Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

This months phone bill from BT arrived today and it was ridiculous - not the cost of calls but the charges for everything else! We've worked out that if we switch to Sky for phone and broadband it'll cost us £100 to break our contract with BT but we'll save £150 over the next five months (our contract was due to end in July), so we've dipped in to the savings and switched provider.

jwil

That's annoying about the feedback. You could always contact ebay and ask them to remove it. If you just reply though, most people will realise you had a numpty.

If you don't want to call ebay, definitely use the 'report a buyer' button. If they do it for enough people, then that can trigger automatic removal of their feedback - there was a thread on the ebay board recently where someone had all their negs/neutrals removed as they were leaving too many.

Well done on switching the phone though! That's a huge amount of savings, even taking into account the penalty!

White_Iris

Phew, well we survived half-term, a bit worse for wear in terms of money but we enjoyed ourselves and had a few meals out so I'm not too bothered.

We've also had some good news about our house, we got an estate agent to do an informal valuation and they think it's worth about £20k more than we thought! I think they were valuing it a bit high but even if it's only £10k more it means we finally have some equity. Even better news is that our tenants have asked if we would sell to them - yes please! They are getting some agents to do a proper valuation and then we can agree a price. Hopefully they want to pay/can afford to pay a decent price for it, it's very early days and it might all come to nothing but fingers crossed. :j

I've had a very domestic morning - washing on the line (yes, it's finally dry and sunny!), paperwork filed away, toys organised, house tidied, now a cuppa and some TV until it's time to collect the children.

debtfreewannabe321

Fantastic news on the house :T Sounds like things are falling into place nicely!

We also overspent on the half term activities but we visited family, did soft play, had a meal out and a take away and one cinema trip so i'm trying to forget about the over spend because the kids were kept happy

I've had the washing on the line 2 days in a row now :T I hope it continues

White_Iris

Just heard from our tenants and they've offered £20k less than we would hope to sell it for and even if we went for a break-even sale price they'd need to increase their offer by £10k. Disappointing but if they can't up their offer we can't sell it.

White_Iris

Well I knew it had been a while since I posted but it's been nearly two weeks! It hasn't been intentional, just life getting in the way.

We've now successfully switched phone and broadband providers and our final bill from BT was about £30 less than we were expecting, which is good. The combined bill for TV, broadband and phone from Sky will vary a bit over the next few months but once that has stabilised we should see a saving of at least £20 a month.

We've been thinking long and hard about it and DH and I have decided to buy a new car and I do mean brand new! :eek: We recently went down to one car, with DH cycling to work most days, so we've already saved some money but our remaining car, although only 8 years old has done nearly 130k miles and is a large engine diesel - perfect for when we were commuting long distances but rubbish fuel economy for short trips around town. So we've done the maths, set a budget, compared used and new cars and thought about it A LOT! The car we're getting is very fuel efficient, £30 a year road tax and (most importantly) will be a safe, reliable car that fits our budget. It's quite exciting, now I've got over the initial fear of spending money, as we've never had a new car before.

jwil

Great news about the car, fab about £30 road tax too!

debtfreewannabe321

Oooh I've never had a new car either, how exciting, have fun shopping for it and don't be afraid to barter xx

White_Iris

As expected the car dealership phoned us back, a few days ago with an even better offer on the car finance so we're going in to sign the paperwork on Saturday. The more I think about it, the more I'm certain it's the right thing to do. We'll have an economical, reliable car for the same money each month as we're currently saving for repairs, tax, AA cover etc. on our old car. We currently have enough saved in our car "pot" to buy a servicing and breakdown cover package for the next two years, so the only thing we'll have to pay for is insurance.

In other news, our tenants have upped their offer to buy our house by ten thousand but that still only puts us at break-even money were we to sell at that price. It's tempting to get rid of it, even if we only end up with a few hundred pounds (we have no love for the house or the village it stands in and it would be nice to cut all ties to that area) but if we do that, we have no equity to buy the forever house. Ideally we want another £10k but if they can meet us in the middle and increase their offer by £5k then I think we'd take it but I doubt if they can/will do so.

debtfreewannabe321

Never say never on the money being upped for the old house! They've already upped their offer by 10k....I reckon they were trying their luck stand firm on what you want as don't forget you will have costs as well as them. I reckon in a few more weeks they might up it again (fingers crossed for you!)

What colour is your new car then? That's all i'm ever interested in i'd like a green or white one next I think as i've had every other colour but those