Statement of affairs - read it and weep!

calleyw

Beetle wrote: »

-Virgin media is £35/mth plus calls. Should we stop it and switch to freeview?

You can get 3 for £30 and for £3.99 for ree calls evening and weekends to landlands.

So that would bring the total down.


Yours


Calley

plonkee

Beetle wrote: »

-Tunnel tag is for cheap travel through Mersey tunnels saves us 50p a day paying £50/mth

This can't be right. If you save 50p a day, thats at most a saving of £15 per month and more like £11-£12 if you only use it during the week. Is the tunnel tag £50 per year? Or £5 per month?

Beetle wrote: »

We are thinking of taking a mortgage payment holiday. Any thoughts?

Can you take a payment holiday on this mortgage? My fixed deal doesn't let me unless I've been overpaying previously. If you have been overpaying then this could be a good idea, but otherwise I'd see if you can manage without first.

PENSION 104.15 seems counter productive paying this much money per month for the future when you need the money today. see if you can put this on hold a while.

I wouldn't stop this completely unless you are sure you will start it up again. Its easy to forget and you want to avoid the situation where you get to retirement without any money. P'raps just cut it down a bit.

Beetle

Ok, few more questions then folks:
1) How DO you budget? I just don't know and never been shown! (Does that sound dim or what?!?!)
2) Halifax said if we have a holiday, they just add the interest charge onto the outstanding mortgage. Doesn't sound expensive. Thought about a 2mth holiday? We are able to have a holiday too upto 6mths.
3) We put £50/mth onto the tunnel tag. It's normally £1.30 each way to go through the Mersey tunnels but as we have a tag it only costs us £1.15 each way. The £50 each month covers the journeys through the tunnel and we use it some weekends too.
4) Should we just reduce the pension, say to £50/mth for a few months? We are very keen to keep it up as this is OH's pension which is a personal pension. He is looking into his company scheme at present, but at the moment he's paying into his personal one for now.
5) Virgin Media=Broadband/Basic TV/Phone £35/mth (not new customer's anymore otherwise would've been paying £25/mth. The extra tenner is on calls to 0845/0870/0800 numbers etc which aren't free on a mobile. I don't think we can get a better deal. We don't have a BT line we are on cable so can't get free broadband e.g. with Orange.
6) Mobiles offer 500texts and 500mins anytime each month for £35/mth per mobile we have one each with Orange. We occasionally go over the £35/mth charge but are trying hard not to!
7) Not sure if I can refer OH to A&L - we already have an A&L Premier account but the Barclays one is our main one. Not for long as intend to claim charges and then switch entirely to A&L.
8) Barclays account offers us following freebies: RAC, free mobile insurance per acc holder, free CPP, free identity theft protection for £6.50/mth.
9) British Gas maintain our boiler and central heating system every year for £20.66/mth. Although the boiler is 15yrs+ old, it is still in good working order so would rather keep on with the Homecare in case it dies on us!
10) OH's salary is paid into Barclays account. Mine into A&L. Should we combine the two, and siphen off a bit each month when OH hits bonus and/or overtime? That can then be used towards holidays etc? Or should we continue to pay into the one account?
11) Should I clear egg card debt and put on low rate loan with already existing £5k loan?
12) How much should we put away for everything else I haven't mentioned like car tax, haircuts, holidays, entertainment etc?
13) Car insurance is high because I have had one claim and have 3points. Although in the scheme of things, it's the cheapest one out there and I defy anyone that can get me a better quote. We live in Liverpool, and our cars are parked on the street overnight. Car 1 is a W-reg 2litre Volvo V40, car 2 is a Skoda Felcia 1.6 P-reg. We are on a very good deal and no one has come closer in 5yrs.
14) Little one gets fed at nursery so by the time he comes home at 6pm he's too knackered to eat "proper meals" but we do eat "proper meals" together every Thursday and at weekends. I don't buy fast food/convenience food and shop online. I have saved on average £30 per shop doing it this way since the beginning of the year!

Phew!

solventguy

I’m a new poster here, so my views may be naïve. That said, I save a fair amount a month.

The question, as I see it, is where do you want to be financially? What would be comfortable? What are you willing to give up to establish savings and see your money grow?

If I were in your shoes I would want to 1) pay off all credit card debts, 2) have some discretionary cash left over at the end of the month, and 3) start a cash Isa. So your outgoings need to be comfortably less than your monthly income. What things do you absolutely have to have, and what can you live without? If you don't change your lifestyle, you're not really going to get out of debt and start saving. As stated elsewhere, you need to also budget for car tax, x-mas, contingency stuff.

So, just two questions: If I paid you £140 to wear glasses, would you? Your contacts are costing you £240 a year; you can get two pairs of glasses at Specsavers or equivalent for a bit over £100.

