SOA help please

rainbow_wishes

Both OH and I have tried cheaper models in the past and have concluded that iPhones are our preference. We don’t have the latest models, never have just buy the same model each time which gets cheaper as the newer models are released.

You have a good point about the account fee though as we have recently decided not to go abroad for at least 5 years so the travel insurance isn’t as valuable as it was. I saw Autoaid have done a deal with MSE in this weeks email so will take a look at that

cms-help

rainbow_wishes wrote: »

We have found BT really reliable but it’s arounf £37 per month for phone and internet and other providers are charging £18 so it is tempting to change but working from home needs to be possible at least once a fortnight

You are right about grocery spend being a quick fix and I just need to be more disciplined with the trips to Tesco and coop and my OH needs to watch his spending at work. It all adds up so quickly. We used to have home delivery but it was about £100 per week. Aldi is £50-60, I even fed the family for £20 one week!!

I find we don’t spend that much on entertainment. For example, this month we went to a farm park on BH Monday for £20 for all of us and took a picnic. Spent £4 on ice cream while there. I had been on a hen do and had budgeted spend left over so treated the family. This weekend our spend on entertainment was £1.09 on a box of ice creams to eat on a walk around the local park. This coming weekend will be park and swimming so no spend then the last weekend we will spend £10 meeting a friend for tea and cake, have swimming and a birthday party on BH Monday. The gift for the party is coming from the Christmas/birthday account which I have budgeted all friends and family for 12 months (this is why it’s £125 pm). It has a little left over for unexpected invites. I keep a look out for offers on gifts in the weeks leading up to party.

The childcare costs are high everywhere but it’s not forever!!

Could this be where some of your "missing" money is going as you said you never had the £200 left over. You said you had a budget for the hen do but nothing like that shows on your SOA. I know they're not every month of the year but it's still an expense so if you had a budget of £100 for it, for example, then that's £8.33 a month. It's surprising how the little things start adding up (for example this month, I have son's martial arts tournament fees to pay of £25, he's got a school trip so another £15, a birthday party to go to which will involve buying a gift and feeding my youngest whilst eldest at the party and then all of a sudden I've spent £60/£70 in random things).

Gemsy81

I'm with you there on the iPhones....they are more expensive, but I have a mac for work, as I find them much better for graphic design (and a lot more reliable), and when you have a lot going on diary-wise, and lots of documents that you need to be able to access/save on the go, the whole Apple system is brilliant. Someone once told me that no one's time is free, even though we tend to treat our own time as costing us nothing - when if you are running your own business for example (like I am), saving yourself time can also save yourself money.

Regarding BT/Sky - I am sure I read somewhere that Sky and BT pretty much share networks, so their reliability and speed should be the same, and if your service drops you should complain, as they only make it better when they have a certain number of disgruntled customers in any one area. I am not sure if there is any truth in that, but the amount of time I see the Openworld engineers out and about 'tinkering' in their boxes, I wouldn't be surprised!

rainbow_wishes

Cms-help I think you are right. My husband has a direct debit for a subscription that he uses his own money for and I hadn’t included that. The way we have split it is our salaries go straight into the joint account and we have £175 each per month into our own accounts. His pays for the course fees and gym from the SOA and the £21 pm subscription. The rest tends to be spent on things he buys at work. Mine goes on my hair and waxing appointments and any entertainment for me and DS. I don’t really spend mine so it goes on the family. Occasionally I’ll buy clothes for myself but that’s rare. So if you add the £86 left in DH personal account after items on SOA come off and the £100 left in mine after hair etc then that’s nearly the £200 I said I could find! Makes sense now!

For the hen do I budgeted £40 from my £100 left over personal spend allowance and only spent £20 so I don’t ‘accrue’ for these things knowing I will more than likely have enough in my personal account for these things