Free By Forty-Five

Gaz83

So, been doing a bit of thinking today and decided that I'm going to try to cut down on my household bills a bit as well - then any excess can be paid to the mortgage as well.

I keep a spreadsheet that shows everything coming off. My bills for last month were as follows:

Mortgage £650.70
Council Tax £148
Life Assurance (Legal and General) £13.27
Trade Union (EIS) £11.29
Golf Club Raffle £5
Car Insurance (Aviva) £104.62
Buildings Insurance (Aviva) £50.60
Cineworld (£31.80)
Newsgroup Subscription £5.55
Loan £116.25
Mobile Bill £33.59
Virgin Media £76.24
Netflix £5.99

So we're looking at a total of £1,252.90. My monthly income is £1,525.73 from employment (with an £80 raise per month once per year for the next five years as I move up my salary scale), £81.20 every four weeks for Child Benefit and approximately £400 per month for some self-employed work I do (hence why I am able to make overpayments on my mortgage).

First impressions are that my mobile phone bill could be changed to a PAYG one. My phone is three years old now so I'm not in my initial contract any more. In fact I'm on a £15 per month contract but this has been overrun in the past couple of months as we've had continuous problems with our house phone, so I've had to use it for everything. TO DO: Call Three and find out how much to buy out the rest of my £15 per month contract (should only have three months left) and switch to PAYG.

Second is car insurance. My wife and I have replaced both our cars since January. But we've still not sold one of the old ones as it has a personalised plate and we need to transfer that over. Because of this we're still paying for its insurance. TO DO: Transfer plate over and sell car to cut down on Insurance. Our renewal is up in May so we will shop around as well to see if we can get a better deal.

Third is buildings insurance. When we bought our new house and moved house in December we had a three-week overlap in our previous rental period. So I left it to my wife to organise buildings insurance and she went for, in her words, the full package to insure both houses. It seems excessive to me. TO DO: Check Aviva policy details and shop around for a cheaper deal that offers similar cover now that we're only responsible for one house.

Could maybe save about £60 a month from these three things alone. There are another couple of things that could be chopped down as well, so if anyone's got any suggestions, feel free!

EDIT: I've also decided today that I'm going to limit the amount I overpay on my mortgage to £349.30. This way the most I will pay to my mortgage per month is £1,000. Any excess will go towards paying my council tax (so that I'm not paying it every month) and the loan.

Gaz83

So today we came home from a lovely day out in Glasgow (Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, thoroughly recommended) to find our renewal letter from Aviva. Another year of great car insurance awaits you, said the letter, and you don't need to do anything to renew, it'll happen automatically. A yearly premium of £933! That'll be shining bright.

Phoned them up and told them we wouldn't be renewing with them and to cancel the renewal. Jumped onto Compare The Market and I've had two quotes for insuring both our cars for £191 and £186 for the other. Identical levels of cover. Happy with that!

gallygirl

Gaz83 wrote: »

That'll be shining bright.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Gaz83

A pretty expensive month this week - was away for the weekend to Oban with my wife and daughter and then been away this weekend with my mates for a stag do near Aviemore.

Still got a wee bit sitting in my overpayment fund and I've got some tutoring lined up over the next week or so, but don't think I'll make it to the £349.30 point. Will just need to wait and see!

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Hello,

You are doing really well. It is tempting to put everything to the mortgage but you do need to have funds for fun too, life is for living after all.

All the best,

Squirrel x

katejo

edinburgher wrote: »

You're always better to look around, unless you end up on a fantastic rate (for example, after the financial crisis, people got trackers at base rate + 0.5% and the like, nearly free money!)

If you can push it to 80% LTV, it gets better yet. That's what we are currently doing (dropped from 4.99% to 3.15%).

Main points for mortgage rates seem to be 100%, 90%, 85%, 80%, 75%, 60%, 50%.

Try to avoid product fees, they can be nasty if you're looking to remortgage every couple of years.

I have still got one of those low interest trackers! Currently base rate plus 0.27 which i took to replace a fixed rate in 2008. It means that i have paid off a fairly large amount of capital in 8 years.

Gaz83

Now that the car insurance is more or less sorted off (premiums of £40 per month for both cars, a saving of £60 per month on this expense alone) it's time to sort out the buildings insurance. Our policy with Aviva is £565.52 over the year. This seems very excessive to me. Having a look at the policy and my wife has put the value of our contents at £50,000 and unspecified valuables at £10,000! The only items of any real value we own are my bike and her engagement ring, and my bike's only worth £600 tops. I won't say how much her engagement ring is worth but it's certainly not £9,400!

Going onto everyone's favourite meerkat-associated website (other comparison sites are available) finds me policies for under £250 all-in. Just need to decide on one and then call Aviva to cancel - will try to get that done tomorrow.

Gaz83

That's the car insurance finally sorted then. From £104.58 per month down to £36.13, a saving of £68.45 per month!

Decided to keep my mobile phone for two reasons - now that our landline is installed and working, my mobile bill has dropped to £25 per month. I could have one cheaper on PAYG but my network allows me to tether unlimited data - it's a massive boon to me so not one I particularly want to give up.

Still need to get our buildings insurance sorted out. Then I'm thinking possibly our Cineworld cards - we used to go to the cinema two or three times per week but since we had our daughter we're lucky if we go once a month. We need to go a minimum of twice per month for them to be worthwhile. Cineworld gave us a payment holiday when our daughter was born and now that number 2 is due in July maybe they'll do the same again.

EDIT: Oh, and change the TV License to monthly. What's the easiest way to do that?