help :(

roxiegriff

is anyone able to offer any suggestions to help our budget?



my partner had been working self employed, but we was unable to pay our bills and worked out that we was better off going onto jsa untill he can find something better

in our family there is OH and i am 35 weeks pregnant, and we have a 3 year old daughter

our total monthly income is £720

here is a list of our bills
WATER35
EDF69
TV12.5
SKY45
PHONE25 (8.50 from next month)
CAR INSAURENCE210
PETROL50
HMRC 40
FOOD180
ROAD TAX20
our bills total £686.50


after we have paid all our bills we only have £33.50 left over to buy clothes, hair cuts, saving for christmas etc

this is better than when OH was self employed as we was left £45 not enough each week



but i am still worried about our outgoings as DD is in desperate need of new trousers as she has outgrown all of them except 3 and i have outgrown all of my bras. my partner needs to go to london to renew his ID card (he is portuguese, and came to the uk as a child renewing his card will cost around £150) we cannot afford to replace any of these things, but we need to



we took out our car insaurence in october, and get the final 3 months free, is it worth cancelling our car insaurence? and taking our car off the road? we had to pay a £750 deposit for the car insaurence which i know we wont get back

is there anything else we can do other than take the car off the road?

wapow

Sky - Shut it down.

Casati

The car is costing you £280 a month, that's a huge portion of your income, can you do without it?

roxiegriff

thank you for your responses


in all honesty we only use the car for shopping so we could do fine without it, my mum has said that she will take me shopping and drive me to the hospital to give birth and will pick me up



our sky bill covers , broadband , tv and phone . we would still need broadband and phone line so removing the tv package wouldnt be much, i did look into changing suppliers but there wasnt much choice in suppliers for my address :undecided

londonsurrey

Cut your family's hair yourself.

wapow

A) Request a Mod to move this to the correct section. Alot more people there can offer you alot more responces.

You have mobiles. TV/BB/HP are a luxury and they are things you can go without for a hort while. You will probably get the same when this topic moves to the correct section.

They can advise on how to get BB and HP cheaply while you sort out your finances. Along with other gems of advice.

I keep typing responces instead of responses!

podperson

Cut down/get rid of the Sky if not in contract (even if you are worth ringing them and seeing if they can reduce the package)

Is the HMRC payment a debt repayment? Could try ringing them to ask if they will accept lower until your OH finds a job.

Food budget could probably come down a little - have a look on the Oldstyle board for lots of ideas on reducing this. The benefit of you both being at home means you tend to have more time to cook from scratch and go round Aldi/Lidl/Home Bargains etc to get the best deals.

Could be worth trying the insurance company and asking if instead of having the last 3 months free you could pay a lower monthly payment for the rest of the year. Might not go for it but if you don't ask you don't get.

roxiegriff

londonsurrey wrote: »

Cut your family's hair yourself.

i have started to cut dd and my hair for the past 9 months as we havent been able to afford hair cuts

londonsurrey

Can you try charity shops or Freecycle for clothes?

roxiegriff

podperson wrote: »

Cut down/get rid of the Sky if not in contract (even if you are worth ringing them and seeing if they can reduce the package)

Is the HMRC payment a debt repayment? Could try ringing them to ask if they will accept lower until your OH finds a job.

Food budget could probably come down a little - have a look on the Oldstyle board for lots of ideas on reducing this. The benefit of you both being at home means you tend to have more time to cook from scratch and go round Aldi/Lidl/Home Bargains etc to get the best deals.

Could be worth trying the insurance company and asking if instead of having the last 3 months free you could pay a lower monthly payment for the rest of the year. Might not go for it but if you don't ask you don't get.

thank you for responding


sky have already cut down my bill as i rang them about 3 months ago to cancel and they cut my bill down instead so i dont think il be able t get any more discount

im sure my hmrc overpayments finish either this month or next, so is nearly paid off so they shouldnt mind me extending it a little bit hopefully, i hadnt thought of this


i have already tried askint the insaurence if we could pay during those 3 free months so we could make our payments smaller, they said no, but i will try again and tell them if the dont then i will have to cancel usually companies are more cooperative when your trying to cancel, so im hoping it works the same for insaurence lol

i already shop around quite alot, we use aldi and buy alot of reduced veg, but my OH has a very big appetite. thanks il have a look on the old style board

roxiegriff

londonsurrey wrote: »

Can you try charity shops or Freecycle for clothes?

i have been checking net mums and various facebook groups, but i havent had any luck,

we dont have much choice in charity shops in my area