Is it possible to make £500 a month

mennie

This is at the moment. But in a few months, my salary will stop.


I have some savings to cover the shortfall for a few months before our situation becomes dire

rosalie

If your husband is working more than 24 hours you should get working tax credits and the child tax credits sound a bit low too, also it's worth applying for council tax credit or whatever it's called once you aren't working as that should be reduced by 25% (different in each council ) also if you have to pay for prescriptions/dentists and can't get working tax credits you can apply for hc2 form to either give help or full help for this. Xx

Catwoman1975

The things that jump out at me are

£40 for a landline. This is very high.

Cable TV, no need, Freeview is free

£19 for contents, again high, I pay £9 and its not essential

£64 for life insurance. Seems very high and is it really needed?

£15 pet insurance. Cut this. I dont spend this much on my cats in a year of vet bills.

£27 Gym. Not needed. Walking is free

£15 for Holiday. Again not essential.

£3 charity. This can go. Charity begins at home

Haircuts - £20 a month. Cut haircuts to twice a year and just get a dry cut. Cut H's yourself with clippers

Your gas and electric also seem very high. I pay £80 a month combined for a 3 bed house.

System

I agree with some of the comments above but just want to add a few comments of my own.

You say contents isn't essential, well it isn't a legal requirement for sure but if your house burns down with all your items in it and you've got to start again you'll realise it was worth finding the money for contents insurance. I agree it can be cut though, I pay £7 odd without accidental damage cover and it has served us well so far.

£64 is high for life insurance, my husband has £100,000 of cover for £9 a month, as a smoker, and this is a fixed term policy for 25 years.

I would say NOT to cut the pet insurance. My cat, one of them, has developed a condition and the scan alone that she needs on her heart is over £300. That is a considerable amount of money to find and even if I did the cheap option of putting her down that would've come to almost a years worth of cover at £15 a month for the fees involved up to that point. Although I wouldn't personally take the cheap option with my pet as I love her of course.

Unless you can't afford food etc I would say not to cut out the pet and contents insurance as if something goes wrong you're going to be right in the mess!

ammiLy

mennie wrote: »

I have completed me SOA and would appreciate any advice


Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Monthly Expense Details
Telephone (land line)................... 40.5
Mobile phone............................ 22
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 24.3
Internet Services....................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 20
Haircuts................................ 20
Gym..................................... 27.5
Created using the SOA calculator at www.stoozing.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using other browser.

My comments:
If your landline does not include internet it is very expensive! If it does, it's ok.
Mobile phone can be reduced if you take out a SIM only contract (I've seen Vodafone do £9 pm with ok minutes & txts). It is cheaper to buy a new phone outright (unless you want a very fancy one) than get into expensive and long-term contracts. PAYG may be an option if you are careful with usage. Usually best to have same network as other half and other important people (parents, best friend) so you (or they!) can call free or at lower rates per min.
Satellite/cable is very non essential. Unless you are tied in a contract cut it out and don't think twice. You can watch Freeview, youtube and plenty content online for free. If you have to have paid-for tv, consider the likes of netflix as they are cheaper than what you pay currently.
£20 a month for presents sounds a lot if you are on a budget. Consider home-made pressies - anything from food to knitted goods etc. Buy in advance on sales etc.
£20 a month for haircuts again is expensive. If you dye your hair try at home kits, they are good quality and cheaper than that, root touch-up kits also available. In terms of cutting find a hairdresser that need to practice and volunteer for a nominal fee. In London you could go to Vidal Sassoon academy, they do anything from fashion cuts to bog standard few inches off the ends, also hair colour if you need it. Other colleges offer this too and I have seen threads on MSE about where to look for beauticians in need of models (hair, nails, waxing etc). Husbands hair can be cut at home.
Gym is also not essential. Can exercise for free at home, in the garden or local park. Playing with a child would cover a lot of what you'd do at the gym - cardio, core strength, weight lifting :T If this is used as me time (and we all want some of that) look into local council gyms on PAYG options. Council also offers discounts for those on low incomes or benefits, worth checking out.
Best of luck! :beer:

mennie

Thanks for all the replies


I know you are all right about the gym, haircuts, sky, etc I would like to keep them and make the extra money any way possible. If I can then I will ditch them. I will not allow myself to go into debt for any of these things so please don't worry.


Everyone says the tax credits seem low. I am waiting on a call back from a CAB Advisor to look into this further.


The Landline does include broadband.


I am tied into all my insurances, phone line, utilities and sky until September. I have diarised a month before to look for better deals and will switch.


The Life Assurance is all the mortgage insurances and a separate life assurance policy.


The contents is buildings and contents combined.


I have cut things back a bit and decided I need to make a further £450 a month to sustain this lifestyle.


I have managed to make £ 102 so far without too much effort.


this is from using vouchers when shopping, Crowd Flower, Top Cashback, Mystery Shopping, bank interest, money found on street, Cash for clothes.


I usually average £200 a month like this, so I am really hoping with extra effort I can double this


Some of this cash will need to be declared to HMRC.

mennie

This total has not changed at all in the last few days


I have £70 pending in TCB


I have just withdrew on CrowdFlower and not too far from withdrawing again


I am £5 off withdrawing on One Poll and £14 off yougov


I did find a 10p voucher in Tesco car park and have batch cooked loads of soup and Bolognese


Any more pearls of wisdom peeps?

Stefan234

Hi Mennie, try these sites:

textbroker.com

On this site you can earn money by writing articles and website content for businesses. No overheads for getting started, all you need to do is submit a trial piece of content so they can assess your quality. Then you can write as much as you want and earn money per word.

easy-rewards.com

This is a rewards site I use which lets you earn points and then convert these into vouchers e.g. amazon or iTunes vouchers. You could then use these to cut your costs or sell them on ebay, I've seen a lot of vouchers going on there.

One thing I would recommend is to focus on the affiliate scheme they do. Get 10 of your friends to sign up with your affiliate link and you will earn 25% of what they do whenever they complete offers. That means you can multiply your income on the site by inviting more people to it. That should help you reach your goal of £500/month quicker.

Hope that helps!

mennie

Thanks all,


I am up to £122 so far this month.


No way of making the full £450 this month.

mattcanary

Catwoman1975 wrote: »

The things that jump out at me are

£40 for a landline. This is very high.

Cable TV, no need, Freeview is free

£19 for contents, again high, I pay £9 and its not essential

£64 for life insurance. Seems very high and is it really needed?

£15 pet insurance. Cut this. I dont spend this much on my cats in a year of vet bills.

£27 Gym. Not needed. Walking is free

£15 for Holiday. Again not essential.

£3 charity. This can go. Charity begins at home

Haircuts - £20 a month. Cut haircuts to twice a year and just get a dry cut. Cut H's yourself with clippers

Your gas and electric also seem very high. I pay £80 a month combined for a 3 bed house.

It is extremely sensible to have contents insurance and pet insurance. Just because you have paid less than £180 a year in vet bills, doesn't mean everyone does. That is what insurance is in place for - to cover large, unexpected bills!


Life insurance is critical if you have a family. Perhaps OP has pre-existing conditions that means the premium is quite high.


£3.00 payments a month to charity is nothing and not worth quibbling over. One pint a month costs less.


£15.00 per month towards holidays is very low. Hardly lavish.


I do tend to agree that the gas and electric bills can be cut down somewhat though..

And how about paying off the credit card debt of some £2000 with some of the cash savings of £4500?
Would still have quite substantial savings left. I think it is advised that people should aim for around two months salary in instant access savings. £2500 would still leave this and more. It also wipes off £25.00 per month in interest payments (without the debt decreasing very much, if at all I would have thought).