Nibbling away at Debt....

Mice_Elf

Hi everyone - thanks for the points raised.

The savings :

Yes, we could stop these to pay other stuff.... I guess we both like the knowledge that in the event of an emergency we have funds to use, as opposed to being absolutely skint and needing to....repair the boiler, maintain / tax a car etc.

The cars :

It's impractical to have just one car, unfortunately. We had to try this for 3 weeks when OH's car was off the road and it just caused more problems. The first week I took OH to the station, which meant getting Daughter up 3 and a half hours earlier than her normal wake up time and either keeping her up until past her bedtime or getting her out of bed and driving to the station to pick OH up as it's not guaranteed that he'll manage to get home before her bedtime. Even when we have 2 cars, he only manages to leave work on time about 3 days in 5, so he rarely is here for her bedtime.
The 2nd & 3rd weeks, he took my car but that meant that I had to rely on my mum to take me anywhere if I ran out of anything important - washing powder / nappies / milk etc. We both became a little stir crazy, even with messy play, walks and all the bits that we did to keep her occupied.

Egg Loan Repayment is £123.46 and SkyCard repayment is £150-odd each month. Blimminy...we really have got ourselves into a fix.... :S

Groceries / Meals - good idea about the meal planner - at present I only tend to know what we're having for tea when I get the meat out of the freezer to defrost... We don't tend to throw too much away, in all honesty. My OH is a veracious eater and will consume 5 - 6000 calories a day, easily. He has a very high metabolic rate and becomes extremely short-tempered and irritable if he doesn't eat regularly. (For instance, after a meal of 2 pork chops, broccolli and sweetcorn, with a fruit smoothie (home-made) as a pudding, he has now eaten a packet of crisps, some cheese and is currently munching through some rice crackers. 20 minutes later another fruit smoothie and another plateful of rice crackers....)

The figure above (£389) does include things like pet food, nappies - everything that we need, basically. Only thing it doesn't include is rabbit food as we get that from Pets at Home. They don't like the Tesco's stuff and will leave it if we feed them, then mow the grass in their run to mud, then try to chew their way out of the run into the lawn to get the grass in the garden.
The food / grocery bill does need to come down though....it's ridiculously high. Mum used to feed a family of 5 on approx £100 a week, so I've asked her what she used to buy and the meals she made. All our meals are home-made - I don't waste money on pre-prepared as a) they are too small for OH and b) I'd just have to add to it anyway, so might as well cook from scratch.
I'm trying to make at least one portion of food more than I need and then freezing it.

Bank accounts - yes, we've got accounts with other organisations, "just in case".

In terms of these :

car tax, (1 due in February, one in July)
MOT (February / July. Friend of family who owns an MOT station does it)
Servicing (OH does it)
RAC/AA (joint membership - £70 Home Relay - due in February. Should get a discount this year as we haven't called them out. First year since taking it out!
xmas costs (everything Home-made this year and paid for in cash from savings)
presents (difficult to add this up, we don't tend to spend more than £15 on presents for birthdays per person)
the odd takeaway (oh yes please! Haven't bought a takeaway since we moved into this house!
socialising (We have a 19month old daughter...what's this "socialising" of which you speak? )
weekends away (Chance'd be a fine thing.... No weekends away since we got together! We have pets.....)
holidays (Ditto - we've always had pets, so holidays are much more difficult to arrange, so we just don't go on holiday
clothes (I don't buy any for me as I'd like to treat myself WHEN I lose the baby weight and then some, OH has all he needs and I get Daughter's clothes from friends with older girls or Matalan / PoundStretcher etc
any hobbies/interests (None that we spend money on, no. Our hobbies are too expensive to be persued at present.)
haircuts (Family friend does these. Costs approx £4 per person
any optical/dental/medical (Fortunately no.)

One of the ING payments (the £150 one) is also trying to accrue enough to pay off the mortgage, if we never move off an interest only one...which we WILL. With any luck....

Mobile phones : Mine is on the rock bottom tariff - my line rental is dirt cheap because my calls are expensive, OH's is the other way - he spends AGES on the phone and no, work won't cover costs as it's not a work's mobile, yet expect him to be on call 24 hours a day. Grrrrrrrrr.
I'm not happy on PAYG in case I run out of credit, the car breaks down and I'm miles from anywhere with my daughter. It's a security thing, I guess. :S I make maybe 1 or 2 calls per month on my mobile....mostly I receive them or send texts and I'm on a package that gives me 150 texts free and I haven't yet managed to use them all in a month.

Have also bought my huge Coke bottle in from the garage to start putting coin change in to see how much we can get in there from the roughage that stops my purse closing and rubs holes in OH's trousers!

