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

Kim1965

Has any one tried Iptv?
 Looking at it instead of sky, currently sky, bt sport, netflix costs around £95 per month. Iptv costs £10pm.
Daffodil, do the cat expenses cover insurance and food? 

Daffodil1234

Kim, not heard of LPTV but this looks interesting.  (We have Sky currently).

Cat expenses - yes it covers cattery, pet insurance, annual vaccinations etc and regular flea /worm treatments.  We've also been looking at the most effective way to buy good quality cat food and have found it works well to buy big bags of pet food (4 kg size) from Amazon, rather than buying smaller size boxes from supermarkets.

Sea_Shell

SouthCoastBoy said:

Thanks for info, I'm interested in fees as currently with h&l but they too are expensive so looking to move, currently interactive investor is where I'm planing yo go. Do you have the link to the other thread? Thks

Being discussed here...

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79738104/#Comment_79738104

Not my thread 😉

swindiff

IPTV Internet protocol television. Depends on if you are concerned about its legality or not. There are legal IPTV subscriptions, but the ones that offer Sky movies and Sports at huge reductions certainly aren't.

Sea_Shell

We've recently dumped Sky for a firestick on Prime!!

Ads are a bit of a pain (on ITV etc) but we'll suck that up for a saving of over £30 a month!!!

michaels

Daffodil1234 said:

Wishing everyone a good 2023 !

Closed off the 2022 accounts - while we are not yet retired, we're trying to live "as if" so that we can check what budget we need to plan for - with the hope to move into retirement within a couple of years.

Totals came out as below at £29k spend for 2 adults.  Looking at this, I can see we could have been more restricted on spending on some items.  We're budgeting £30k for 2023 and will probably aim to reduce spend on some of the categories below.

Categories	Actual Spend per year 2022
Bills (household inc gas, elec, water, council tax, insurance etc)	£6,515
"Supermarket", inc all food and drink plus any other items typically bought for the household from a supermarket (e.g. loo roll, household cleaners, cat food)	£5,741
Discretionary & Leisure (e.g. hobbies, days out, visiting relatives, occasional meals out)	£5,722
Personal care (inc clothes, shoes, haircuts etc)	£2,148
Holidays	£1,761
Transport and travel (car inc insurance, MOT, petrol, parking, bus, train)	£1,743
Tech and Comms - broadband, phone bill per month, TV licence, anti virus software, tech upgrades, etc	£1,617
Health care (inc prescriptions, dentistry, optician, some specialist health items)	£1,304
Cat (inc vet etc)	£746
Exercise (gym membership)	£510
Presents / Gifts	£469
Charitable donations	£432
Cash	£260
Totals	£28,967

When I do an annual budget I do 'accruals' for big one of spends which I count even if they are not spent in any particular year.  For example if I anticipate changing car every 5 years and the cost of the change is £10k (eg new to me car 15k, sale of old car 5k) then I will put down car expenditure 2k per year into my budgeting.  Similarly for household maintenance expenditure, new boiler/settee/white goods.  I feel I then have a more realistic view of the actual annual spend needed to maintain my lifestyle.

Dizee123

End of Year accounts and variance from 2021 figures for spends.

Income:  I am currently bridging the gap before claiming my deferred civil service pension in Jul 23.
Standard Life AVC pot - Last bit of tax free sum and irregular drawdown - £14,020
L&G AVC pot (small pot taken in entirety) - £4,992
Other income towards bills (from partner) - £5,720
Total In - £24,732

Spends
Category                 2021          2022          Variance
Food & Drink            5326          6546          +1,220
Clothes/Hair/Beauty 306            289             -17
Motoring/Transport   1922          2281          +360
Pets                           2997         3015           +18
Leisure/Holidays       1060         1231           +171
Household Bills          6944        7155           +210
Maint/Decor/Garden  1430         1426           
Presents/Gifts            998           1065           +66
Misc.                          369            385
Totals Out                 21,352       23,383        +2,041

Capital Spends (Separate Pot)
New boiler and replacement pipework - £3,000
Log Burner - £3,000 (loving the warmth in our formerly cold lounge, but definitely not a money saving investment).
Replacement Bathroom Window -  £638

