It's a Whopper - need to pay it off!

Moneywhizz

There are few ways that you could reduce your outgoings but it all comes down to individual choice and lifestyle. With your income you could be enjoying spending much more on holidays and entertainment, which seems very minimal, but that may not be important to you. Also you could be in a much more secure position with a good emergency fund/savings instead of owing money on a credit card. Even if it is not costing you in interest at the moment. It is still a debt that will need to be repaid. As you have said the easiest way to cut back is your grocery spend. It really is astronomical and could probably be reduced by 30% with impacting too much on the way you eat. As you said in a previous post you are probably not giving your children a realistic view of life/finances as they will likely not be able to afford this kind of lifestyle when they leave the nest and have to pay their own way in life. You could also look at how much your cars are costing you but that could be something you do not want to change. It really is about what is important to you and no one can judge you for the way you choose to use your money but you obviously don't feel too comfortable with the size of mortgage that you have, so reducing your outgoings would free up money that could start to bring that figure down to a more manageable figure. I wish you well on your journey. 

kazwookie

Food is a good place to start.

Gather up for this month all the receipts and see what you are actually buying and where you are buying it.

Move down a level of supermarket products.

Do you have major stores already in, in the freezer / fridge, if so start using that all up.

Are you buying ready made meals or cooking from scratch?

Who does the cooking is a lot of food being wasted?

Is all the food served at meal times being eaten? or is it being wasted, either cut back on portion sizes or freezer the left overs for another day.

How much of the shopping is drinks, wine, beer, soft fizzy stuff for the kids, maybe that can be cut back?

How much food is chucked out as it has gone off in the fridge? (cut back on how much is purchased)

Get a meal plan together, the kids can help with this, use up what you have first.

Get the older kids to cook dinner one  night per week each, help with skills for when they leave for Uni.

Good luck

Grass_Roots_2

Thanks @Superhung @Moneywhizz and @kazwookie for taking a look.

@Superhung (what a name!) the gas/electricity refund  is a result of moving away from an old inefficient boiler mid way through last year.  After getting such a big refund I was hoping they'd also reduce the DD which was at £399 per month but they have advised on their email comms to me to keep the DD the same due (due to planned increases this year).  It is a big amount and I could give them a call to challenge that - will put it on the list.

Wish I was drinking Champagne every night - I promise I'm not ;-)

@Moneywhizz you make a good point about the cars - me and DH now share one car and we are funding the other for the kids (1 drives and uses it for work, another has her test next week).  This goes back to a theme here I think of us being super generous with the kids and not necessarily setting them up for future life!  It is difficult when you have 3 to change the strategy half way through the brood reaching these milestones.  Our plan is to keep the second car until the youngest has learned to drive - it's a shared resource for any kids living at home.  When a child leaves home they'll need to fund their own car.

In terms of holidays/entertainment this is probably a reflection of the last couple of years and restrictions of Covid - but when the world is back to normal I will likely increase this a little.

@kazwookie - I'm using a budgeting app for the first time this month to track all of this automatically - so far this month on Groceries I've spent £652.43 so have another £504 left.  Which now I write it down seems bonkers - I might adjust this down to £1000 for Jan so I have £347.57 left.  That's £24.82 per day which has to be manageable.  You've given some great ideas there to reduce the spend thank you.  My current spend I think is a result of fussy teenagers wanting their own thing - not eating the same meal and constant nipping off to the shops.  I get to the end of a long day at work and want to get dinner on the table at any cost!!  This month has been better with meal planning and some easier meals like Jacket potatoes etc.   

Thanks again all your feedback is hugely valued and I appreciate I may be coming across as a ridiculous overspender,  I'm just being honest to try and achieve my goals and your input is really valued.  I want to be someone who can smash this whopper of a mortgage and direct my money to the right places!  Hope to look back on this entry in months to come and think 'wow you've changed'

jennystarpepper

Just want to wish you well on your journey.  You do not come across as a massive over spender, just maybe not as thrifty as you could be  , but I like to think most people spend according to income.

As you have 5 in the house can you maybe cook one evening meal each a week (depending on work),  you could maybe sell it to the children as a 'when you have your own place and or are a student'.... meals to impress friends / people you date?  I think the idea of your daughter paying for her meal and your daughter getting friends to bring alcohol was great.  

Do your family know how to make some of the basics, a white sauce, Yorkshire pudding,  gravy (not  in a jug) a chicken dinner?  Cooking is not for everyone, so not everyone will be on board.... we have eaters and cooks in my house, lol!

If everyone makes a meal, you could then have one night for a takeout and a Sunday lunch / dinner and everyone can contribute to this?

