SOA help please

Grumpelstiltskin · 19 July 2019 at 9:18PM

TV Licence is £154.50 yearly if you pay in one payment.
More if you pay by instalments.

You keep adding to the amount you are spending on food I mean Cinema £22 for lunch.

I'm sorry but I just can't see how you manage to spend so much on food, my thoughts are that you must be throwing large amounts of food away.

Bogof_Babe · 19 July 2019 at 9:20PM

You have put 0 against benefits. Don't you qualify for child allowance?

greenpanda · 19 July 2019 at 9:33PM

Bogof_Babe - we don't sadly and are actually having to pay 'late filing fees' for the years when we did receive it and were entitled to it it but didn't do a self assessment.

My husband is currently also paying close to £500 in student loan repayments which should be paid off in around 18 months.

MovingForwards · 19 July 2019 at 9:33PM

Even your one offs you need to budget for, split the total over 12 months and update your budget. Make sure you save the money so you are not taking a chunk out of the wage to pay.

In a flat, no service charge/ fees etc?

You could probably breakdown your kids spends into your budget.

Double check what your OH gets as death in service benefit, work out whether that would be enough to clear the mortgage in full and give you six months plus of money to get you through before you will need to look for work, else you will be waiting for whatever benefits the government have. Make sure your OH has named you as beneficiary! Also consider critical illness policy.

Keep a spending diary for a few months, write down every penny you spend. This will give you the chance to see where you are spending for the sake of it, or spending because you have to.

Look into child benefit as you are losing NI payments towards your state pension. Again this is a future concern but needs to be addressed now.

MovingForwards · 19 July 2019 at 9:35PM

The child benefit you can claim it, but not have it therefore building up the NI payments; someone else will have to explain that side!

greenpanda · 19 July 2019 at 9:37PM

Grumplestilkin - it's difficult as I'm trying to give an overview of the spending but also 'incidentals' that come up. Obviously not spending £20 every single day (ie, if we ate lunch out) but most days I seem to. I don't think we are wasteful with food but clearly could massively tone the spending down and shop at more sensible places.

theoretica · 19 July 2019 at 11:03PM

I suspect you are falling into the trap that if you aren't working not only are you not earning, but you have more time to spend money! Can you make more use of time to save money? A trip to a cheap fruit/veg market that is a way away for instance, or putting time in to find a well chosen but less expensive presents. Making packed lunches to take, both for work and days out.

Jami74 · 19 July 2019 at 11:05PM

greenpanda wrote: »

HOLIDAY - expenses listen on this line are our general lifestyle non-essential expenses. This would be expenses such as childs swimming lessons (£180) plus meals out (sometimes £300) takeout (£80)

Did you mean to divide those figures by 12 to reflect approximate monthly costs?

I'm thinking £180 a month for swimming lessons is quite high, although I guess if it's due to your childs special needs then they're probably quite important.

What sort of meals out do you have? Is it with friends where you have to split the bill equally even if you only had salad and tap water? If so it might be cheaper to host a dinner party and tell friends to bring a bottle and desert.

Are the take-outs because you're both too exhausted to cook at the end of the day, or because you've not meal planned and haven't got the right stuff to cook or because you're indulgent? You can have almost the same for a lot less if you buy from the supermarket and prepare yourself.

Jami74 · 19 July 2019 at 11:19PM

greenpanda wrote: »

- it's difficult as I'm trying to give an overview of the spending but also 'incidentals' that come up.

I've found it's taken me a few attempts at doing the SOA and thinking of absolutely everything in terms of monthly costs even if they're paid yearly, before it really started to make sense.

Over time it's got more accurate and I get a monthly spend figure which seems far higher than what I actually spend most months, and then the debt (or lack of spare cash/savings etc) make sense.

I've just started budgeting for the yearly costs on a monthly basis, which initially felt like I was worse off each month but I know will mean that there won't be months that plunge me into debt when yearly expenses need to be paid.

greenpanda · 20 July 2019 at 7:14AM

Theoretica - you've got it! I think I've used spending as an activity rather than using the time to make better choices. I've started doing packed lunches recently but it's been a bad habit for a while.

Takeout is a mixture of bad planning and being exhausted at the end of the day. I'm going to pick up a few frozen pizzas today to have in the freezer for at the end of really busy days or days we are all home late.

The eating out costs have been so high as we usually pay for family members after they've watched our son for us. I think this is something we definitely need to stop doing. I'm a good cook with plenty of recipe books at home.

Thank you all for pushing me to look at what I consider the 'incidental' costs. I spoke to my husband about it and he said 'they are all one offs' but we are really having these 'one offs' almost monthly which is the problem (April - son's birthday, May - my birthday, car repairs, June - booked holiday and spending money for Italy holiday, July - car insurance extra fees as switched policy to new car) . I going to redo our SOA today and will post later on today.

SOA help please

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