To ask if you have a 40k household income how much your outgoings are?

[PantyGiraffe]

To help me see where we are going wrong!

I’m not working at the moment due to health problems. We have one child. No mortgage (paid for house in full on purchase). We live in a 2 bed house and our bills come to £800 including our car and mobile bills. Car was paid for cash and we don’t spend more than £60 a month in petrol.

Could people of a similar income tell me if their bills are less than this and if so how?

Depends what your bills are surely?

Gas heatin/electric/heating/oil?

Area/council tax band

What bills do you mean?

When you say bills do you mean council tax, electricity, gas, water, phone plus food? Or not including food?

If you're at home all day your heating is presumably on a lot?

not a 40k household here but wish it was! i'm not working either.

does that £800 include groceries?

Ok fair point.
Our gas and electric are £80
Council tax £162
Mobiles £110
Water £85
Car tax and insurance £45
Prescription prepayment £12
Life insurance £45
Contents insurance £20
Heating/ plumbing cover £28
Sofa £20
Breakdown cover £17
Pet insurance £15
Virgin media £140
Charity £9

No food is seperate.

Yes heating is on a lot. I have to keep warm as the cold makes the pain worse.

What are you getting for £140 from Virgin media?

I pay £30 virgin media and £12 per month for mobile. You could cut those down considerably once your contracts end.

Wifi broadband, sky movies, sky sports. Can’t remove the channels as dh needs them for work.

Key point here - is the 40k gross or net???

Well, you could save on the mobiles (assuming 2 mobiles?)

The car insurance and the breakdown cover could be combined and probably come to a lot less than £62 (minus the tax as that’s totally separate)

Your gas/electric sounds lovely and cheap though.

Joint income of about £40k here... very approximately per month (for two adults)

• mortgage £650
• utilities (water, elec, gas) £150
• council tax £140
• car insurance, tax £120
• mobiles - £50
• other bits (union fees, life insurance, pet insurance, home and contents insurance) £80
• nursery - £500

God life is expensive! Similar to you really once mortgage taken out of equation.

@BanginChoons what do you get for your £30?

40k gross.

I’m in the phone to my mobile company and have got my bill down to £16.

Your water bill seems high to me. Are you on a meter?

@PantyGiraffe I would definitely consider getting NOW TV. Sky movies and sky sports are significantly cheaper, and they usually have offer codes you can use as many times as you like when the current one expires. At the moment I'm getting sky movies for £5 a month, for example. Even sky itself would be a lot cheaper than £130 for a broadband and movie/sport package, personally I would shop around and look to reduce that, it's a very high amount for what you're getting!

Basic tv package, fairly fast broadband (myself and 3 kids use WiFi at the same time and it never slows it down), landline that I don't use.
I subscribe to Netflix and now tv for the kids programmes, which costs £8 per month combined.

£85 per month for water? And £140 is very hefty for Virgin Media.

And yes consider whether you need such a pricey VM package - that sounds crazy to me. What are you watching/using that costs so much?!

Your electricity and car insurance are cheap. My bills are about £900 pcm but my income is a lot less than £40k and I'm paying a mortgage as a lone parent.

Sky has superfast broadband (although would need to check you have coverage), with line rental, sky movies, sky sports and sky entertainment plus HD with set up costs and Q box for £73 a month even when the price is due to rise in 18 months, it's still around £45 cheaper than your current package, although could probably negotiate and stay on that amount to be honest.

first thoughts is water is very high? are you on a meter?

Also is your water on a 10 month plan? Here you only pay for 10 months of the year (no idea why) so it means your monthly charges are higher, but the annual charges are comparable to other places.

Well the things that raised my eyebrows are the phone, water and virgin. Have I missed your rent/mortgage? Cause that can account for a lot if it's high but may not easily be changed.

Our outgoings not including food are about £1k.

The fact you were able to buy your house in full inheritance?) doesn't make you the typical family on £40k.

Also you don't have anything for house repairs, redecoration, garden, utilities etc... We spend about £100 a month on the above.

We are 2 adults 1 toddler in a 5 bed 4 bath and we only pay £30 a month for water.

We cancelled VM tv and only get their superfast broadband.

We use NOWtv all on offers and Amazon. I had realised I hadn't actually watched much of the live tv in the last year and could cope with the catch up services we had