Making savings before it's too late

tori.k

Paint is always a hard one as the same colour will look different depending on light and surface so really its a paint and see kind of job.
Council tax has finally landed we have a £120 rise this year but still means we will have a £300 saving in the new house, will help offset the cost of the gas central heating.
Life insurance came in at £68 a month and buildings and contents at £58 a year more than happy with that as we knew the life insurance would be loaded due to health issues.
its currently looking like we should break even at worse with the new house in the very short term with our outgoings we should be able to retire in 2034 :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

my buildings and contents are almost 600 a year. It is a non standard build and dh and I went through contents with a fine tooth comb, every cupboard and drawer and we ended up doubling contents cover. Everything is covered in this house, re-build, pv, solar thermal, stove etc. I will have to do a re-evaluation after I move

I don`t have life insurance and my ct bill went up by110. I do now definitely know that I will be getting that annuity when I have sold my present house and have cash, the peace of mind when I have a definite extra ££x every month, so I can sail through without belt tightening and hopefully leaving my savings alone

depends on the shade of grey pigpen, if your kitchen gets plenty of light or not

Blackcatsreturns

Pigpen, I think a dove grey white looks nice in a kitchen. Also with your existing colour scheme you could consider a soft lilac or lavender colour. Often paint brochures from a DIY shop have some nice design photos in that might inspire you to try something that you might not have thought of yourself.

lessonlearned

This thread is certainly helping me manage my money better. It is really making me stop and think about how to stretch my money. So thanks for keeping me on track with all your tips.

So far this month my food bill stands at just £79. The freezer is still well stocked so I am hoping to keep to my proposed March budget of £100 and am aiming to do the same next month. I have stocked up on vitamins this month and have more than enough cleaning materials and toiletries, so hopefully £100 should be plenty.

Council tax has remained the same but the water bill has jumped up by £8 a month. I did a quick search on the online calculator and I think i will go onto a water meter. Now that I live alone I think it will be much cheaper.

As each renewal comes up I will make sure I shop around. The next ones are medical insurance and travel insurance in May so enough time to do my homework. Am thinking about switching banks to find one that covers travel and car breakdown insurance. Need to crunch the numbers.

Life insurance....I am debating about this. I have savings to cover my funeral expenses etc, no debts, will be under the IHT threshhold and have no financially dependent loved ones to consider so do I really need life insurance now. One to think about.

Still no clothes purchases this year......although I did treat myself to lovely leather handbag £39 reduced from £110 and I bought myself a new 4 wheeled carry on case for £19 using a groupon voucher. I find the 4 wheel cases easier on my back - even a carry on can be heavy.

I am off to London tomorrow - sort of business. DIL found a very reasonably priced hotel and I used my senior railcard for the train, so hopefully my trip will not break the bank.....

Just done a quick projection for April and it is looking reasonably healthy. Next months credit card bill is not too bad. I can clear that from income and not dip into my savings.

Hopefully from April onwards I can start to rebuild the savings.

Just checked the water bill again, payments are over 8 months not 12 as I thought. It has not changed at all. Silly me. I will leave it alone for now.

tori.k

we are lucky enough that this is a bog standard house Kittie we actually don't own any item that's financially worth paying the insurance excess on internally so always just keep the basic contents covered in case of fire. we have separate outbuildings insurance to cover the bikes, kayaks and equipment.
All our interests are based outdoors a house to us is really just somewhere to kip and store stuff you don't want to get damp.
That's not to say im not house proud i do like a clean and tidy space i just don't own a lot indoors so there is less to clean but id be horrified if anyone looked in my workshop shamefully its organised chaos at best.

pigpen

LL you can have your water bill spread over 10 or 12 months if it is easier for you.

We trundled to B&Q today.. I have a lock and letterbox for my new front door OH has made.. saved me £750!!! I got black paint for the door in case it is not suitable for just varnishing. I got a pile of huge planters for repotting some bigger plants they were reduced to £5 so I will fling some of the boring plastic pots and have these big ones. We got a couple of pots for the kitchen plants which are burtsting from their pots. I got some paint for the bathroom woodwork.. and some hooks for the bathroom.. hopefully to stop everyone putting their stuff on the floor! Some new pegs.. and the most exciting purchase.. a new set of rollers... I love new rollers!

