Need help :(

theoretica

Does your daughter also get presents from her father? She may prefer less spent on presents and more on holiday - worth discussing with her!

MissMollyJ

Hi

You have some easy savings to make here. Groceries for one adult and one child I would think should be max £200per month. Car parking another one to hit hard. Holidays can be reduced hugely - have you thought about camping? Very very cheap even in summer holidays and loads of fun
Along with some maintenance and you’re all set.

Good luck
X

CakeCrusader

We cat sat for a holiday once, it worked out well and we got an almost free holiday. £1800 is a lot for 2 weeks, especially in the UK. It's expensive to holiday here, you can fly to France for £40 return each, a small cottage would set you back £500 for a week so you'd be saving loads.



I stopped buying take away coffee a year and a half ago (plastic). I have a travel mug and I'll fill it up before I leave the house. It keeps the cost down and I get to do my bit for the planet too. I really do understand that you don't want your daughter to miss out, but a stressed mum isn't the way to go either.



There's loads of ways to cut your food spend down too, what sort of things do you usually end up making?

MissMollyJ

I carry sachets of lattes with me in my bag and take a reusable cup everywhere with me. The sachets are 0.80p for 8 or 10 in Aldi and I get a couple of boxes a week but that’s between all of us in the house. Easy saving!

fatbelly

DWhite wrote: »

Holidays - was a once in 2 years holiday. We had 2 weeks in Cornwall in Haven, cost £190 per month before the holiday plus spending money for 2 weeks. I didn't work out exactly how much, took a good guess.

The Haven & Parkdean sites are in the Sun £9.50 deals and we have a regular contributor who helps us to access them without having to buy the ruddy paper

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6080940/sun-holidays-from-15pp-january-2020-codewords

There's a batch coming up in the next 2 weeks.

It's easy to get a 3-day and a 4-day at the same site giving you a week's holiday. OK so it is off-peak season and you may have to move chalet/caravan mid week (or pay a small fee). But the savings are huge if you can find a date to suit.

You paid £1800 for 2 weeks. One week using the deal would be something like £38 +£38 + £52.50 service charges = £128.50, though you might have to pay a bit more for some site/dates.

clairebeth

Is there another mode of transport available to you other than the car? Particularly to get to work? Is it really worth the £500 a month you currently spend on paying it off and running it? That's the same as your rent and mortgage combined, but unlike your house, it's a depreciating asset! Even if you were to apply for a job closer to home with less pay, you'd probably still be better off if it meant you could ditch the car (and probably have a better quality of life!)

We are a family of 4 and spend £250 a month on groceries including nappies. It's totally doable, I promise! Put the money aside in a separate account or put the cash in an envelope and only allow yourself to spend that amount. Eat less meat and shop at Lidl as well as batch cooking and taking a portion to work.

All the best!

DWhite

I know the car is a big expense, but the town I live in isn’t really easy to get around at all without a car. I work the other side of town which would be a few buses to get there and back, definitely can’t be walked. Then factor in having to get to and from meetings for my job which can be an hours drive or more and the car is the best option. I didn’t pass my test until I was nearly 30, I lived long enough without a car!
I won’t be having another holiday in the foreseeable future. This is why the two weeks we had was so important to us to be good. It was a really great two weeks tbf. I can’t go off season due to school holidays. I was fined for taking her out for a week at the very end of her school year in which she was leaving primary school and was doing zero work because the SATS were done already. She smashed her SATS with the highest marks.

monetxchange

Okay, as other posters have said, there are a lot of savings to be made here. But a lot of the suggestions you seem to have a reason why you can’t implement them. I’m afraid there’s no other way round this than you making changes to your spending. Nobody’s saying your daughter has to suffer, but she’ll also be in a much better place in a financially stable home than one where she gets overpriced holidays and then sees her mum struggle unnecessarily the rest of the year. You can definitely do this and the first hard step of facing up to it you’ve smashed!

