First Steps to Solvency

RelievedSheff

warby68 said:

@alt60
He's 6 , doesn't need an ipad at all - cheaper tablet or hand me downs. All mindset changes to think about.
I bet you will get ready for a change even with your RR. Once you've got your dream car, its no longer your dream car lol.

I actually think you are right. Once the mindset regarding money has properly changed the realisation will come that the RR is a massive waste of money and not as important as it feels right now.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Sounds like you've made quite a few self discoveries and made good progress since I last caught up
It's nice you're discussing things (past and present) with your wife, it makes life easier if you're on the same page.
Food is an easy save.... we spend £650 a month and we're a family of 7, also with 2 pets! That includes alcohol and basic toiletries too.  I think you could cut your budget to £400 easily.
Mobile phones are another easy save... ours cost us £5pm each on SIM only.  I have an Apple 11 pro that I bought outright, hubby has a Samsung Galaxy that he bought outright.  We keep our handsets for 4-5 years.
With regards to presents, I think you can trim heavily there.  We have 5 children and spend up to £200 each on them at Christmas, which I feel is a bit excessive, but we budget for it.
For the older 3:
- £125 on main present(s), we ask for a list to buy off. If they're saving for something bigger, we give them cash towards it.  For instance, one is currently saving for a gaming PC which is £2k, he's nearly there  
-£50 on little surprise gifts -2-3 gifts they don't know about (the list gives me a heads up on the sort of stuff they're currently into
£25 stocking fillers - chocolate, annual, socks etc
My younger two are 8 and 5... I tend to spend about £100 on them plus their stocking, occasionally a little more if I see something special.
We've found that plenty and if they don't, then tough
Birthdays, we spend around £100 on each

getmore4less

One thing you will find with a lot of threads  after the initial push fall into Monty Python mode where people go down the you don't need to spend that or live in a big house or drive a big car..... 
I live on.......

Your fundamental problem was you had no clue where your money was going.

That is basically solved and now you can now work on where you want your money to go to get best value for you as you know what everything is costing and how much you have to dish out between things.


My Monty Python contribution for today

With food the biggest win for a lot of people is waste management don't buy stuff you are going to throw out.

The second big win is buying reduced stuff and the best place (round us) for those is M&S and Waitrose especially for more expensive items like meat, fish, cheese. most of our meat is 1/2 or less the price in the cheaper stores(like Aldi,Lidl).

Picked up a couple of dry aged sirloin joints ~2kg each for <£9/kg last week,  a couple off seriously good Sunday lunches sorted.

Tonight is a 1.5kg chicken £2 that does us 2 dinners and a lunch sandwich.

(helps to have a decent freezer to stock up on the bargains)

alt80

@warby68 sure I would like to change the RR before it’s 10 years old but not going to be getting a Cullinan anytime soon lol. Would rather keep the RR or anything I’ll be able to get in 2/3 years time would be a definitely be a downgrade - not many places to go from a Range Rover every upgrade is hard into six figures. 

@RelievedSheff I don’t see my RR as money wasted - have to drive something. I want to clear my cards and stop having multiple cars on credit at any one given time but not going to fundamentally change the fact I am always going to be greedy lol. 

@ohdearhowdidthathappen / @warby68 interesting to see others views on kids presents. Wife spends a solid 6/8 months a year buying presents for son. By the time he opens them it adds up to thousands or has done past couple of years. Told her he’s got enough this year. If she wants to get him a new iPad Air she can do some more nails - £725 with the pencil and he’ll wreck it in five minutes lol.

@getmore4less chance of wife going to supermarket is about nil. Waste management quite an issue in this house she cooks something once and throws the ingredients planned a bit better now but she’s still throwing a lot of stuff away. Don’t like it tbh but not worth the whole ‘children starving in Africa’ routine and inevitable argument haha. 

RelievedSheff

You don't need to go down the starving children route, just point out how much the waste going in the bin has cost you in the first place.

I would hazard a guess you could save £100-150 a month on your food bill with proper meal planning and only buying what you need. That is £100-150 per month that can go towards the balloon payment on the RR.

alt80

@RelievedSheff I don’t doubt it. Just don’t want a fight or the inevitable ‘if it means so much to you, you sort it’ lol.

RelievedSheff

alt80 said:

@RelievedSheff I don’t doubt it. Just don’t want a fight or the inevitable ‘if it means so much to you, you sort it’ lol.

It needn't turn into a fight. You have both done so well at reining in the spending so far that this seems like an easy goal. Less food waste and more money in your pocket. What isn't to like?

ryanm8655

getmore4less said:

One thing you will find with a lot of threads  after the initial push fall into Monty Python mode where people go down the you don't need to spend that or live in a big house or drive a big car..... 
I live on.......

Your fundamental problem was you had no clue where your money was going.

That is basically solved and now you can now work on where you want your money to go to get best value for you as you know what everything is costing and how much you have to dish out between things.


My Monty Python contribution for today

With food the biggest win for a lot of people is waste management don't buy stuff you are going to throw out.

The second big win is buying reduced stuff and the best place (round us) for those is M&S and Waitrose especially for more expensive items like meat, fish, cheese. most of our meat is 1/2 or less the price in the cheaper stores(like Aldi,Lidl).

Picked up a couple of dry aged sirloin joints ~2kg each for <£9/kg last week,  a couple off seriously good Sunday lunches sorted.

Tonight is a 1.5kg chicken £2 that does us 2 dinners and a lunch sandwich.

(helps to have a decent freezer to stock up on the bargains)

M&S is great for the yellow stickers. Used to live above one when I was living in Clapham, would get a weeks worth of ready meals for 20p each one a Sunday afternoon, ha. Other wins included a £13 tuna steak for £2, that was M&S at London Bridge on a Friday eve. They would massively reduce everything on Friday nights. My trouble was I just bought stuff coz it was cheap and ended up binning it But with some planning you could save a fortune. 

Planning and organisation could be fun if the wife gets into it and by the sounds of things it could save you a fortune...get it though, it’s not something that comes naturally to me either...another reason why my finances have been terrible ha.

monetxchange

I agree on the expensive supermarkets and their discounts - maybe you could pop in if you see an M&S or Waitrose on your way home sometimes. I find the "local" ones are so big on reducing from about 5pm as they just stock so much stuff that it's more than they'll ever sell. Used to pop in one by a nice new build development and all the packaged fresh stuff was always reduced substantially.

theoretica

You are learning the importance of money management for a happy life - it might help Christmas budgeting to think how you are teaching this to your son so he can avoid nasty realisations later in life.  At six I was very familiar with being asked how much I would really use something and that the more expensive something was the more thought went into getting it.  And I entirely agree with others about the joy brought by small well chosen presents. 

Well done on other things - you clearly have the financial ability and are now thinking that way about your personal finances.  Something you said about not thinking budgeting applied to you reminds me slightly of the one lottery ticket I bought in my life - I needed to buy one, just to prove to myself that probability worked and I wasn't innately lucky (I wasn't).  Slightly wonder what would have happened if I had won £10.