Thinking creatively: could you get by with one car? This would save real money as you’d save at least £33 each month on insurance, cut out car tax, reduce fuel costs, etc. There would be some inconvenience, but you have to focus on how much money you are saving every day and month.

Your mortgage sounds pretty reasonable – will you really save a lot by moving?

Gemmzie

6) As I said, they won't cover you when it breaks down. And they'll stop making parts for it soon, then you're stuck and have to pay out for a new one.

headoutthesand

My boiler is 20 years old and i have taken out the cover with Scottish Gas when it broke down last month.

The guy came out and was able to fix it and replace the relevant part. Everything is covered under our cover.

I can say though that we did try 2 years ago to get cover through a few other companies and some said they couldn't cover us as it was so old.

As far as i'm aware some companies have access to more parts than others, so maybe Beetle's cover plan does cover her particular boiler regardless of age.

Scottishmummy

headoutthesand wrote: »

My boiler is 20 years old and i have taken out the cover with Scottish Gas when it broke down last month.

The guy came out and was able to fix it and replace the relevant part. Everything is covered under our cover.

I can say though that we did try 2 years ago to get cover through a few other companies and some said they couldn't cover us as it was so old.

As far as i'm aware some companies have access to more parts than others, so maybe Beetle's cover plan does cover her particular boiler regardless of age.

We are the same. Our boiler is estimated to be about 15 years old and although we have had to call them out a lot over the last 3 years they did eventually fix the problem. They kept replacing the pump when it turned out not to be the problem after all - after I researched the particular boiler online next time I called them out I mentioned what I thought the problem might be and bingo - problem solved. If it goes completely kaputt though we can't afford to replace it so will keep the homecare agreement for as long as they can keep fixing it.

Kaz2904

I didn't mean to cause offence about the meals- we used to give the babies chopped cheese and salad veg -carrots, peppers, tomato, mushroom and cucumber when they had a cooked meal at the childminder.
There is a link to show you how to budget somewhere on the right.
Please don't stop the pension and please don't take a repayment holiday. It may not sound expensive but multiply the cost over the 20+ years (or whatever) you have on the mortgage.
If A&L is a joint account then I don't think you can refer him but you could open a different one maybe via quidco?
You are paying 247.92 per year for your boiler. I'm sure you could get it serviced for less than that each year.
I save £140 a month for my yearly costs such as car tax, insurances and christmas/birthdays. Any others have to come out of my grocery budget. I always pay yearly for my stuff as it is cheaper for me (don't know if you pay interest for your monthly insurance payments) and I make sure it is bought through a cashback website IF it is cheaper to buy it that way!
Is there any possibility to downgrade to 2 1.6L cars? We have a 1.4 and a 1.6 but don't do a huge amount of motorway driving as we are rural. The bigger one is our family car and used for holidays. I take out cash for food petrol and spending money on payday. DH and I each get £80 pocket money and keep it in our purses. We keep £10 of the food budget on us at all times incase either one of us gets a call saying we've run out of soso, pick it up on the way home. We also have a family leisure budget so that the kids don't miss out.

headoutthesand

Scottishmummy - i'm starting to wonder if you have to same boiler as me - Thats what happend to me too when i was with direct line so i cancelled the policy.

My uncle was corgi registered and knew what the problem was but couldn't fix it without going through his firm so when i called SG they got someone out who had the part and now it's fixed.

We are in the same boat as you too - need to but can't afford to replace so we'll be keeping this policy tillw e sort something out.

I was thinking of payingmy £20 a month menage money into the credit union as of January so that we could borrow at a very low rate.

We were quoted £1000 loan over 12months total to be repaid £1063. I need to get rid of some of this debt first before going down this line though

Sorry for highjacking your post Beetle - won't do it again.

calleyw

Beetle wrote: »

5) Virgin Media=Broadband/Basic TV/Phone £35/mth (not new customer's anymore otherwise would've been paying £25/mth. The extra tenner is on calls to 0845/0870/0800 numbers etc which aren't free on a mobile. I don't think we can get a better deal. We don't have a BT line we are on cable so can't get free broadband e.g. with Orange.

I have been with Telewest/Virgin Media for about 9 years and I am on two for £20, which is phone and broadband then £3.99 for free calls evening and weekends to landlands. And that was put in place in the last month or so.

So you need to to call them and ask.

Before making a call try looking up http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk/ and see if there number that is free or you can use on the mobile.

Beetle wrote: »

6) Mobiles offer 500texts and 500mins anytime each month for £35/mth per mobile we have one each with Orange. We occasionally go over the £35/mth charge but are trying hard not to!

Virgin offer 300 minutes and texts for £10 a month. Not sure what the charge is after that. You do know that 500 minutes is over 8 hours :eek:

You phone must have a total call duration meter on it re-set it every month and check to make sure you are not going over. And think about each call before you make it. Do you really need to spending over 8 hours a month on a mobile talking and then text on top.

Yours


Calley