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?

Similar income here, outgoings around £1700 per month as a rough guess. We're okay, I don't feel like we struggle. Granted we don't have loads of luxuries (only ever had one foreign holiday for example which I guess is out of the ordinary for many families) but we manage the odd takeaway, pub lunch, days out, music lessons/ dance lessons for the kids etc.

Definitely check the water, ours crept up and up after having DS and we assumed at first it was extra with the baby, when it got to £60 we got them to check and there was a big leak! We got a refund.
We pay £99/month for virgin media which I think is crazy but DH loves it, that's HD, sports, movies and 2 boxes for multiroom though.
We have boiler/heating/electric cover for £19/month.
Have you been on the money saving expert site? Lots of good info and a really friendly forum.

I don't really understand how any of this is going to help you. If your monthly income is roughly £2200 pm, what are you spending the rest of your money (£1300ish?) on? Surely that's as important as tinkering with your bills? Holidays, cars, socialising, clothes, takeaways, days out - if you're not letting us know what you're spending on those, none of the previous 100 posts will make much difference.

If you think it's just being frittered away, I recommend you download a budgeting app and record absolutely everything you spend.

Literally our only other expenditure is food, which we overspend on. Dh has a taste for luxury food which I’m trying to reign him in on. We don’t really do many trips or breaks cos I’m not well.

I mainly wanted to know if our bills were too high, some of which I’ve been told now are- so thank you for that guys- as for the food it’s a work in progress.

What are you eating

I earn 49K.

Mortgage £875
CT £156
Utilities £250
Life insurance £34
Critical illness £23
Car insurance £35
Sky/landline/broadband £75
Mobiles £40
Credit/catalogues etc £100
Food for a family of 7 £500.

Everything else is spent on holidays, clothes, birthdays and christmas, take aways and leisure/ extra curriculars.

We do not save as we overpay the mortgage by £400 every month.

Coughsyrupsucks Ours jumped up quite a bit this year too - did you have to investigate for leaks or water company?? We have an unusually long driveway (about 150 yards), I’m guessing the water company will want to get out of digging that up and I don’t fancy that cost and disturb and either (no one would be able to drive in or out)???

@janus So we followed the instructions here www.anglianwater.co.uk/help-and-advice/plumbing/checking-for-leaks/ found the meter was spinning. They came to check the meter which was on the public land but it wasn’t there.

Then it got painful, everything that’s on private land (unless you have insurance that will cover it) is your problem. So we had to find the pipe on our side and then they dug up the driveway (120ft) to find the leak. It cost £1400 to find and fix the damn thing. Thankfully the water company let us off the £760 bill.

Our water bill is lower (£35pm)

We pay £15 each per month for phone bills

I'm sure you could get sky sports and movies for less than £140pm. We pay £30 for broadband, so it seems a lot for the TV package.

Literally our only other expenditure is food
So you don't buy clothes, shoes, gifts, holidays, household items, home improvements, etc.

I’d definitely be looking into the water bill. I thought ours was high but then I love a bath every day for a start. 4 of us, DH showers, as does DS1 and DS2 tends to jump in my bath. But then they also like a bath on a cold weekend, specially DS1 after his paper round. And we have a dishwasher.

So we do not by any means scrimp on our water usage and it’s £52 a month.

I’m busy wondering what your DH’s job is where he has to watch all the premium channels on tv!

@ Coughsyrupsucks Christ!!! I think I may get some kind of insurance and investigate in 6 months maybe?? Ah gawd, £1400?! I’ll worry about this after Christmas I reckon 🙄!

Our income isn't 40k but with youe budget,

I'd ditch the heating and plumbing cover -£28
cut back on mobiles and your TV/broadband -£180
sort out your water - maybe there's a leak? -£50

So that's saving of about £250. Shop around for best deals too, eg your content insurance seems high, and you'll probably cut back by over £300 a month. You can plan other expenses too and should be in a position to save a good amount every month.

I can’t say what dh’s job is but it’s in the media and he works from home following the news feed/ media.

No we rarely buy clothes. Quite minimalist like that really. Ds has stuff when he needs it but we aren’t frivolous. No holidays as I’m unwell. Days out are rare or inexpensive. Dh’s train fare costs a few hundred quid a month. We have savings that we use if there is a catastrophe like broken boiler etc.

I’ll ring the water company tomorrow! And virgin.

If TV is part of the job then that's a business expense not a household expense so shouldn't be included here.

Bloody hell. I'm on 45k (before tax) as a single mum. I have sky, pet insurance, Amazon prime, Netflix's along side all the normal bills.. and I can save £800 a month.

Your heating and plumbing care policy totals £336 a year, have you ever claimed? I think I’d rather save that each month and call on it if I needed it. I would service the boiler once a year (that’s about £60) as that may pick up something?
Also agree that phones are extortionate unless you are actually paying for a new iPhone bought recently? Mine is less than £20 a month and has massive amount of data and texts etc.

The highest threshold for full student loan parental contributions (around £5k post tax) is not much more than this 😬

You need to pay the savings first like a bill on payday then give yourself the rest for food etc. You should be able to save probably a grand if living frugally or £500 if not. Too much is being wasted right now for no reason.

When you sort those very high bills out and pay savings first. You will quickly get used to living on the rest which is still a decent amount bit you will get the joy of watching your savings grow.

Echoing some PPs, although some of your bills are on the higher side I think the bigger issue is where the rest of your money is going? You must have about £2500 per month coming in and that leaves £1700 after bills are paid which is a lot - you should definitely be able to save something from that.

Also consider getting a credit card with zero interest on purchases to pay for car/buildings/contents insurance, by paying monthly it is essentially a very expensive loan due to the high interest.

Have a browse on money saving expert, you'll find loads of ways to cut costs by switching etc.

We earn a bit more than that but spend £600 a month on our mortgage & have enough to save £500, mainly because we do our research rather than just keep renewing/sticking with the same companies.

£1600 roughly is our bills that go out by DD on the first

On top of this we have fuel and food costs

Our mobile phones come out of our individual accounts so that’s not counted but would be another £70 a month

If you don't want to give up any of the things you pay for, you really need to get better at negotiating. Every year the AA tries to put up the price of our breakdown cover. We phone them, threatening to leave for the RAC/Greenflag, and every year they reduce the price back to the current amount. It's annoying, it shouldn't be necessary, but as a result we pay less than half of what you pay for cover that includes pretty much all eventualities (home start etc). At the moment you're the ideal customer for companies like Virgin, as you're effectively subsidising the cheaper rates of customers who do negotiate.