It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!!

MallyGirl

Ours is a Victorian but double fronted with sashes and bay windows. I don't begrudge him the cost as it looks so much better afterwards and we really can't do it ourselves. OH fractured a vertebra when he fell off a ladder so we don't do ladders anymore.

Bravepants

michaels said:

Bravepants said:

Food & Household	99.23	430.00	5160.00: We pay this for a family of 5 but we are tight
Council Tax	27.04	117.19	1355.85 This is half what we pay but our heating (24/7 as DW does not work) is similar to yours, could you improve efficiency in your heating (our house is 160m2)?
Cleaner	0.00	0.00	0.00
Energy (Gas & Elec)	30.00	130.00	1560.00
Water	7.85	34.00	408.00
Mazda Maintenance	7.69	33.33	400.00
Phone and Broadband	8.31	35.99	431.88 Worth shopping around every time your contract ends, we just renewed fibre broadband and after cashback will be paying £15 pm
Car Road Tax	0.58	2.50	30.00
Car Insurance	4.75	20.58	247.00
The AA	2.75	11.90	142.80 Do you need this brand, there are much cheaper 'full service' offerings.
TV Licence	3.24	14.04	168.48
Solid Fuel for Stove	2.69	11.67	140.00
House Insurance	2.31	10.00	120.00
Sky	2.31	10.00	120.00
Mobile 4G	2.46	10.66	127.92
Window Cleaner	2.00	8.67	104.00
Canary Security	1.52	6.60	79.20
Ring Camera (Front) Plan	0.48	2.08	24.99
Heating Servicing	0.77	3.33	40.00
NowTV - TV	2.07	8.99	107.88 If you shop around for vouchers, threaten to cancel etc you can probably get this down to £4pm
Carbonite Backup	2.19	9.47	113.64 We use Microsoft cloud for our backups that has 1tb free cloud storage with an office 365 subscription that is about £50pa
Chimney Sweep	0.96	4.17	50.00
Total	203.20	915.17	10931.64

Always fascinated by peoples' budgets. Mine is above. Monthly figures in bold. This doesn't include "pocket money" for each of us nor house/garden maintenance costs. My partner and I also pay petrol for cars out of our own money; although normally I generally walk to work (when I'm there!). Also, I have just started cycling, so that will save a bit more petrol in general too.

Some comments inline

In our annual budget I also include an allowance for car depreciation, house repairs/upgrades etc, it is obviously not spent most years but captures the big one offs.

Thanks for your comments michaels.

Food and Household: Yes, this is quite big for us, but it provides some leeway. We are with TSB and use the Save the Pennies facility, and we always have spare in the account at the end of the month, just in case we need to spend on small household repairs etc. So it provides a buffer. My partner does most of the shopping...she likes Asda's Yellow Labels and always hits the local Lidl at 8am on a Friday morning to get the offers. I can't imagine a more efficient spending machine than my missus!

The AA: Yes I know there are cheaper, but these guys are good. Used them last year when our Mazda 6 lost its coolant, and the AA attendant clipped the hose back on (the hose-clip had failed), filled us up and then followed us home 60 miles to make sure we were OK. The AA app is great. We always haggle the price each year, so the price you see here is about £50 less than normal. We haggle every year and ALWAYS get a reduction. I wouldn't want to be without AA.

NowTV: I went with Now TV for phone and broadband too. I had previously been with BT where we were paying £65 just for phone and broadband because of our compacency! I'm happy with NowTV. I personally also pay for Prime Video, Amazon Music HD, and Netflix - it's only a few pounds each month, but we like our entertainment! We still have Sky on the £10 a month (this just covers recordning and HD) we only have it because there is stuff on our planner that my missus wants to watch. We intend to go Free Sat at some point soon. So we will save the tenner!

Heating: Most of our energy use is electricity, our gas heating bill is pretty low living in a terraced house. We leech heat from the neighbours! :-)  

Carbonite: This is very interesting. I didn't realise Microsoft Cloud provides 1 TB free! Looks like £4 per month for the Office 365 subscritpion? I will take a look. I run a small PC (Gigabyte Brix) as a file server (photos, music, houseold files etc.), Carbonite saved my life the other month when the hardrive crashed! Took about a week to restore 250GB of files to my main PC! No longer use the Gigabyte for storage like that, as it's been a bit unreliable, but want to invest in an external hard-drive for local backup. I will chaeck out Office 365.

In general my aim is to try to keep our necessities ike the above below about £1000 a month. Not sure how long I can do that with inflation though, but as I say we have a good buffer.

I should say we also each pay £50 into a "Holiday" fund account each month. If something big comes along needed on the house, or a "new" car (like last year) then we each chip in half.

