To ask what your monthly bills are

[crimson72]

I'm trying to do some budgeting at the moment as DH and I need to tighten our belts. I was wondering if our household bills sound broadly in line with other people's, or whether there are some areas where we may be overspending? Here's what we pay per month on average:

Council tax: £110
Electricity/gas: £105
Water: £37.50
Internet: £21.50
TV licence: £12.43

We also pay pet insurance at £27.20 per month and home insurance at around £370 per year.

It all adds up to a total of about £4150 - which sounds like an awful lot!

I live in a two/three bed fairly small terrace in London and it's just me and DH - no DC's.

How much is your rent/mortgage? Council tax sounds quite cheap!

Sounds fairly average to me.

£105 Council Tax
£36 electric
£40 oil
£15 water (water only, no sewage charges)
£65 phone line/internet/2xmobiles

Insurance is £150 per annum, draining the septic tank is about £15 a year for each house. Three bed semi, rural location so petrol costs tend to be high as no public transport

We're basically identical in both situation and spend, except we don't insure the cats - we're lucky enough to be able to absorb surprise vet bills and the last 20 years they've collectively been fit as a fiddle up until dropping dead.

Your bills apart from the TV licence are specific to your own circumstances so what others pay isn't helpful to you. What do you gain by knowing how much I pay for my cat insurance for example?

Once you've been on the comparison sites for utilities and insurance to make sure you've got the best deals you can look at saving more by cutting consumption on utilities.

It's boring and common sense but if you want to save money it's what you need to do.

Your bills are fairly average and probably a relatively small fraction of your income.

You could possibly cut back a little, but your rent/mortgage, and spending on food, travel and possibly discretionary personal spends are probably far more significant part of your budget, and where you should look to cut back if you need to. Or see if you can increase your income.

There are only two of us, and that sounds about right.

The biggest savings I could find were moving to non- branded food.

We spent a weekend doing live taste tests and found we couldn’t tell the difference for about 40% of our shopping. Saved us about £1400 a year.

If you want to review things in a systematic, thorough manner, you'll probably find this useful:

www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/Budget-planning/

Your gas and electric is a bit higher than mine (£81 a month, three bed semi, outskirts of London). I switch deals every time the current one expires, our boiler is new and we have a well insulated loft so might be that though.
I'm presuming that home insurance figure is building and contents combined?

Pretty much the same here. We also both have life insurance which is £18 a month, both have contract phones which are £90 a month, home insurance is £10 a month and mortgage is £380 a month. Pet insurance is only £4 a month for the cat. Don’t pay TV licence because we never watch TV. Then there’s the car which is about £150 a month all in I’d say. Then there’s Netflix, amazon prime and DP has an Experian account.

That’s the crux of it but the rest of our bills are similar amounts to you. We spend in the region of £250 a month on food but that’s with three DC.

If that council tax is right then your house insurance and fuel bills are high.Time to pop over to MSE and see if you can do better.
I live in a 3 bed semi,fuel £50pcm(in credit thanks to a nice summer),insurance £150 for building and contents,legal cover and and emergency call out thing that they were offering cheap.
My council tax is a bit higher,my water£30 pcm.
My biggest expense is the car but living rurally means dwindling bus service.My petrol bill is now an eye watering £180pcm.

mortgage £2200
Council tax 256
gas/lecky 99
groceries 600
x2 life insur 110
childcare 380
diesel 180
house insur 15
water 75
tv/net/mobile 46
car savings 75 (14 year old car needs money put aside for repairs)
car insur 75
car parking 80

one of the midlands so-called "fancier" area. house is too big for us, looking to downsize in a year and 2 small children.

its a lot of pressure - still, we chose to live this way.

total £4191, income is £5800 pcm

Your water is cheap, gas/lecki high if just the two of you?
Internet is cheap.
Rest average.

Forgot your house insurance that’s very high also.

yes, your house insurance is high

DP has an Experian account.
Why? Clearscore is free.

I wonder why my home insurance is so high? Nothing out of the ordinary about where I live and I did a price comparison at the time too. I’m with Churchill.

150 Gas &Electric
150 Council Tax
15 TV Licence
30 Internet
50 water

My Home insurance is £450 a year - not sure why it's so high!

We spend 20% of take home pay on mortgage, 40% on all bills, remaining 40% goes on petrol/food/days out/clothes/gifts etc.

We have a relatively low income, but im happy with the balance of our outgoings.

£950 mortgage
£125 gas/electric
£65 water and sewage
£110 council tax
£60 life insurance for two
£12 cat insurance
£60 mobiles X 2
£62 internet, tv, phone
£8 Netflix
£10 Deezer
£20 gym
£20 house and contents insurance
£40 car tax for two
£80 car insurance for two cars
£40 Union memberships X2
£400 groceries on average sometimes a little bit more
TV licence we pay annually
That's all I can think of off the top of my head in terms of bills rather than spending habits.
Petrol for DH is very little as he walks to work, for me it can be anywhere between £200-300 a month, but I claim most of that back.

Council tax: £110
Electricity/gas: £105
Water: £37.50
Internet: £21.50
TV licence: £12.43

None of that adds up to over £4K though, even with pet insurance and house insurance.

What do you spend on transport (cars etc, including petrol, insurance, road tax), on food (groceries including ‘top up shops’ takeaways and eating out/coffees etc) and on ‘entertainment’ & media (Netflix, iTunes, phones etc)?

What’s your mortgage and do you have any debts?

We pay more in council tax/internet/water and the same in electricity/gas/TV licence.

But that’s not where your money is going...

Gas/ electric -£113
Water- £38 ( we have this capped).
Council Tax- £38 ( reduced due to low income).
TV Licence- £12
Broadband - about £24
Mobile- £52

Three bed terrace, just me, monthly:

CT £99 (not a line one can budget anyway)
Gas and electric £75
TV licence whatever it is, £12?
Broadband £7
Mobile phone £6
Water £28 (hoping to reduce this one)
I pay the landline annually as it saves 10% or something, £120pa I think
My insurances, building and contents is £250pa, paid annually
No TV packages or anything like that. No pets. Car insurance is c£280pa paid annually
I pay £30pw for a cleaner.

Our mortgage is about £1400 per month so quite high, but we live in London (in one of the cheaper parts) and I have friends who live nearby and pay a similar amount per month in rent.

Food shop tends to come to about £200 per month for both of us. We do spend quite a bit on going out for meals etc though so that’s an area where we could definitely cut down. I’ll also be looking into our home insurance as that seems to be quite high. It does include contents too though.