My SOA

Tuesday_Tenor

I understand the piano lesson are important to you as a family.

But do all three children have to had a lesson EVERY week?

Could you cut it down to two booked lessons a week, which the children take turns to use? This would save you some £500-£600 per year! Cutting down to 1 lesson a week (i.e. each child once every three weeks) would save you £1000-£1200 a year!

If they're keen they'll still practise between their (less frequent) lessons. .

And you might aim to do this only for a short period, until you've made a serious impact on your debts.

jon1965

Is here any need to cut everything all at once, it just seems too much and will possibly be counter productive.
Huge savings can almost certainly be made by looking at the basic bills, TV, Phone, Internet, Insurance etc.
Talktalk do a package with inclusive calls to North America, Insurance...just make sure it covers everything...price is not always the best thing, look at overall value for money. I would have thought with 4 kids accidental damage cover would be very useful, do yo uneed freezer cover, legal cover etc etc.
I hope you can enjoy life (how can it ever be too much) and still balance the books. It won't happen overnight but good luck.

RhiBi

Thanks again for the replies! Freez, regarding Scottish Power, it seems we made an error in reading the complicated bills, and we're actually £172 in arrears So until that is paid off, which hopefully over the coming months should come down quite quickly, I think we're stuck with them.

Regarding piano lessons, they haven't got any for 2 weeks anyway as the teacher is away, so will see how things are at another time. I will be able to see things much more clearer when everything is moved to its right place, and we can work an accurate SOA and snowball calculator.

jon1965, our current phone/internet/USA calls is with TalkTalk, I think we get a pretty good deal on that but will certainly look around for better deals.

Checked Nationwide again, and the money transfer still hasn't gone through, so I guess it won't now until Tuesday, but nothing I can do about that. I'm planning on a NSD today and Sunday, and hopefully Monday too!

Today, DH is doing a mystery shop at a supermarket, we're low on tea bags so thats good timing I've listed a few more things on ebay, but 1 auction that ended on Tuesday still hasn't paid, I've sent an invoice, but not sure how long I should wait...

MFWannabe

Hi Rhibi
Bad news reference Scottish Power. Never mind, maybe you may be able to lower payments once that's paid off; or look at changing to cheaper provider

How did your hubbys mystery shop go?

Have you managed your NSD's over the weekend?

SpagBol

Hi RhiBi, just wanted to say Hi and well done, oh and your OH clearly is in the same line of work as me! :cool: You probably need to add HPC fees to the SOA too and did you know you can claim some of the HPC/IBMS fees back on his tax return if he does one?

It is very hard keeping on top of things when working patterns are all over the place. We got in a complete pickle. Could your OH do on-call on the bank for another local hospital? Private hospitals often have bank slots free. Could you get on the hospital bank for any work when your OH is off before or after a shift or does he not get much time off for that?

Does he do on-call from home? Could he claim travel expenses or stay on-site to save petrol money? Sorry if this has been mentioned before I haven't been through the whole thread!

You could try a party plan such as Body Shop, pampered chef, Jamie at home etc I have done that before and worked around my shifts so you could book parties when OH is in to look after the kids.

Keep it up! :beer:

RhiBi

Mystery shop went well, had to spend £9 there, so got a few things we needed which Saved a bit!! He was also called into work to do a test on Friday, so did the both at the same time, and so can claim traveling expenses for that too!

SpagBol, yes he does claim tax back thanks! He has to go into work to do on call, because we live more than 20 minutes away, so does get traveling expenses for that, the on call rota is 1 in 9, he's going in tonight!!

SpagBol

I did last night! Horrible!

RhiBi

Oh Saturday night are my dh's least favorite!!!

Wow, how have you managed to pay off £6000 in 3 months? I'm really impressed!

SpagBol

RhiBi wrote: »

Oh Saturday night are my dh's least favorite!!!

Wow, how have you managed to pay off £6000 in 3 months? I'm really impressed!

Thanks, it's been hard work but we've only just dented the total debt :eek: so a long way to go. I used to work full time with shifts which meant my OH couldn't work to his full potential (we only have 2 kids but I feel your pain regarding shift work!) as he had to cover my shifts. I now work PT in one hospital, do bank shifts in another and DH works full time and now has the main "career" as in he can stay late etc and I have to sort out the kids to school. We have sold everything we can and do every bit of odd job work going!!! We also have made a pact that we won't visit pubs, restaurants or anything this YEAR :eek::eek::eek: so can only socialise at home with friends or in their houses or the park etc. I have only been to a restaurant twice since before Xmas for my birthday when a friend took me out and for mothers day!! Most unusual for us to do this but it was food and drink spends that were out of control. Mostly because we worked so hard we felt we deserved treats and we have a lot of friends so a birthday out here and a meal there really added up.

Paying off 2K a month (from my incomes and selling things and DH had a huge tax rebate which helped!!) is far more satisfying and we now know how to live at a baseline so one day we should have extra cash to overpay mortgage, save for regular big spends like xmas, holidays etc. and the odd curry and beer in a restaurant :beer::beer:

I hate to say it I also cancelled the kids activities which was hard but I have started them on MUCH cheaper things now which means they still have fun and exercise but much cheaper.

Good luck! :beer: