dont know what to do,

angelavdavis

Welcome to the forum. As already mentioned, there are lots of people who will come along and offer their help. My suggestions:

Have a look at www.entitledto.co.uk and see if you are entitled to any more benefits. I'm no expert, but suspect you might be entitled to housing benefit at least.

Check your van insurance rate through Uswitch.com - £780 is very high.

Freeview should be free - you are paying £104 a year for this!

£20 per week feeding the animals - can this be reduced? I am sure Old Style forum members who keep animals should be able to help here - post a message to find out ways they feed their animals cheaper. I think chickens live on leftovers in Old Style houses!

£260 per year for horse insurance sounds high too - check out other insurance companies.

£280+£40=£320 on food and household could definitely be cut down. As dawn2dusk mentions, check out the Old Style forum - its for you!!! It will help you make more of your groceries and also eek out more from expensive items like washing powder.

I think trying to grow your own veg and fruit will definitely be the answer - I didn't buy any veg for months last summer - it fed 4 adults - and I only have a small veg patch, so starting now will be a help (again, Old style forum will be able to help on this). With all the animals you're certainly not sure of manure to use to grow the best veg's!!!
You may even be able to sell some at local fairs if you produce well.

You mention car tax - is that van tax or do you have a car too?

Bad news is that you haven't included Council Tax.

Hang on in there! It WILL get better!:grouphug:

I_was_a_fool

Your income does seem too low, definately double check you are getting all the benefits you are entitled to. Also look at doing on-line surveys such as lightspeed, look at pigsback, quidco etc.

findingmyownway

Is there a reason why you or your husband (or both!) don't have a job? There's no mention of DLA or anything so i assume you are both fit and able to work...

laikadog

sorry taken so long to reply,
thanks for all the ideas so far :T
will look into lowerin the horse insurance, she was valued at £3000. so i will see if i can half it. wasnt supposed to have her at the momment anyway as she was out on loan but got colic and was dumped back on me :rolleyes:
the van isurance is so high cos we had classic car insurance for 3 years for our old landrovers (that were tax exempt :T ) which doesnt count in no claims bonus(the never told us that !!!) so lost our 6 yrs no claims as its over 2 yrs ago !!! but we are having to change van anyway to something cheaper if we can scrape the cash to get something !!! have 2 weeks to do it !
we are sorting a plot to grow veggies on our land, but our co-op does good reductions on veg so i get plenty of bargains at the mo.
the chickens are staring to lay again too, they get all our food scraps plus waste veg from the big grocer/butcher(the dogs get raw bones from there 2)
husband is a tattoist and we were wanting to start up in business but have ended up with no money thanks to 2 cars dying that cost us a fortune.
anyway i could prattle on for hours about how we ended up like this, but im off to read up on the old style forum bit for some tips and we aregoing to go through all our money stuff and work out what to get rid of etc,
so thanks for all the help, i feel a bit more possitive , just hope i can sort the rent out and not loose the house

southernscouser

Hi laikadog.

OK now this doesn't mean to sound harsh so don't take it that way.

Whats more important to you? Your health, your kids health and your animals, or the tobacco? I won't pretend to know what it's like to give it up coz I don't. But you said you don't want to lose your home. Sounds like good motivation to me let alone the positive effects it will have on your family's health.

And I'm sure you can get help from your GP. And do a search coz there is a giving up smoking support thread on here.

Also if you gave up smoking that would effectively give you free electricity every month with the money you'd save!