It’s madness not to apply for maintenance from her father. A child is a lifelong expense for both of you and should be paid by both as such, no matter who paid what in the past. Your wage isn’t high enough to fund two people comfortably and the father needs to pay his share properly.

Do you have Just Park app in your area? It allows you to rent drives/car parking spaces and is much cheaper than station or council parking. I cut my weekly £40 parking bill in half and only added a few mins extra walk to the station! Would definitely recommend.

Second all the advice on reducing groceries, haircuts and entertainment/eating out. Being on such s tight budget is only for the period of debt clearing, then you can loosen the reins a little when you’re clear, while still sticking to a budget plan that’s within your means. You can do this!

DWhite

which I’ve done in the past and hated the hair cut I’ve had as a result! What I can do is plan each month to put a few pounds aside to pay for it so that we don’t have to do that.
Parking wise, I discovered yesterday that the car park I sue will be closed for 2 years! So I have no choice but to find alternative which will be a 10 minute walk into an estate. Which is free parking so big saving there.

I’m off to an interview in a few minutes. The job is a 5 minute walk from my house so parking and petrol would significantly reduce if I get/take the job!

CakeCrusader

Best of luck with your interview!!



I know it's really difficult trying to find a hairdresser who understands you and is good, they are like gold dust! I look after mine really well, I don't blow dry it very often, I don't use straighteners, so I get it cut once a year, and I always make sure it's a good cut that will last and won't drop out after a couple of weeks when it's grown. Maybe have a chat with them. Some offer a discount if you book your next appointment within a certain time from the last one, or just tell them you're really short on time and can't come for another hair cut for a while, so can they recommend a style that will last a little longer.



Cars are vital if you want to get from A to B in some places, and buses can work out expensive so I get why you need it. I'd look for savings elsewhere (and do ask your ex for child maintenance, this is for your daughter's benefit, not for yours).



Food ideas for you to reduce your bill;

A whole chicken, not chicken breast or pre-prepared stuff. Roast on Sunday, chicken curry on Monday, chicken stir fry/chicken salad on Tuesday, and this is pretty much half the week sorted.

Jacket potatoes are cheap to make and really filling.
Pizza's are really easy to make yourself and cost next to nothing to make, the manufacturers and the take out places make an absolute fortune as they are so easy to make but sell them for £10. Basic ingredients - fine flour, salt, yeast, water. Passatta for the base, mozzarella cheese and whatever toppings you want (left over chicken is good).
Oily fish, so tuna with pasta, or salmon with the rest of the stir fry veg and noodles, or canned tuna pasta with mayo, sweetcorn and honey and mustard sauce.

Whatever you want for the last evening. Meal planning is the key, some of the ingredients you'll use only once, some will last for a few weeks so you don't need to buy them every week (like the flour, the pasta and the salad dressing). Avoid anything that's overly processed and 'easy to cook'. This just means it's expensive as someone else has done the work for you, it's the same with pre-prepared veg, it's often cheaper to buy them loose and chop them yourself. Write a list of things you need, but check what's in your cupboard first as you may end up buying something that you already have. Jack Monroe has written a few books and has a web site, there's a lot of cheap recipe's there; https://cookingonabootstrap.com/category/recipes-food/



My phone's with O2 and there's always eat out deals on their priority app. Sort your insurance out with the Meerkat whatever it's called and you get buy 1 get 1 free cinema tickets and food on Tuesdays for a year. I used to take my (now not so) little one to the park, museums and to the library quite a lot. It's free and we'd get out of the house. It's worth checking out the bus to get to places too as it may work out cheaper than driving and parking (it doesn't always though, it depends on where you're going). Train tickets are often cheaper if you leave after 9am (try megatrain, they sell off peak train tickets to London for £10 depending on where you are), we've visited London for the day, to York, Birmingham etc so holidays don't have to cost loads and can be day trips or a cheap hotel overnight.