OH loan has about £10000 left on it, he's just told me, not £12000, so that's a little better...not much, but it's something. APR is 4.5%.


Think that's all the points....thanks to everyone for helping here.

Mice_Elf

Hello Timbo - yes, I think you're right about the Ebay thing. I've got a loft-full of stuff over at my mum's still and it could all go on Ebay, as could the Christmas presents received this year that I'm never going to use.

I'm really trying to be good with stuff now as I'm a terrible hoarder. I keep things "just in case" and even if such a case doesn't appear for 10 years, I'll still keep it as "you never know"... However, my OH throws things out if he glances at them, so between us, we should meet a happy compromise.

Mice_Elf

P.S. - what's the Olympic Challenge?

hypno06

Hi and welcome.

My advice would be to get an A4 pad of paper and a cup of coffee then have a brainstorming session to get the full picture. Only then can you see where it is easiest to cut back.

For example, you have said birthdays are difficult to work out but you don't spend more than about £15 per person. So how much are you spending? Make a list of all the people you buy for in the course of a year - family (do any of these get bigger presents eg parents?), friends, kids of friends, godchildren etc etc. This could be 5 people at £15 total £75 a year or it could be 30 people at £15 total £450 a year. Then whatever your total is, divide it by 12 so you know how much you are spending on birthdays each month.

If you do this with every expense - Christmas, holidays, trips out, haircuts, treats and add it to your SOA, you will be able to see just where you can cut back.

For example, if you are buying for 30 bods for birthdays, cutting back from £15 to £5 by shopping around, careful thinking etc will save you £150 a year easy, and could be more with a little more effort!

Hope that helps, so get brainstorming!

Good luck and keep posting.

Mice_Elf

Good point!

OK Birthdays....we have
On my side :

Mum
Dad
Brother
Brother
Gran
Cousin's son
Cousin's daughter

On OH side :

Mum
Dad
Brother
Grandma B
Grandma D

That's it for birthdays.

Made it through the day without spending any money, which is great! LOL...1 down....364 more to go.

Have made a start on Ebay and listed the first 5 items. Loads more to go, but it's a start.

Will transfer money from 2 of our savings accounts to pay off the 2 smaller credit cards. It's pointless having a DD go out for £7 to pay off one of them when we could just clear it completely.

Think I'll also start on the grocery challenge to try to get my bill down. Aim for £300 as suggested, maybe £320.

Does anyone have any good recipes for cream cheese? Have loads left over from making stuff at Christmas... :S

Trying_to_Budget

Hi Mice

Just wanted to mention pet insurance. I have 3 cats and have just taken out insurance with petplan for £21. Obviously, I dont know circumstances with your cats (Age, illnesses etc) but it might be worth looking into getting it cheaper. £35 sounds a lot! Also, do Tesco's cover illnesses for life? As long as your cats are under 10 years (Recently increased from 8) Petplan will cover.

HTH

angelavdavis

Hi Mice!

Sounds like you are doing great!!!

Couple of things:

Have you checked out Old Style Board yet? As mentioned I can really recommend the store cupboard challenge. This is aimed at eeking out a meal or two from storecupboard contents.

I do think you should investigate tariffs more for your mobi. I'm not sure of the split between you/hubby, but there are PAYG tariffs that include £5 emergency so you can use should you break down, etc.

The eBay prospects sound great - good luck. I am currently selling two chandeliers that my inlaws were ready to chuck out - they are at £100! My father in law is gobsmacked!!!

Good luck!

Verbatim

Hi there,

On the 2nd car could your OH sell his and get a motorbike or scooter. If it's just to get to the station and you have another car for longer journeys this would save maintenance and petrol costs and perhaps parking costs too. Also if you could sell it you could pay down something. (As it's wet dark January and I don't know how far you are from thestation I hesitate to suggest a bicycle.)

Welldone on your achievements so far.

eyelinerprincess

On the subject of phones, do you call or text more?

My O2 PAYG gives me 300 free texts with a min topup of £10/month, and it has a service to borrow £1 in case of emergencies.

angchris

my oh loves meat too im really not that bothered myself and could live without it completely:D tips i have found great for meals to cut the cost of meat are that i buy the bacon miss shapes from mr t`s for less than a quid and you get loadsss in a pack these are great for bacon sarnies/homemade quiche/pea n ham soup and bacon pasta bakes they really do make a meal really cheap but still satisfies oh`s pangs of hunger for meat. i also make alot of stews with a bit of stewing beef you can make huge batches and with all the nice gravy he still gets the fab meaty taste but with much less meat.