HELP! Have cut back all I can but am still over-spending!

ScrimpingandSaving

Hmmm thanks Maman, ours are from the 25th of March and I was aiming to go on the 23rd, stopping at his parents for the weekend, then setting off on 25th to Orkney, coming back on Thurs 28th (overnight stay that night) returning to his parents for Good Friday. That way we were hoping to bypass the traffic and bank holiday prices.

I've failed my £60 budget I spent just over £87 BUT last week's spend was just over £50 and it lasted 8 days using leftovers and stuff from the freezer. This week's shop included household stuff such as washing up liquid, fabric softener, toilet roll, shampoo, etc and some things will last 2 weeks such as 2 jars of curry sauce for £1 each which will make 2 meals each. So if I can get next week's shopping down to £50 and make this last until next Wednesday it will start to even out.

(BTW my shopping for this week also included 2 bottles of wine, 1 for £4.99 and 1 for £5.99 plus a 4 pack of Guinness so nerrr!)

I also filled up my car at the weekend at a cost of £80 and I'm planning to make this last until the end of March. So I'll use it for shopping/orthodontist appts and emergencies but will walk my son to school and back every day no matter what the weather.

I'm also going to stop my son's one school meal a week. £2.30 is ridiculously expensive for one school meal. I'll bake him lots of nice treats instead. Last night I made chocolate crunchies for them so I'll share this as it's dead easy:

100g butter
75g brown sugar
4tbsp golden syrup
4tbsp cocoa powder
200g broken chocolate digestives
loads of rice crispies/marshmallows/raisins/popping candy/choc pieces

Melt butter in pan and add the sugar, cocoa powder and syrup. When combined chuck in the biscuits and other ingredients until you get a fairly sticky mess that is quite stiff to stir.
Pour it into a baking tray and press down firmly.
Once cooled pop it into the fridge.
They taste lovely and make great packed lunch treats. Hubby also took one instead of his usual chocolate bar to work

Verbatim

(BTW my shopping for this week also included 2 bottles of wine, 1 for £4.99 and 1 for £5.99 plus a 4 pack of Guinness so nerrr!)

:T:T:T
Tee hee loved this

Good luck with the trip

Spendless

maman wrote: »

I'd love to get involved in this 'government' argument but I, too, have to go out and fritter some money away. Good luck with the shopping.;)

I'm not sure whether you plan to go to Orkney for two weeks but there is some variation with school holidays this year. Some schools break up on 22nd March for 2 weeks while others go on until 28th and then have Good Friday and 2 weeks. I suspect that the airlines and hotels have got all bases covered but it's worth considering.

Yes, thank you that's what I meant! Always worth having a look to see if there's a date the holiday companies haven't hiked their prices up for.

£2.30 is expensive for a school meal, I pay £2 for my Primary aged child and £2.10 for Secondary.

CH27

Has a post been removed from here today? :huh:

theoretica

I am coming to this late and haven't read all the way through, so forgive me if I repeat, but all the posts I have read are looking at the problem backwards (as I see it).

I suggest you start by adding up the absolute minimum spending you need to make - not the things like savings that you don't want to compromise on, but the drinking water and only heating one room of the house minimum to keep you alive and healthy - if bored. This will let you know how much money you have to divide up among the other things you want from drinks (have you looked at buying concentrates?) to savings and more heating. Most people can't afford all the nice comforts they want - some will need to be cancelled or cut back so list them in priority order and see how far down the list you can get. Do you really appreciate them all in proportion to what they cost?

mildredalien

I get your anger. I hate most of what this government stands for and what they are doing to the country - in particular to people earning at or below the median wage (a paltry ~£20k - surprising how many people think the 'average' wage is about £40k!!)

Anyway, I just wanted to point out one thing in your post:

ScrimpingandSaving wrote: »

If I have any sense of entitlement it is that a family who both work full time should be able to live within their means without having to turn off the heating and wear coats instead, without having to buy second hand clothes all the time, without having to stop school meals and without having to seriously lower their standards of living.

