Time to be an adult about this!

MFWannabe

You don’t need to sell the car, you need to cutback on groceries, takeaways and clutter purchases
Set yourself a realistic budget and stick to it, imo you need to allocate some money in budget to spends for each of you, but once it’s gone that’s it! 

You have enough income and enough scope to cutback to pay off the debts 

MFWannabe

When is your house insurance up for renewal? £360 per year is very expensive 

no_more_spending

Yeah in regards to the car it's more of a worse case scenario if we lost some income. DH doesn't get sick pay other than statutory and so we had what we thought was a hefty emergency fund in case something happened. And then something DID happen! So we have learned life happens and to roll with it.

Contents and Buildings insurance is seperate. The contents is usually about £100 a year so we put £10 aside each month to round up, we have some expensive bikes as we cycle a lot in the woods near us so it's a bit more pricey but we could definitely look around when it renews in June.

Buildings cover we have no control over, we live in a leasehold maisonette and the freeholder has a blanket insurance policy for everyone and we pay our share. When we first moved in it was £110 a year, after the cladding issues, it basically doubled. It was £215 last April so we put £20 aside monthly to cover this. 

MFWannabe

Ouch to the insurance 🙄

no_more_spending

I know right, it's frustrating that it's out of our control. My dad has a 3 bedroom house and only pays £105 ish. We have our 2 bed maisonette that is much smaller. Sigh....

no_more_spending

So I'm hoping this doesn't get screwed up by formatting. Sorry in advance if it does! But this is just a starting budget for March. DH and I are going to sit down tomorrow and discuss whether it is too generous or too restrictive. Thoughts welcome. March will be mission Less Food! Income         5350
Bills             -1630
Debt              -855
Expenses    -1150
Savings         -850
Sinking Fund -380
Left Over       485  Fixed is mostly DD's that can only change on negotiation/renewal. Expenses is flexible spend that we 100% can be in control of. I'm still playing about with the categories. I just mocked this up quickly so expecting that I am missing something somewhere. I will dig out my old budget spreadsheet but I stopped doing this (mistake!) as thought I could do it in my head!!!! How wrong was I haha.

Type	Category	Budget
Fixed	Mortgage	974
Debt	HP Car	220
Debt	Loan Payments	635
Fixed	Council Tax
Fixed	Electricity	75
Fixed	Gas	75
Fixed	Water	22
Fixed	Mobiles	25
Fixed	TV License & TV Subs	44 could probably trim this too!
Fixed	Internet	28
Fixed	Medical Insurance	213
Fixed	Life Assurance	39
Fixed	Car Tax	50
Fixed	Cat Insurance	85
Flexible	Cats	100 Food & Litter
Flexible	Groceries	350 Try to beat this
Flexible	Him Spend	100 As suggested, some guilt free money. May lower to 50.
Flexible	Her Spend	100 As above
Flexible	Petrol	100
Flexible	Gifts	100 Extra money in March as I buy flowers for the mother's and nan's.
Flexible	Entertainment	100 We really enjoy our date night, it's DH's bday so we make it extra.
Flexible	Hobbies	75    DH is part of a sports club, they have a weekend outing.
Flexible	Eating Out	100  No takeaways is the aim but afternoon tea w/mum is planned.
Flexible	Other Travel	25  for car parking and a train
Flexible	Impulse buys	0     This line is in in case I have any actuals (hope not!)
Savings	Investing	200
Savings	Emergency Fund	200
Savings	Fixed Saver	150
Savings	Holiday	300 Upped this compared to Jan & Feb
Sinking Fund	Car Insurance/Maintenance	120 Normal
Sinking Fund	Clothing	30 Normal
Sinking Fund	Gifting/Charity	150 Normal - Birthdays and Christmas
Sinking Fund	Building & Contents Insurance	30 Normal
Sinking Fund	Hobbies/Work	50 New in March.

enthusiasticsaver

That looks like a reasonable starting budget. I don’t have an impulse buy category but we do have household savings pot for things like window cleaner, garden waste subscription, cleaning products or oven cleaning service/small diy repair jobs. 

Is the plan to overpay the loan? 

tunathe_cat

Will follow your journey.... baby steps Smile and breath.... Hope hubbys health has improved x
Tuna

tiptoe_mouse

As far as the most recent Amazon purchases go - are any of them still within the returns period (usually 30 days)? You may be able to return some of them and get your money back.

Petal88

Will follow along! I too am terrible with my grocery and takeaway spending - I reckon we spend roughly the same amount!

I have a Santander loan too btw and it's really easy to overpay? The loan shows up in my app and has its own sort and account code so you can just pay into it out of your main bank account just like paying into a friend's account or whatever. Admittedly I agree it's even easier with the Halifax app! Just thought I'd share that info if it made your overpayments easier.