Can we post here to get advice on streamlining our spending?

fannyanna

Hello

We're not really in a position where we're in debt but we're trying to save as much money as possible as we're looking to sell our current property (which is realistically in negative equity) and buy a bigger property - which will be quite an expensive exercise.

Also we're trying for a baby so we've been trying to get to a point with our finances where we have a lot of spare money so that when we start incurring baby related costs (mainly childcare costs) it wont be such a shock to the system.

Would it be possible to post details of our income/outgoings here for advice or is there another area of the site that would be more appropriate?

Tixy

Hi

Certainly post on here - best place to do it - you may not be in debt, but you want to stay debt free so thats good enough for us!

We use this calculator for income & outgoings - http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html - and I'm sure people will be able to offer advice.

Good luck with the trying for a baby!

fannyanna

Thanks Tixy.

Thankfully we're not in debt anymore but we know what it's like. We cleared the last of our debts last year - and what a great feeling that was.

Ok, here we go....

We don’t feel like we live an extremely extravagant lifestyle (perhaps we do and just don’t realise it) but we do want to achieve a healthy balance between saving and living frugally going forward. I have some thoughts on how we can cut costs but I’d be grateful for others thoughts too. Once we’re armed with all the information we can look at our priorities and amend things accordingly.

I haven’t completed a SOA but I believe I’ve covered all the relevant information below (done on a monthly basis).

Our household is just me, Hubby and two cats.

Monthly income – yes I know it’s a lot

£1,949.30 My salary
£1,708.23 OH salary

Monthly outgoings

£100 My spending money
£200 My petrol
£47.44 My car insurance
£30 My mobile phone
£17 My contact lenses
£100 OH spending money
£200 OH petrol
£41.34 OH car insurance
£30 OH mobile phone
£355 OH child maintenance
£300 Groceries/eating out/pet food
£406.48 Mortgage
£45.07 Lease
£112.90 Council Tax
£23.57 Water rates
£21 Gas
£33 Electric
£12.37 TV licence
£14.44 Pet insurance
£15.24 BT line rental
£35 Sky (TV, calls and broadband)
£15.15 Contents insurance
£300 Monthly savings towards annual car costs (both cars), holiday, Christmas and birthdays
£1,200 Other savings

Edit: I haven't specifically listed clothes, haircuts etc as I rarely get my hair cut, colour it myself and I'm too fat to look nice in clothes (lol) so don't buy that many. On the odd occassion that we do spend on anything like this it comes out of our £100 spending money.

Tixy

Looks pretty good - and presumably you are actually saving the £1200? and saving (and then using) the £300?
Does the £300 tend to work out about right for those items? does it include car tax, and things like new tyres as well as maintenance/servicing?

If you want to make further cutbacks
Do you pay for your car insurances monthly? usually this works out quite a high APR - maybe consider paying them out of your savings and then paying more into your savings each month to repay it. Or a 0% purchase credit card and pay off over the year that way?
Your spending money for each of you, I guess this includes socialising/entertainment type things - this could be cut if you needed to (or if you were on maternity/paying childcare) - you'll probably be too tired for socialising then anyway!! But as it also covers clothes & haircuts its not particularly excessive.
Your mobile costs are not bad, though always worth shopping around at the end of your contracts.
Groceries could be reduced, some will say you could manage on half this amount, but as you are not in debt then its a balance isn't it. If you feel you are wasteful with food (if you throw stuff away or buy a lot of convience food) you could try to reduce this a bit.
Presumably your mortgage is repayment rather than interest only?

I don't think your lifestyle looks too extravagant from what you've posted. And you are making a good level of savings to put yourself is a good position for when a baby comes, presumably thats going to be 9months at least so you should have a nice cushion built up by then.

fannyanna

Tixy wrote: »

Looks pretty good - and presumably you are actually saving the £1200? and saving (and then using) the £300?
Does the £300 tend to work out about right for those items? does it include car tax, and things like new tyres as well as maintenance/servicing?

If you want to make further cutbacks
Do you pay for your car insurances monthly? usually this works out quite a high APR - maybe consider paying them out of your savings and then paying more into your savings each month to repay it. Or a 0% purchase credit card and pay off over the year that way?
Your spending money for each of you, I guess this includes socialising/entertainment type things - this could be cut if you needed to (or if you were on maternity/paying childcare) - you'll probably be too tired for socialising then anyway!! But as it also covers clothes & haircuts its not particularly excessive.
Your mobile costs are not bad, though always worth shopping around at the end of your contracts.
Groceries could be reduced, some will say you could manage on half this amount, but as you are not in debt then its a balance isn't it. If you feel you are wasteful with food (if you throw stuff away or buy a lot of convience food) you could try to reduce this a bit.
Presumably your mortgage is repayment rather than interest only?

I don't think your lifestyle looks too extravagant from what you've posted. And you are making a good level of savings to put yourself is a good position for when a baby comes, presumably thats going to be 9months at least so you should have a nice cushion built up by then.

Thanks Tixy. The ability to save so much each month has only come about recently but yes we have standing orders set up to pay into savings accounts. I must confess that I have in the past dipped into savings to do something quite frivolous so it might be worth me moving the account to another bank - that way when I do my online banking I don't see a wodge of money just sitting there and feel tempted :-)

The £300 covers all car related expenses (servicing, MOT, tax and tyres).

We do pay our car insurances monthly so your suggestion of paying for them at the beginning of the policy is a good suggestion.

We've (very, very recently) changed both our mobile phone contracts to better deals so I'm confident that we have the best deal for us. I know it could be a lot cheaper but whilst we have the money it's nice to have a snazzy phone that can access the internet

Groceries, take aways and eating out are the area that I think we can really cut back on. I think we waste a lot of money. I think we just need to be a bit more organised with cooking rather than getting home hungry with nothing to eat and getting a take away or going out for dinner instead.

Mortgage is on repayment. One option is to maybe overpay the mortgage by £600 per month and then put £600 into savings rather than £1,200.

I'm glad you've confirmed I'm not delusional with regards to my thoughts about not being extravagent :rotfl:. I know we bring home good salaries but I'm conscious of the fact that we'll be paying out at least £900 per month in childcare costs when we have a baby and I feel like we need to be used to a certain standard of living now so that it's not a huge shock to the system when a baby comes along. And to be honest with you a baby wont be coming anytime soon (as we have a few issues) so we should definately have a good amount of time to get savings up. We live in a one bedroom flat at the moment so the plan is to save up to get a house.

Thank you so much for taking the time to review my post and provide your thoughts.