Help & Advice with monthly budget & finances

sistafromanothermista

As others have said it looks like your main saving is going to be on food. Slow cooking cheaper meat is a brilliant tip throw in some veg and everyones happy

rising_from_the_ashes

You're doing all you can job wise to help out so it really needs to be cuts here & there.

As others have said, groceries is the big one - please do try the Grocery Challenge as suggested, as you should be able to get £300 + off this with gradual reductions (and this is incl toiletries, cleaning stuff etc).

I'd suggest taking the logs out of here & putting into one of the "spare" categories - where do you buy them out of curiosity? My previous house had a fire and I was able to find someone local who sold a trailer full (fairly decent sized) for £25 incl delivery and I only needed 3 of these each winter so it may be worth asking around to see if you can find something similar for next winter.

Re the oil - it is expensive if you're not careful (also in previous house) but I must admit I didn't use it much and just used the open fire - re water - have you got a timer? Really if you put the water onto boost for an hour before someone needed a shower etc then it should be hot enough & would save loads. If you're not using it for heating then the cost of this should be way lower than it is (sorry).

Do you have a separate bank account for your gardening business? If not, I'd suggest it to keep track of costs and make budgeting a bit easier and also to make doing your accounts a LOT easier!

Council tax seems really high - is this over 10 months or 12? If 10, ask the Council to change it to 12 and this would free up around £35/month

tyllwyd

It's not extra money exactly, but you've put down child benefit as £100 a month but it is £134.80 every 4 weeks for 2 children (and is the 16 year old staying on in education?) And have you gone over the threshold for tax credits? You have said that you earn £600 per month from gardening, but is this after tax and averaged over 12 months of the year?

Housework*Fairy

Groceries: Write a meal plan. If it feels overwhelming start small a week at a time. Split it into breakfasts, lunches, dinners, drinks and snacks/treats. Write down everything you would need to make that meal. Go through your cupboards and cross off everything you have (like you wont need to buy gravy every single week). I can do a full weekly shop for £60 for 2 adults, 1 teenager and a child, so I'm sure you could easily knock £300 a month off your £700. I've got a four week meal plan stuck to my fridge. I used ideas from this website and even just asked on facebook "what are you having for your tea tonight" to get ideas.

Child Benefit: This should be more than £100. I get £134.80 for two kids and you've got three so I think you've underestimated.

Next: I know you don't have any credit cards and you pride yourself on this, but if your credit rating is decent, please do try and get a 0% credit card to be able to pay this and your overdraft off. My husband's Natwest card paid off our catalogue with a 0% money transfer.

School dinners: could you "ask" your child if (s)he would mind taking a packed lunch just for a month or so until you have got your finances sorted?

Spending Diary: DO THIS. You can't tell where your money is going if you don't.

Good luck

rising_from_the_ashes

Just had a thought about the hot water issue ..... now, you may think I'm nuts but bear with me here!

Have you got an immersion on your hot water tank?

If not, it may be worth looking into the costs of getting one - I had one (yup, previous house & luckily the previous owner had put one in as I guess they got fed up with the cost of heating water too!) - it had a timer on that could do 8 on/off cycles in a 24 hour period (and you could set same each day, different for weekdays, weekends etc) which would more than cover everyone's requirements.

Yes, your elec would go up, but if it was set on the timer for when required, and enough for someone's shower etc then it should certainly be a lot less than having the water on 24 hours with the oil.

If you post on the "in my home" board http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=39 hopefully someone may be able to give a rough idea of how much it would cost.

greenwoodlad

Yes i have got an immersion heater but never dare put it one cos of the cost but yes maybe cheaper than the oil - gotta be worth a go - thanks again

rising_from_the_ashes

greenwoodlad wrote: »

Yes i have got an immersion heater but never dare put it one cos of the cost but yes maybe cheaper than the oil - gotta be worth a go - thanks again

Brilliant - so no cost to give it a try!:D

To see how it affects your elec / oil (not sure how accurate a reading you can get on this?) - take a reading one morning and note down, use everything as normal for a week and then take new readings.

2nd week, use everything as normal but use the immersion for the hot water - again, take readings at the end of the week.

This should certainly let you see how much it's going to add to your elec bill and, depending on how accurate a reading you can get from your oik tank, your oil as well.

If it's a switch on a wall it can be hard to put a timer on (electrician may have to help with this & not worth looking at until you know if it will save money) so, if it's one like this, I'd suggest something like a kitchen timer set for an hour, alarm on a mobile etc so it's not left on accidentally all the time.

Would be interested to hear the results!:)

asparagus1968

just wanted to say good on you -3 jobs!!a good example for your children.:)

i would:
1.check you are claiming all you can-there ae websites that do this for you.
2.make sure you are putting money aside for any tax implications of 2nd and 3rd jobs.
3.packed lunches to replace school dinners
4.meal plan/batch cook/cook and freeze leftovers/get that grocery shop amount down.
4.ring orange and tell them you are struggling-they won't want to lose a whole families business and may give you a better deal,whats the worse they can say?its worth an ask.
5.look at internet package-seems high.
6.look into 0% CC for the n*xt account and overdraft,this will save you a lot in interest.Better being proud you pay no interest to a CC than loads to a store account!
hope things get better for you,think you deserve it from the sounds of it!

whiteguineapig

i;m sure someone knows better but your internet and phone services are too high i think
i pay £27 per month for excellent landline and broadband service from talk talk
don't forget if you switch to use quidco

greenwoodlad

Thanks for your reply & good advice - I thought about the 0% transfer credit card to get rid of the next 29% interest card!! about 3 months ago - applied twice and rejected twice for 0% card- they must be getting hard to get - we have a good credit score , gave it up as a bad job - might wait a couple of months & try again