First-Time Buyer, Mortgage free desires

philhews

So I've just done what was my last grocery shop of the month, and considering I only really started thinking about cutting back what I spend about a week into May and then revised my budget down to £150 from £200 I wasn't expecting to come in under that at the first attempt. However I spent £22.24 which puts the month total at £149.24 !

What to spend that extra 76p on?!

I think I could get it down lower, but will probably keep that as a budget and think about another cut in a couple of months. Should be a cheap petrol week coming up too thanks to the bank holiday and probably working from home on Wednesday.

CathT

Well done on the grocery budget, that's a great saving.

philhews

Thanks Cath, the £200 'budget' before was more of a guide than anything else and never aimed at as a maximum, tended to vary between £170 and £240 per month so I'm really pleased that I've managed to get it down so quickly with so little apparent affect on my quality of eating.

philhews

So not a particularly money saving weekend so far. I haven't spent anything but I haven't done anything in particular to save any either.

I've been running some numbers to see what I could overpay by once I've built up my savings. Discounting anything that might be left over at the end of the month that would go for normal savings I currently have £15 going to emergency fund, this will rise by £80 when I get my payrise in July, another £5 when I change my electricity direct debit from £25 to £20, I'm not going to renew my income protection insurance in October as my job is now secure and I have long term/critical illness cover anyway which is £36.

So just in savings made to my current outgoings and increased income that gives me £136 a month which would knock 88 months!! off my mortgage apparently. Wow. :j

Obviously that presumes I start that paying now, which I won't, but even so, that's a big difference.


Anyway, having surprised myself with those numbers the rest of the weekend has involved tending my veg patch/garden. Have lifted my first potatoes which are delightful, the first strawberry of the year has been had and my chard is now growing to a usable size. Everything else is really getting going now so fingers crossed for less wind and more sun and I could be eating fresh home-grown veg all summer and autumn with frozen surplus for the winter

I've half designed some big drawers to go under my stairs for some much needed storage, I can't block the whole bit off and have a cupboard as my TV is under there so it's a little more tricky, but no-one seems to make things suitable so I'll be attempting that in the next 6-8 weeks I guess.

That's about it I think, which is good as I appear to have written an essay!! Enjoy the extra day off people.

LilB_3

**Deleted**

philhews

Well bits here and there keep dribbling into the savings pot, any permanent savings that are made every month get added to the direct debit and on each Friday I round my current account down with the payment going to savings, so at least it's ticking along.

First grocery shop of the month yesterday which was £26 so not great, but that did include cutters so I can make scones, so it wasn't entirely food based spending.

The next couple of weeks are going to be tough on the petrol front, both of them are 5 days driving to work so no opportunity to save anything. This will be my first real month of trying to cut back my spending so it'll be interesting to see what I manage and what the state of my bank account is at the end of it!

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Good luck to you! it is amazing how much you save just by being aware of all the samll things.

Squirrel

LittleMissAspie

philhews wrote: »

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 1
Number of children in household.........
Number of cars owned.................... 2

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1493
Partners monthly income after tax....... 0
Benefits................................ 0
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 1493

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 508
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 80
Electricity............................. 25 your gas and elec is a bit high for one person, investigate changing suppliers or tariff and try to keep your usage down
Gas..................................... 30
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 20
Telephone (land line)................... 14
Mobile phone............................ 36
TV Licence.............................. 12
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 21.5 do you really want this? how much use do you get out of it?
Internet Services....................... 7.5
Groceries etc. ......................... 150 high for one person though I see you eat a lot of fruit and veg which is good. Try going down a brand or going to the supermarket at the end of the day when they reduce stuff.
Clothing................................ 10
Petrol/diesel........................... 150 ouch! Can you get a more efficient car, or work from home, or do anything to reduce this?
Road tax................................ 13
Car Insurance........................... 56 as above, get a cheaper car for your daily?
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 13 is this enough for 2 cars?
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 25 if you have multiple prescriptions you can get a prepay thing that will save you money.
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 28 assume this includes contents as well. Bit high, shop around when you renew.
Contents insurance...................... 0
Life assurance ......................... 13 if you are single with no children do you need this?
Other insurance......................... 48 what's this for?
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 15
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 50 low, is this what you actually spend?
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1325

Hope that helps a bit.

We bought a couple of weeks before you, borrowed slightly more and as you can see we've paid off 5% of the capital already. Obviously we have two incomes but still, the earlier you overpay the more benefit it has.

We have a regular amount in our budget for housey things, plus a regular amount for overpayments. The latter started off as a regular amount for emergency fund. Now there is 3k in the emergency fund so it's turned into an overpayment. We also rounded up our regular monthly payment to just over what we'd been paying in rent.

It means we have to wait and save before we can decorate the house but I'd rather do that and get the mortgage down quicker.

(I'm quite jealous of your vegetable patch, it sounds great).

philhews

Hi LMA, thanks for the comments on my SOA, I'll try and answer what you've asked.

The gas and electric is just the direct debits that were set up when I moved in. It appears the electric should be about £15 based on usage so I'll try to get that changed, probably not to that low, but less than current. The gas is also slightly high I think, but during the very cold months I had no neighbour so my end terrace was losing a lot of heat as it has no cavity insulation.

My house is in a place where I get no freeview signal, I think about 3 channels work if the weather is good! So sky is pretty much necessary if I want to watch TV, which I do.

My food bill used to be around £200 on average, last month I managed £150 and I'm hoping I'll get it down to £130ish this month, mainly by trying the things you have suggested.

I do work from home occasionally, the car I commute in gets me between 45 and 50 miles to the gallon, I'll only get much higher than that with a very new car which I can't afford, and I need the size car I have (Focus) for lumping large things around which happens reasonably often.

The car insurance is for two cars, and I'm not going to be able to get much cheaper insurance without seriously downgrading the size of car, and even if I wanted to do that I can't afford to buy one.

The maintenance figure is fine as it covers two MOTs and I fix anything myself and service them myself so costs are a minimum.

The medical covers dentist checkup costs and contact lenses costs (contacts are £22 a month, I may look at if I could get this cheaper but it does include sight checks and any aftercare I need due to problems).

I think I can get building/contents down to about £20 on renewal.

Life insurance is part of critical illness insurance, this, along with any other insurances will be reviewed on renewal to determine if I need them. The 'Other Insurance' is long term illness and redundancy cover. Redundancy will not be renewed as my job is now secure.

My entertainment costs had been going up over the previous months so I wanted to set myself a figure that I thought was reasonable. My hobbies don't cost me anything much, it's mainly down to how many times I go to the pub after playing tennis.


Having an extra salary would certainly make it a lot easier to save/overpay, however that's not going to happen anytime soon for me.

The veg patch is hard work and has yet to produce much other than salad stuff, but once things start producing it'll be really good I think.

Lois_E

philhews wrote: »

My house is in a place where I get no freeview signal, I think about 3 channels work if the weather is good! So sky is pretty much necessary if I want to watch TV, which I do.

If you stop paying for it at the end of your current contract, you will still have the box and it will still get the free channels whether it has a valid card in it or not. Depends whether the channels you want to watch are the free ones, though.