You SHOULD be able to live within your means - and on a wage of over £2k a month you certainly can. The sticking point is deciding what is an 'essential' a 'desirable' and a 'can do without' in your budget. This is going to be different for everyone, and only you and your family can work it out! The 'lower their standards of living' bit might need a bit of a rethink. Your standard of living needs to be what you can afford. I spent years of my life trying to live at a better standard than my £12k a year wage would let me - resulting in a massive load of debt and another few years budgeting out of necessity to pay it all off. Now I KNOW what standard of living I can afford, and I've figured out what is important to me and what isn't.

Be angry about the government. You (and me and everyone else IMO :P) are entitled to be. That has nothing to do with your current situation though. You don't need to be angry about your standard of living - you are in a fortunate position of being able to easily afford the essentials with money left over. It's just up to you to decide what to spend that extra on!

Perhaps you think that because you can't spend what you like each month you are hard off. Well, you're not. You're not as well off as you'd like - but none of us are! I'd love not to have to choose between taking a holiday and saving for a house deposit. To not have to think about whether I can afford new clothes for work, and if I buy them what I might NOT buy this month. But hey, that's not budgeting, that's responsible spending. I don't mean this last bit to be harsh, I genuinely think it will help to rethink how you view managing your money. If you can see it as managing your income and making choices rather than 'budgeting', you might feel a bit happier month to month!

suki1964

Hey I flipping angry with government. We also earn what should be a good wage yet we too are having to budget like mad and so with out things we thought nothing of spending on a few years back

Me and hubby got together in 1990 I had a 1 bedroom HA flat and 1k in hard earned savings. We worked so hard to be a me to furnish that and save a deposit for a house so we could have his kids stay

Now near 25 years down the line all we have is our house and car. We tread water. We can't save our pensions. Every penny spare goes in fuel costs, diesel or heating oil. We burn coal and logs, not for a feature fire place but because we can't afford the oil on all day


And I'm back making scratch meals and back at work when I'm barely fit enough


Usually I don't moan cos there's so many worse off. But yes I'm angry. And whilst I'm so angry, like s n s , I too will budget a wee drink or treat in cos otherwise I might as well give up

mildredalien

Just wanted to add an illustration of what I mean from your updated SOA.

Income is £2252

Spending on essential household bills = £697.63 (utilities, mortgage, house insurance, council tax)
Spending on other near-essentials = £574.05 (car expenses, home telephone, I included the money you were putting to pension because personally I think retirement planning is pretty essential!)

Total essential spending = £1271.68

That means you have £980.32 to spend on everything else, assuming you don't make any savings on your essentials. Of course food is essential, but it's discretionary how much you actually spend on it. I'm not saying that all of the other expenses you list aren't important or necessary, just that once you take the essentials out you can really see how much you have to play with and start to prioritise what percentage to allocate to entertainment, holidays, food etc. etc.

fallen121

Spent most of the evening reading this and haven't much to add to what has already been said, but since joining MSE I have had a few "lightbulb moments" which I will share with you:

Some years ago I decided that I really needed to lose some weight so started a food diary. This helped me to realise that my weight gain was as much about what I drank with meals (non alcoholic) than what I ate. I was buying lots of freshly squeezed OJ and other fruit juice thinking that it was healthier than fizzy pop (no it isn't), also fizzy pop at weekends.

So the first thing I did was switch to iced tap water at mealtimes. Not only did I lose weight, but my grocery bill fell as well. So when doing your grocery bill analysis look at what you spend on non alcoholic drinks as it may surprise you. Quite a lot of freshly squeezed juices etc. have hefty amounts of VAT on them. Now I just have one glass of ginger beer with my (home made) curry at weekends and the ASDA ginger beer is lovely and also very cheap. Cloudy lemonade is good too. Also DH and I drinking water all the time trained DD into good habits. She hates fizzy pop and a few years ago we discovered she was born without tooth enamel and the dentist told us that the fact she drinks only water and has good dental hygiene saved her from losing all her teeth.

Another area of high spend was alchohol at supermarkets. I think we were shopping at Sainsbury at the time, buying wine, beer and cider (my weakness). Now we get buy on a £2.99 four pack of Beer from Aldi which lasts my DH two weeks, one with the Saturday curry, one with Sunday lunch. Aldi wine and beer is actually not that bad. The usual cheap plonk, but they do have some high end stuff too - you need to keep checking as it varies.

