SOA done - phew! Comments please?

cottonhead

I agree that the water seems high. Our bill is £36 a month and we are metered so it should be accurate.
Groceries you can get right down. I spend £200 a month. Get fruit / veg from the market and the other bits from supermarket. I think the Tesco £10 for 3 meat items is a good deal. Be sure to open the packs and divide into portions in a freezer bag and there is less wastage. Then bulk out with pasta, veg and rice. There are loads of budget meals ideas out there. Mince rules !
The phones seem expensive. I pay £10 a month on pay as you go with Tesco. £10 is tripled so you get £30 of credit for your £10. I never use it all. Perhaps thats an option when the contracts end.
With the car - could you hand it back to the car company ? I did that with mine. Once you are a certain way through the loan you can surrender the vechile. Then just buy a cheap run around so you have no monthly loan repayments.
I agree with what you say about the kids. I am the same - they are only young for a bit and I dont want mine to look back and remember us being poor ! Having said that I do want to teach him the value of money so its managed better than I did.
Road tax seems low - is that right ? what about a house phone or do you not have one ?
The other thing is to keep a spending diary. I know what my bills should be but they are usually different in practice. I looked at my statement and was shocked how many time there was £10 for this £5 for that £8 for the other - soon adds up.

Bumbelina

Thanks again for replies and comments.

I've checked on the water rates and the reason I've got it down as 58.70 a month is because I pay it over 8 months instead of 12. Doh!! I hadn't even realised. That brings it down to less than £40 a month over a year. It's not on a meter. I did the calculator thing to check if I'd be better off on a meter but it looks like I'd be considerably worse off. Yorkshire Water also told me that the rateable values of properties were calculated on an individual basis in the 1970s, taking into account things like extensions and the size of the garden, so on that basis I think we're better just leaving things as they are because our property has had 2 extensions since then and doubled the size of the garden by buying an extra piece of land (the people who had the house before us did all that, not us).

Phones - there are 4 mobiles, two of which are on a £10 a month tarriff (the kids). Mine is £15 a month (I need email and internet access on it for work) and my husband's is £30. I know that's a lot but he uses it constantly for work and claims it back off his tax. All the phones and the landline and TV and broadband are on a package with Virgin and because we've got the whole lot with them we get a special deal. I put down the landline as 0 because we were going to get rid of it, but have since found that if we do that it messes up our deal with Virgin. So we're only using it to receive calls and if we call out on it only evenings and weekends (but we hardly use it to be honest).

The car - I have a lease agreement for this which I took out for 3 years. It's a pure lease, not HP or anything involving eventual ownership. I'm tied in until August 2013. I can't take it back before then without breaching the agreement and incurring penalties, but I have considered doing that anyway if we really can't manage on the budget. It would just be another debt to add to the already huge pile.

Window cleaner - I would cancel this but DH is dead against it because we have 3 storeys at the back and wouldn't be able to reach the top windows at all without their extra-long ladders.

Because of the size of the debt the only realistic way it's ever going to get paid off is with a windfall (inheritance) or by selling the house. Even if our income increases by a decent amount (which I hope it will soon) it's going to take years and years. At the moment my SOA doesn't make provision for any debt repayments over and above the token payments we're making now.

By implementing the suggestions made by people on this board I reckon I can shave off another £100 a month which can go towards debt repayments but I also have to consider that when the interest-only period on the mortgage comes to an end, that's going to increase from 458 to probably around 800 a month. The interest only period is until next April and then we have an option to take it for another year, but the longer we stay on interest-only the more it will go up at the end of that time. So we've decided that if DH gets a job the first thing to do is to get the mortgage back on repayment and then use what's left toward the debts, otherwise we won't be able to sustain the debt repayments when the mortgage goes back up. Or if the worst comes to the worst, we'd have to put the house on the market if it became obvious we weren't going to be able to manage the repayments.

So although I feel a lot better about the SOA I still feel like we're in limbo for now, waiting for something to happen. I'm going to start a new thread about the savings pots now because I need advice about how to put them into practice.

Thanks again for your help and support.

Bumbelina

RAS

Given your situation, I strongly suggest that you make those reductions in your budget and put the money aside in a separate account, not as savings but as a buffer if the interest rate on the mortgage goes up, at least until you know whether OH has another job.

If you have to go BR the kids are allowed one activity each and I think there is a limit on the amount per month.

Bumbelina

Should I take the car back and breach the lease agreement? That would be deliberately incurring another debt but would save a lot of money each month.

RAS

I would not breach the lease agreement. By all means try and negoitiate your way out of it; they might play ball.

Bumbelina

Worth a try. Will hang on three months to see if OH gets a job (in which case I'll need the car anyway) and if not I'll speak to them. By then will have completed 2 out of the 3 years of the agreement so that might make them more inclined to co-operate.