A set of dead bunks and a dead mattress went off to the tip so my front room has a little less in it and my front garden no longer looks like a skip!

I have a list to go to my daughters who has just got a new house so that will free up lots and lots of space in my house!

I have sold a beautiful summer top so my paypal is a little fuller and my house a little emptier.. I really need to get more listed.

My house insurance is up for renewal in May so I get to do a lot of price checking then.. I love saving a few quid and feeling like I got a bargain.. it does seem to have risen massively in the last few years though. I have a few items which need higher cover, a couple of pieces of jewellry and a watch and OH's macbook, his bike and about £10k worth of woodworking tools.. maybe I should look at those more closely for my new policy.. get him to do an inventory or something.. they would be extortionate to replace if the shed went !!!!!!!

[Deleted User]

pigpen I photographed the whole of the garage/workshop so I would remember what I have in there. I also kept as many receipts as I could because insurances don`t willingly pay out. I insured the garage for rebuilding as it is separate from the house and the contents were added to house contents and I have 3 bikes , two of which were expensive but I only insured the recent one

My last water bill was £120 on a water meter, last year it was £70 but I have switched the underground harvester off, I didn`t think it was clean enough for the washing machine

lessonlearned

I would definitely second photographing valuables for insurance purposes, especially if you have lost the receipts or boxes they came in.

Pigpen......Some great bargains there from B&Q.

pigpen

OH is a bit of a geek and keeps all the boxes.. but I shall encourage him to photograph and categorise and inventorise them all on a spreadsheet and cloud it.. I need to do the same for insurance policies.. I have a folder of the emailed ones and screen shots but some are only paper copies. I am quite organised with those and have a folder full of policy documents and birth certificates so if we had a devastating fire I pick up one folder and an external hardrive which has every single photograph and video ever taken of my girls safely stored.. and nothing else matters or would be safe to grab.. I probably have about £7k worth of pictures on my walls! lol

moneyistooshorttomention

lessonlearned wrote: »

Life insurance....I am debating about this. I have savings to cover my funeral expenses etc, no debts, will be under the IHT threshhold and have no financially dependent loved ones to consider so do I really need life insurance now. One to think about.
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Imo it's simply not necessary for someone on their own LL.

I've thought about it before and thought "Well - who would suffer financially if anything happened to me?". The answer is no-one. Not having a partner or children then no-one would suffer if anything happened to me.

It makes sense if one is half of a couple and/or has children. I know my father had some sort of insurance on their house whilst they still had a mortgage. That did make sense - as his wife (my mother) was either not working or only working part-time and they had children. That cover would have paid off the mortgage instantly if anything had happened to him. Obviously - it made even more sense in the case of what my fathers job was for some while (ie in the Armed Forces - until he subsequently retrained as a teacher).

For a single person - well...if I keeled over tomorrow - I dont have a mortgage anyway (and wouldnt be bothered about it if I did - unless house prices were going down and the house might be left in negative equity).

There should be enough in savings to cover my "departure costs" if I died tomorrow. If not - well the house has all its equity available for that to start with. If I had "children" that might be asked for that before the house sale had made it available - then I'd check carefully that there was enough savings to cover said "departure costs" - so there was no question of waiting for the house equity to be released from it having sold.

If one has a partner then (even without a mortgage to be paid off) then it probably makes sense. As we know - living expenses are noticeably higher for a single person than someone who is married/partnered-up (no-one to share the bills with). So - it makes sense for a partnered-up person to bear in mind their Other Half didn't have an overnight transition to the lower standard of living single people have:(.

But no-one's standard of living would be affected by me or thee "popping our clogs" - so we don't have to "cushion" anyone against a descent to "single persons standard of living" - as our death won't cause anyone else's standard of living to drop. If we were partnered-up - then our death would mean an OH having to find more than £1,000 pa extra for bills (as they'd be paying them on their own) and maybe other adjustments to "standard of living". But, in our case, "what the heck?"