Saving and Budgeting help

FireWyrm

RyanWarner wrote: »

We got the phone contracts out about a yr ago now we mainly did it because we didn't have any credit and was told that getting a phone contract would give us a credit history which we would need to eventually buy a house,

Put these words into a well known phrase or saying....Saw, Coming, They, You, Did.

You DO NOT need a credit rating to buy a house. A credit rating is a number that these 'agencies' pluck out of thin air and sell to mugs for £14.99 a month. When buying a mortgage, they will do underwriting manually! They dont give a monkeys if you can pay a phone bill, they do care that you have a stable job, history of stable income and you can afford the money. They will test this using real information and paperwork like payslips and a personal interview where you will be questioned IN DETAIL about your outgoings. Best get some idea of that 'detail' now. Tell me, if you were running a business, would you trust an accountant to handle your books if he said "well, you know, you spend some on this and some on that, but I'm not quite sure what you spent last month"....? Why do you imagine that handling a household budget of £30K annually should get less attention than business books?

RyanWarner wrote: »

We don't have film or sports channels, I thought £50.99 for all 3 combined was good, guess that's why shopping around is so important.

Really? You spend £600 a year for the privilege of veging out in front of a box to be spoon fed adverts that make you feel chronically inadequate and unhappy about your life and actively encourage you to spend more money than you have available?

I suggest that £600 a year could be better spent on either your new home, or some DVD's. At least you get to keep the DVDs. For everything else, there is catchup, or god forbid, something else to do with your time like read, craft, cook, decorate, garden, go for a walk, swift pint down the pub etc.

RyanWarner wrote: »

I know we spend a lot on our cats but our oldest one has a heart murmur so has always cost us a little more, we adopted them all for different reasons, for us spending the amount on them that we do is worth it, but yeah you are right we probably will end up over spending on any children we have to!!

Animals are a luxury item. They consume resources and give little in return. You should consider carefully whether you can afford to replace them once they are gone and whether the heart murmur one is really experiencing a good quality of life. I suggest you spend your money on getting yourself stable and happy. Pets come later.

RyanWarner

Thanks for all the input, I am getting a lot of valuable advise which I am going to start putting into actions.

We have got the super fast fiber optic broadband deal with Virgin, I think maybe that's why ours cost a bit more than yours Archi Bald, when the contract ends I will reduce it to the normal one which will save us some money.

Getmore4less, your absolutely right, we didn't have any goals when we took all of our contracts out and figured we could afford it so why not, hind sight is a wonderful thing! However after being on here and really looking at how much we are spending on certain things we are not going to make the same mistake again!

I am working on my SOA, just going through my online banking and seeing where the money is going is actually quite scary, we spend a lot more on drinks on the way to work and lunch than I thought!

Firewyrm, Pets are a luxury however they do give us a lot in return and right now we can afford to keep them all very well looked after, this part of my outgoings while we can afford to keep it wont be getting adjusted, that being said we are definitely not getting any more! The one that has a heart murmur is in no pain she can lead a normal life she just needs to have an extra check up each year and her pet insurance costs more than the others as she is 'at risk' of needing treatment when she gets older.

Thanks again for all the responses,

Ryan

getmore4less

RyanWarner wrote: »

I am working on my SOA, just going through my online banking and seeing where the money is going is actually quite scary, we spend a lot more on drinks on the way to work and lunch than I thought!

Normalise on annual figures to get better relative comparisons on where you get value.

Firewyrm, Pets are a luxury however they do give us a lot in return.........

Ryan

We all have different priorities, what is important is you understand what yours cost so you get the best value(for you).

It's down to do you need or want or are there alternatives that give the same value for less or things you would prefer to do with the money.

The changes don't have to be just to save, you can reallocate.

I have said this many times we swapped a regular weekly takeaway for another holiday.

That's where normalizing on a year really works for relative cost/value.
It's the small things that are regular that add up that we forget about.
£1 spend on every work day is £230(ish) per year, don't take much to have £1k(a holiday).


During the help you will get people that have different priorities that is very common some can be very useful to get an idea of what the low price point is for some things but for example £50pppm food does not buy some of the things I like even at the cheapest places mind you our local Waitrose has been doing very generous(75%+) discounts on overstocked meat and the freezer has been stocked quite well some of the year.