpaid (I don't see how that can be right - will need to double check all this when I've got a bit more time I think). I'm not going to get carried away and start predicting what this might mean in terms of potential mortgage balances at the end of our fix as this may not be accurate and as I mentioned earlier - alot of it depends on jobs etc. in future. It just doesn't feel right making such forecasts (but it's tempting).

I'd rather focus on optimising what we're earning and spending now - on a monthly basis. The rest will follow.

Bufger

BaconandEggs wrote: »

Apart from maximising income in this way, and money on the holiday side of things, can you see any other areas we might be able to save? Apart from on household bills, pertol and food we sometimes go weeks without spending any money and I am struggling to find areas that we could save on - so any help is welcome.

To be completely honest you look fairly streamlined to me. You can consider extra income in the form of mystery shopping or selling crafts - find something you both enjoy doing together and try to make a few bucks from it. With mystery shopping you effectively get a meal out for free so i use that as my treat whilst getting paid for it.

Just make sure you put a value on your time. I'm paid X per hour at work and get time and 1/3 for overtime so thats how much i value my hours after work. If i want to earn extra it has to come at a benefit to me. I work a weekend a month at a paintball field which completely offsets the cost for paintballing once per month for me (my hobby) and leaves me £20 + for a treat that weekend after work (usually beer) - see if you can make anything cost neutral in a similar way.

Bufger

BaconandEggs wrote: »

My earning on our SOA do not include overtime. With overtime it comes to 2400/month. I think you're right - there is the potential here to blitz this. As I say - I'd appreciate any suggestions about how to minimise our outgoings - have you an SOA on any threads that we could look at and see where we might be able to cut back?

My SOA is about 2 years old now! i'll do a new one later and send you the link.