Affordable Budget?

tori.k

Rule of thumb the more in a household the cheaper per head, single people get the rough end of the stick, cutting back in groceries is fastest savings you will make. Take a inventory of what you actually already have in stock and look at how much waste you have each week.
It took us a while to adjust as the kids left home for ages I was still shopping and cooking far more than was required for a meal as I spent over 20 years cooking for 5, my own mother still hasn't really managed to get on-top of that one .

Your lifestyle is not in line with your income so consolidation even if it's possible will just add to the debt, you have to be brutally honest with yourself and account for every penny, only then can you break the cycle.

louby40

We are a family of 4 (2 tall teenage lads) and we shop in Aldi. We spend £60 a week on food. We cook everything from scratch. Any left overs are boxed up and eaten for lunches the next day.

In the past I rented out 2 rooms. I got £600 a month from this. It wasn't ideal but it helped me get through a difficult period.

Money_saving_maniac

Arnak wrote: »

Hi,

I don't have time for a full reply but this is relevant:-

Quote "My total income is approximately £250 per week. I take out £100 per week on a Monday from which I buy my food and anything else I need for the house. I'm divorced but have a lady friend who lives 100 miles away and spend about £75 a month of diesel to go up there twice a month. From that £100, I usually have £40-£50 left over each week. End Quote.

So that makes that this single pensioner spends about £50 a week for one person so I believe that for 2 people, 2 cats and 1 dog £100 per week is reasonable?

That does include such as cleaning materials etc.

I'll comment more later.

Martin

Hi Martin

The lovely ladies on the Old Style board will help you cut your expenditure. I know it can be hard if accessing the cheaper supermarkets is difficult, maybe you live a good run from them, but in that case for example it is worth investing in a cheap chest freezer and stocking it up in a monthly run to the supermarket.

My husband hates veg but loves fruit, so we eat a lot of meat (I'd prefer to eat less) and including packed lunches and meat dinners nearly every day, all food and drink and cleaning materials comes to £60 a week for the two of us, and we go short of nothing. We don't drink though cos neither of us are keen.

Dog has an expensive food called Nature Diet (because I am soft and stoopid) and his budget is around 70p a day including treats.

So I think that you definitely have room to cut down on your living expenses without feeling it.

I'm not going to tell you to stop the fags at your age I think you're old enough to make your own mind up and certainly you don't want your lives to be miserable.

You need to post more about the debts because some of them can be unenforceable (the devil is in the detail). Also is the house in one name or in two, if it's in one name and the debt is in another name, there's nothing to stop you just not paying it any longer. They can't get blood out of stone and can't take your house away. That's one reason you should think long and hard before you turn unsecured debt into secured debt, cos then they can....

PS I think the £25 a year clothing allowance is actually a monthly figure - sounds like something has got lost in translation.

enthusiasticsaver

I think £100 is a lot to spend on housekeeping each week although we don't have pets or smoke. My daughter has two cats and a baby and I don't think they spend that much even. We spend £40 at Lidl for 2 of us and £10 for odds and ends through the week. £200 per month on gas and electric is horrendous. We live in a 4 bed detached and gas/electric is £130 per month which apparently is above national average.

From what you have said about remortgaging to pay off debt it does appear as if you have been living beyond your means for a while. Your options are to increase income, decrease expenditure or continue down the existing path of overspending until you cannot make payments. It is never a good idea to turn unsecured debts into secured ones as it does not address the original problem which is too much expense for too little income.

Anoneemoose

There are 4, sometimes 5 of us and we spend £370 tops on groceries (a month), which includes things like toilet roll, kitchen roll, laundry liquid (I use Method eco stuff). I bulk buy loo and kitchen roll and things like dishwasher tablets from Makro. I also actually have to buy a lot of ready prepped produce because of my physical limitations, due to chronic illnesses.

So, your housekeeping budget is definitely something to look at. I also mainly shop in Sainsbury's - I know it won't be a popular opinion, but I just can't get on with Aldi or Lidl for general stuff, although I do still get some bits from there. This is just to illustrate that you can still live well on less than what you currently are.