Sea_Shell

DH does our windows currently.  Luckily we have uPVC which pivot so you can do outside from inside, so no ladders involved!!   Although there is always the possibility of falling out of the window 😂

It is another thing that we will undoubtedly have to pay for as we age...but while we still can, we will.

Done a couple more Lifepoints surveys this morning, and have enough points for another £5 voucher.   Woo.

fred246

I was going to say that your bird should learn how to defend itself but I thought I should Google canary security first so I discovered what it was.

Bravepants

fred246 said:

I was going to say that your bird should learn how to defend itself but I thought I should Google canary security first so I discovered what it was.

Indeed! Canary is quite good. I only have two cameras at the moment, and the price per month is fixed for up to 5 devices. The canary cameras are quite expensive though. I bought a RIng camera for the front of my house, so I can see how that particular make compares, and it has some features that Canary don't provide. I only bought the RIng because, during the first month of lockdown, a neighbour of ours posted a video on Facebook from her front door camera showing some scally trying her front door in the dead of night (3am)! 

Audaxer

Bravepants said:

Food & Household	99.23	430.00	5160.00
Council Tax	27.04	117.19	1355.85
Cleaner	0.00	0.00	0.00
Energy (Gas & Elec)	30.00	130.00	1560.00
Water	7.85	34.00	408.00
Mazda Maintenance	7.69	33.33	400.00
Phone and Broadband	8.31	35.99	431.88
Car Road Tax	0.58	2.50	30.00
Car Insurance	4.75	20.58	247.00
The AA	2.75	11.90	142.80
TV Licence	3.24	14.04	168.48
Solid Fuel for Stove	2.69	11.67	140.00
House Insurance	2.31	10.00	120.00
Sky	2.31	10.00	120.00
Mobile 4G	2.46	10.66	127.92
Window Cleaner	2.00	8.67	104.00
Canary Security	1.52	6.60	79.20
Ring Camera (Front) Plan	0.48	2.08	24.99
Heating Servicing	0.77	3.33	40.00
NowTV - TV	2.07	8.99	107.88
Carbonite Backup	2.19	9.47	113.64
Chimney Sweep	0.96	4.17	50.00
Total	203.20	915.17	10931.64

Always fascinated by peoples' budgets. Mine is above. Monthly figures in bold. This doesn't include "pocket money" for each of us nor house/garden maintenance costs. My partner and I also pay petrol for cars out of our own money; although normally I generally walk to work (when I'm there!). Also, I have just started cycling, so that will save a bit more petrol in general too.

It's most detailed than mine, but I also include petrol for cars and any household bills, and any individual spend just under a heading of 'Other' if it does not fit into any of the other categories. That is just so I can see an amount each month for Total Spend which can vary quite a bit from month to month.

Interesting to see that your monthly window cleaning bill is nearly as much as your monthly house insurance. Our window cleaner is very cheap at £5 every 6 weeks, whereas our House Insurance is a lot more expensive at £30 per month.

Amateurretiree

Our rough budget pcm

Food           400
Council Tax 160
Gas.              70
Electric.         40
Water.             32
Insurances.     150 ( Life/House/Boiler/Sky etc)
Mobiles (2).      32
BT                     50(Broadband and Landline)
Windowcleaner. 12
Sky.                     35
Grandaughter      150(uni fund- she is only 2!)

so that just about takes care of my NHS pension and we use DH’s SIPP for holidays( we normally have 2-3 long haul a year and will do until health stops us, have had to cancel both this year obviously same as everyone else).
Meals out, decorating, presents , non food shopping etc also comes out of DHs money, though obviously this is all discretionary so can be adjusted if needs be.

merlin321

No one seems to be mentioning hairdressing in their  monthly budgets. Mine is a tenner each time and the wife about £50 a go!
So far I reckon we've saved at least £140 since lockdown.  Wife's hair untouched, still looks fine to me. I just use a ebay trimmer, and will carry on when barbers reopen. Can't persuade the wife to Diy tho.

Sea_Shell

merlin321 said:

No one seems to be mentioning hairdressing in their  monthly budgets. Mine is a tenner each time and the wife about £50 a go!
So far I reckon we've saved at least £140 since lockdown.  Wife's hair untouched, still looks fine to me. I just use a ebay trimmer, and will carry on when barbers reopen. Can't persuade the wife to Diy tho.

My budget included hairdressing under "health and beauty".  Only £30 every 8 weeks, no colour, just cut (v short).

I do DHs myself with clippers.

Sea_Shell

I made another 2 masks yesterday, one each.   I ordered some elastic, which came, and I've butchered an old t-shirt.    Got another 3 squares worth, so will probably make some more today.     Will keep with us when we eventually go out, incase they are mandatory for entry anywhere.

We really want to start doing some days out, somewhere, anywhere!!!   (I did look at posting on the UK travel board but its been closed)   Where has anyone else been, since we've been allowed to venture further than the supermarket?   How have you found it "out there"?