Here is my SOA

EmmaJay

Here is my SOA

Monthly Income £3,808.33

Monthly Expenditure £3,249.60
Mortgage £823.95
HP repayments £499.04
Vehicle insurance £90.00
Loan repayments £244.74
Endowment £162.67
Council tax £140.00
Satellite TV £43.50
Electricity £35.00
Garage £30.56
Water £30.00
Internet £27.48
Gas £26.00
Telephone £25.00
TV licence £25.00
Property insurance £20.00
Contents insurance £10.00
Personal insurance £9.16
Food & sundries £400.00
Petrol £360.00
Cigarettes £80.00
Other £80.00
School fees £50.00
Road tax £29.17
Car MOT £8.33

Monthly surplus £558.73

bobbie78

HI emma, great start, your SOA just needs a few more things adding to it. eg car maintainance (tyres and such) birthdays and xmas (take what you spend and split it up into monthly payments so it doesn't all come at once and have to go on credit cards). School trips, meals and uniform? Clothes, haircuts, dentist/optician visits.

Your food bill looks quite high how many people are you feeding from that? it might be worth heading over to the old style board as there are lots of ideas and ways to re-educate yourself on food shopping.

You should also do a breakdown of your debts and find out apr's on each, see if there are any 0% ways you can move any of the money around.

Have a look at this snowball calculator it is amazing what adding a few quid to your repayments each month can do to saving you hundreds in interest and paying it all off quicker.

I'm sure there will be some others along soon with more advice.

Good luck and well done for posting you're in the right place.

Edit :- just spotted your petrol that is a lot is there any way you can claim mileage for work or re-locate

roswell

Monthly surplus £558.73

But do you actualy have that at the end of a month or does it fall into a black hole somewhere?

liuhut

The insurances for Personal, Contents & Buildings - have you tried to get these quoted together, it might work out cheaper and if you go through Quidco, you will get money back as well. The same goes for the vehicle insurance - I just got my OH's for £80 for the Year going thro Quidco and the Prudential.
Is 'Other' for day to day spending - I was spending about that a month and then started a spending diary - cut it down to about £20 a month!

Mrs_Sparkle

Hi Emma,

Good SOA. Your food bill is high so you can definitely make a saving there. I recommend meal planning and practising some cheap recipes that become second nature.

Good luck and welcome to the board!

EmmaJay

thanks everyone. spotted some of the things i can cut back on as i was putting my list together. 2 adults and 3 kids in our house. home insurance just renewed with cashback through greasypalm. unable to move anything to 0% as credit soooooo bad. monthly income has just increased to the figure shown in my soa, hence the debts we have to date. will update my soa at end of the month when i know exactly what has gone out for the variables like food etc.

nic_santorini

With car insurance at £90 per month - are you driving something expensive - this is a must to chop in and exhange for a cheaper model and thus reducing insurance, tax and any outstanding loans you have on the vehicle. Vehicles are just depreciating waste of money. My neighbour has just done this to reduce her debts and is more than happy with a cheaper vehicle and was so pleased to reduce her debts - albeit by a little - but every little helps so they say.

roswell

well looking at your surplus your 60 months (ish) away from being debt free if you can chuck that at the debts your laughing.

What about savings do you have any ?
Have you checked your houss is in the correct council tax banding ? there could be money there.

sleepless_saver

£360 a month on petrol would be around 3000 miles per month. Is that right? Do you need to do as much mileage as that by car?

£25 on tv licence is more than twice my monthly TV licence cost.
.

Wish I could manage to get my gas and electric costs as low as yours:T

jackieb

Why is your TV licence £25 a month? I pay by DD and it's about £11 a month.

EmmaJay

car insurance is for 2 cars. both required unfortunately.
tv license is being paid for over 6 months at the higher price before it changes to the lower price over 12 months.
petrol is for 2 cars also. hubby uses most of that for work so if he gets a fuel card that will drop by quite a bit.