Arnak

Hi,

Thanks everyone for all the replies, they have been very helpful.:D

I am not going to answer all the points raised as it is clear from your advice what we need to do.

I am going for option 1, see if we can get a secured loan to clear the debts apart from the mortgage which will leave us with enough income to live without debt apart from the additional loan which is affordable.

A 7 year loan will see it paid of in a reasonable time.

Option 2, Go back to Step Change and re-do our SOA to properly reflect our spending, it is clear from the advice that I had not made allowances for a number of items.

In addition, see if I can arrange a 5 year period to pay off our debts as that will be much less to pay out and be affordable.

If either of those options pan out then we must make sure we keep our spending under control.

Martin

dawyldthing

Like one of them said don't get a secured loan as half of it might not need to be paid.

£100 a week sounds a lot to spend on food and £200 a month electric and gas is crazy. Could you switch some of the radiators off in toms you don't use/ switch down the temperature as it should all help reduce the cost

Arnak

HI dawyldthing,

With regards to the radiators, done that plus fitted thermostats on each rad a long time ago.

When it gets cold I put on a jacket rather than turning up the heating.

The heating in the winter is set to about 15 - 17 degrees.

I've already had one stroke and I don't want another!!

24C - top range of comfort
21C - recommended living room temperature
**** Less than 20C - death risk begins ****
18C - recommended bedroom temperature
16C - resistance to respiratory diseases weakened
12C - more than two hours at this temperature raises blood pressure and increases heart attack and stroke risk
5C - Significant risk of hypothermia
Source: West Midlands Public Health Observatory

It's a BIG house...

Also :-
The Welsh Government's statistical release also states that approximately 285,000 of the households in fuel. poverty are defined as vulnerable households.

That is us.:eek:
Not that they are doing anything to help as normal.

We have all the insulation we can get so there is nothing more we can do as regards saving fuel unfortunately.

Martin

foxgloves

Hello Martin,
Just read your thread from the beginning. Just popping in to say that there are 2 of us (& a large very greedy cat) & we feed ourselves very well on £50 a week (£60 absolute max just occasionallyif we happened to see a good bulk offer on cat food or fancied a bottle of wine). The weekly £50 covers all food, pet food, household cleaning supplies & badic toiletries such as toothpaste, soap, deodorant, etc. We do our main shop at Aldi but also use Sainsbury's about once a month, Waitrose for ingredients we can't get in Aldi, as well as our local market for fruit & veg and sometimes local butcher too. We would both describe ourselves as 'foodies' & certainly eat well.....we're certainly not living on value instant noodles & the like. We cook everything from scratch, use leftovers creatively & make extra portions to freeze for a free meal later in the month. Before we learned to live within our means (we had 30k of debt at its worst), we spent around £100 a week on grocery shopping too. We still eat just as well but the difference is that we now plan. We write a meal plan every week which informs our shopping list, which we stick to. Wish I'd discovered this way of doing things decades earlier as it's been an easy way of saving £200 a month before we even started on making other cutbacks. Still, we live & learn.
F

GwylimT

Arnak wrote: »

HI dawyldthing,

With regards to the radiators, done that plus fitted thermostats on each rad a long time ago.

When it gets cold I put on a jacket rather than turning up the heating.

The heating in the winter is set to about 15 - 17 degrees.

I've already had one stroke and I don't want another!!

24C - top range of comfort
21C - recommended living room temperature
**** Less than 20C - death risk begins ****
18C - recommended bedroom temperature
16C - resistance to respiratory diseases weakened
12C - more than two hours at this temperature raises blood pressure and increases heart attack and stroke risk
5C - Significant risk of hypothermia
Source: West Midlands Public Health Observatory

It's a BIG house...

Also :-
The Welsh Government's statistical release also states that approximately 285,000 of the households in fuel. poverty are defined as vulnerable households.

That is us.:eek:
Not that they are doing anything to help as normal.

We have all the insulation we can get so there is nothing more we can do as regards saving fuel unfortunately.

Martin

How does it cost that much to heat one room?