Observations
- Bit of a panic when the cost of living panic hit, but tightened up on energy use and managed to keep energy spend to £1500 for year - DD was more, but have a nice credit balance to carry forward to next year.
- My lovely son moved back in with us in October (and part time children) so food/drink rocketed in the last quarter, as well as the inflationary aspect.  He is rebuilding his finances, so not charging rent/board unless things go up much more.
- Tried to minimise petrol costs by walking more and using public transport, but still up on last year.
- We lost our eldest dog in October after what seemed like 2 years of illness and resultant expensive vets bills, not all covered by insurance due to her age.  No regrets, dogs are family and she was an amazing companion for 14 years.  This also explains lack of holiday spend as we didn't want to leave her.
- Due to the market vagaries, I have used my cash savings to supplement my drawdown when funds took a hit.  It helped when interest rates went up and the cash returns rose which helped balance out the SIPP losses a little.
- I have ignored my small Fidelity S&S ISAs (£20K) apart from putting the usual monthly contribution in.  It was just too depressing to see money going in and the totals going down!
 - With 6 months to go to claiming deferred pension I am happy with my strategy to live off my AVC pot for 2 years despite the interesting world situation and the government doing its best to mess up our economy...... I shouldn't need to claim it early, and it should revalue by CPI in April (bonus ).  Doesn't make up for the lack of pay rises in the last 10 years before retirement though, but don't want to kick off another public/private sector pension debate!!!  My tennis and general health has improved, my garden and house are looking tidier than they have ever done, and I have time for walking, reading and spending time with friends, family and am lucky enough to see my grandchildren growing up.
- My partner and I have some complicated separation of finances which we are going to be looking at this summer.  He is currently feeding a private pension to equalise pension provision and renovating a house in case anyone is wondering why we don't have a 50/50 split....

Bit of a ramble above, but hopefully helpful to anyone bridging the gap from 58 to 60.  I still think of myself as one of the lucky generation who had good DB pension provision and often say thank you to younger self for sticking at civil service career for the long term (even when the work politics ruined most of the enjoyment )

SarahB16

Sea_Shell said:

We've recently dumped Sky for a firestick on Prime!!

Ads are a bit of a pain (on ITV etc) but we'll suck that up for a saving of over £30 a month!!!

You could always buy a PVR (personal video recorder) if you know what you are going to watch and record it (episode or series) and then when you watch if via your PVR you can fast forward through the adverts.  

Apologies if you know this already but a PVR is like an old school VHS video recorder but you record onto the hard drive (instead of a VHS tape) what you want to watch and then watch if when you want to.  No subscription to pay.  I have it and it works very well if I want to record something on a Freeview channel.  I also have a couple of subscription streaming services too that I watch via my firestick.   

pensionpawn

Sea_Shell said:

We've recently dumped Sky for a firestick on Prime!!

Ads are a bit of a pain (on ITV etc) but we'll suck that up for a saving of over £30 a month!!!

With the size of your pots why don't you treat yourselves instead of putting up with the "pain in the a... adds". I'll never quite understand why people (including family and colleagues...) don't fully utilise the wealth that they have?

Sea_Shell

SarahB16 said:

Sea_Shell said:

We've recently dumped Sky for a firestick on Prime!!

Ads are a bit of a pain (on ITV etc) but we'll suck that up for a saving of over £30 a month!!!

You could always buy a PVR (personal video recorder) if you know what you are going to watch and record it (episode or series) and then when you watch if via your PVR you can fast forward through the adverts.  

Apologies if you know this already but a PVR is like an old school VHS video recorder but you record onto the hard drive (instead of a VHS tape) what you want to watch and then watch if when you want to.  No subscription to pay.  I have it and it works very well if I want to record something on a Freeview channel.  I also have a couple of subscription streaming services too that I watch via my firestick.   

Yes, we're aware such boxes exist.

We're going to suck it and see (it's only been a month) and if we get too annoyed, yes, we will get a recordable Freesat box.


We currently just use ad breaks to tidy up, pop to the loo and have a quick surf here!! 😉