Do you do a bulk buy when things you use are on offer, tea, coffee, meat, butter or cheese maybe?

I send my spare change from my bank a/c to my mortgage, so if I end the day with £ XXXX. 67 in my account the .67p gets chucked at it, it all adds up.  Same as with money from cashback sites and receipt app's.

Over paying does get a little addictive!

South_coast

You're not a ridiculous over-spender, you're spending less on petrol and haircuts than me for a start - and I live alone 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️! Seriously though, you're spending a lot in some areas, but hardly anything in others, so it's not a lost cause. You also have a fantastic combined income, so you've got a real opportunity to make some serious inroads into the mortgage. 

It looks like you have £1500 "spare" at the end of each month. Is that really the case, and are you able to lay your hands on that money right now? If that really is just going spare then that's an excellent OP right there without even thinking about making any budgetary changes

Grass_Roots_2

@jennystarpepper thanks - my husband does a lot of cooking - we kind of share it equally.  The kids are recreational rather than basic cooks (particularly my daughter who likes to whip up lots of experimental dishes she’s seen on Tik Tok!) Your idea of taking it in turns is a great one.  

@South_coast the last year has been crazy on our finances as we’ve completed an extension and money has been moving all over the place - so I haven’t been able to lay my hands on £1500 but going forward I ‘should’ be able to.  I’m going to focus on getting rid of MBNA card first.  

Love it that we spend less on haircuts than you!  I just have 2 haircuts a year and refuse to go back to pricey highlights and colour I used to 10 years ago.  I’m blonde going grey and it kind of looks like highlights (at least that’s what I tell myself). 

I also don’t spend much on clothes either.  I work with some glam people in media and get a kick out of fashionable folk admiring my latest charity shop/jumble sale find (honestly my fave dress I wore all the time at work pre Covid cost 20p from a jumble sale).  I’m very low maintenance on that front 😉 

Filo25

I will follow your journey with interest, I can relate to that feeling of concern, carrying £320k of mortgage ourselves which mightn't be so much of a concern if I wasn't about to turn 50 this year, really for us the problem was not being in position to buy until relatively late in life, so that leaves everything pretty back end loaded!

Like you just hammering away at the overpayments as well as we can, original mortgage had an end date of 2039, hoping to be done by 2031/2 with a fair wind, but obviously as I get older there is more scope for things to go wrong on the employment front, its also been more challenging as I am now making up for my earlier lack of saving into pensions by trying to max contributions at the same time. At least interest rates are locked at 1.39% until 2026 so that gives a bit more certainty for the next few years.

In my case it is paying the price for not being financially sensible in my younger years, life would have been easier if I had that light bulb moment earlier but I least I had it, and fingers crossed everything is heading in the right direction.

Grass_Roots_2

Good Luck @Filo25 and can relate to the challenge of balancing Pension/Savings/Mortgage Overpayments - need to make sure everything is being tended to at not at the expense of each other.  And agree it's best to have had your financial lightbulb moment and be taking action!

Wierdly I have a reputation amongst friends of being financially sensible - they see my low maintenance fashion habits and the nice house, but they don't see the massive mortgage that's funding it or the extortionate grocery spending!  So feels great to be honest on here and let all my financial secrets hang out ;-)

Busydoingnothing

Honestly, I couldn't justify spending £1200pm on grocerys but not taking the kids on holiday.. 
Other then the grocerys and cars I don't think your overly spendy.
By HP do you mean that you'll never own the cars? If not could you swop the cars to something that you will eventually own.. that way you won't need to spend that much forever. Are you smokers or drinkers? As a family of 5, I can't imagine how you spend that much. Sorry x

Good luck with changing it around though. 

LadyGnome

I think that getting the DC to cook is a good thing.  DS1 has gone to Uni this year and being able to cook has made a huge difference to him.  He did a full roast dinner for all his flat mates - they all chipped in and he fed all 8 of them for about £6 each. Having to pay for his own food and budget brought the cost of food home to him very clearly.  

Our mortgage was a bit lower but still high enough to give pause for thought.  We are in London so it was never going to be cheap.  What I would say is that even relatively small overpayments add up over time and as the LTV moves more and more in your favour you will relax a bit.  Remember that you will have so much equity that you could plan on moving somewhere cheaper as a cash buyer if you absolutely had to (you may already feel you are at that point).

I found with a big mortgage breaking things down into smaller goals helped.  I used to set myself the challenge of overpaying 1% of the original balance.  That was big enough to be meaningful but small enough to be doable in a reasonable timescale.