House Insurance. Can't quite believe it now, but we were sold a combined house/contents policy with our mortgage and kept renewing it year after year because it was easier. I think at one point we were paying £60 a month. Makes me CRINGE now because using price comparison sites and NEVER staying loyal means we have now got it down to £8.35 a month for house AND contents. Ok so our house is in a cheap area and it all varies according to construction/age/number of rooms etc. but we would never do without it. Our neighbours house burnt down a few years ago after a visitor dropped a cigarette on the stair carpet. I went round with my neighbour and the fireman after the fire was out and cannot describe what it was like inside - it haunts me still. They had two kids and no contents insurance. Just replacing school uniforms nearly broke them.

Country walks. We enjoy these, but enjoy the hot drinks and sarnies afterwards even more! We take flasks. We all drink different things so it's a bit of a hassle to prepare. We either find a picnic bench or my DH has an old truck and we sit on the tailgate of that. Also useful if it rains! Depending on where we are, we occasionally go to a teashop (not many open in December/January where we are, so more a summer thing). Fairly reasonable if you don't eat anything and certainly cheaper than coffee in a pub. Often they give you free shortbread/tablet as well.

Anti virus. DH works in the IT industry (mainly building sites and farms - hence the pickup as he often has to go somewhere where the "road" is either a dirt track or they haven't built it yet!). He reckons that apart from the usual free ones, the best value is probably Bit Defender.

Finally non food items. I think ASDA is probably still the cheapest for things like envelopes/tape which DH needs for the business but for shampoo/dishwasher tabs/washing machine tabs/fabric softener/razor blades nothing beats Aldi.

I do still use M&S for school uniform items such as trousers/blouses as they seem better sized and seem to last longer than the supermarket stuff. DD is EXTREMELY hard on clothes so I can't re-sell on eBay but I do sell them to the 50p a kilo place as they don't seem to care. I load a gift card with a specific amount each quarter and if there is anything left over we treat ourselves to a pie from the food hall (won't buy veg there as it costs LOADS) or maybe get DH some socks.

Newspapers. Don't buy these anymore. Yes, we did the crosswords too, but I have £15 a month contract with EE (paid for by DH's business as I do his accounts and he gets the VAT back) which includes calls texts internet access and email and free chat via BBM with the rest of my family. Skynews is a free app and we also found another app that costing £1 lets me play space invaders and more importantly, another £1 app for Crosswords which is ACE and have been using it for six months now. Not everyone has or can afford a Smartphone, I am very lucky I know, but it is possible to get these on PAYG and as they are getting cheaper all the time might be worth considering for your DH in the future.

School dinners. DD takes a packed lunch to school and I take one to work. Once a fortnight she does school dinners as it is Fish and Chips and I do a canteen meal as they have a curry meal deal and then we have sarnies instead of dinner. Makes a nice change.

I like walking so do most of the supermarket shops on foot. Nothing like limiting what you can buy to what you can carry! If we need milk or something really heavy DH gets it in the truck on his way home from work. Also my "bingo wings" are gone - nice solid muscle now. And my car only needs filled up every 2 weeks. And no car park rage. Sometimes walk 3 miles there and another 3 miles back depending on which one I am using. Hard to fit in time wise as I have a full time job with a long commute but it IS possible. Please note - this suits MY lifestyle but may not be for you depending on where you live. Obviously not suitable if you are 36 miles from the nearest town or live on a dodgy estate.

Someone on MSE who has a debt diary advocates paper money in a card for birthdays of teens/friends children etc which is something I have done when things are tight. Hard to find a decent pressie for a fiver/tenner including gift wrap and most teens would rather have money anyway. It's the thought that counts.

Finally BOOKS. You say that you are a book family but don't have a Kindle. Might be worth asking for one as an Xmas pressie as they are getting so cheap now and lots of FREE and/or cheap books, but in the meantime have you thought about bookswap sites such as Bookmooch or Readitswapit for getting shot of unwanted books and to get new stuff to read for free. Or alternatvely sell unwanted books on Greenmetropolis and use the money to buy new books or download it to your Bank account. Don't bother selling books on Amazon as fees are pants and too many of the same books for 1p means you will never compete with the big guys.

Must go as have just noticed the time and need to make the packed lunches!

maman

Brilliant idea to roll the shopping day on each week S&S!:T