Budget

[Glitterybee]

I have £3100 per month income after taxes, etc but as a single parent with 3 kids, it really doesn’t go far.

To be honest it did until the COL rises. I know a lot are in this boat…

I have found myself £800 pm short in my budget so something has to give.

I cannot reduce any of my outgoings at all - for context I wasn’t always earning this great money, I have worked my way up from minimum wage and therefore am frugal already. I need to work on increasing my income again but no room for further promotion in my career currently.

The kids are teenagers so I suppose I could look at part time bar/retail work, etc for evenings and weekends but honestly I am struggling for work/life balance with my full time job as it is.

AIBU to ask what would you do if you needed to find an extra £800 per month? Or if you have been in a similar situation, what have you done?

I would like to know where you make this money too. My experience is the same as @wineschmine both times I've tried to do surveys, even using places recommended on MN. And half the time I found I would spend 10 mins doing questions that seem like a survey then they say "you weren't selected," to get out of paying. I made £15 for about 8 hours of surveys and the time I put in wasn't worth it.

Re Christmas check out the Mumsnet Christmas bargain thread for real time bargains & discount codes etc.

Everybody has already said what I was going to post anyway so I won't repeat the advice. Re swapping over to cheaper deals, only do this when your existing deal is expiring. Otherwise you might get hit with an early exit fee.

Regarding managing your ADHD and impulsiveness, check out the resources here.

Money Saving Expert has tips on how to cut the costs of streaming apps & general cost of living.

@BLT24 so you make £40 an hour doing surveys?

Sorry, I don't believe that.

No I made £20 yesterday doing a survey. It’s actually the first one I’ve done. I’ve put the name of the site I follow for tips. It’s Fun Money Club. I’ve also made money from other things they’ve recommended on there.

I've just realised that every time we have the "six figure earners, what job do you do?" an awful lot of MN seem to be senior marketing execs.
I wonder if that's why surveys get recommended so often... because they need participants rather than because anyone is actually making any money off them. 🧐

I’m not a marketing exec. I’m a chartered accountant but had to give up work earlier this year due to ill health. I initially said on this post that I’m going to give surveys etc a go and aim for £150 a month as I’ve seen others on the Facebook community making up to £500 a month, not just surveys but on a range of online tasks.

You need to deal with the car as a matter of urgency. What are the terms of your deal? Will you own it outright at the end? Your car is costing you 216+90+14+400= £720 a month, and that's without things like MOT which you've included under spending money. If things are tight, you can't afford to drive a big SUV. Ideally you've just got a bank loan for it rather than some sort of hp and so are free to get rid- if so, do it. You could halve this cost.

mortgage & utilities - 1198- check whether you can get this down
loan repayment - 175 - what is this loan?
credit card - 100 - what was this?
kids sports/hobbies - 415 - can this come down?
sky tv - 10, Netflix - 10.99 - don't need both of these
mobile phones (tesco family sim only deal) 50- ok
savings - 70 - why are you saving when you've got outstanding CC?
groceries - 500- ok
iphone storage 2.99 - meh
nails & eyebrows - 30 - emery board and tweezers cost a fiver
spending money - 400 - you need to break this down, you don't have the budget for this amount of unconstrained spending. Spend a month writing down EVERYTHING and you will see where it goes. Bet you could get it down to half.
birthdays & Christmas savings - 200- £2400 a year! It's good that you're thinking ahead but you don't have the budget for this. Agree with family and friends not to swap gifts with other adults- they'll probably be pleased. You could halve this.

By getting rid of the SUV and getting a cheap runaround, stopping spending £400 just on undefined stuff and having a more reasonable budget for Christmas and birthdays, you can pretty much find your £800. Apart from food and mobiles, I don't think your current spending is frugal at all.

Ahh, right. You're a survey newbie. Good luck with that. If you do them for longer, you will probably find that the first 2-3 surveys you do seem great but nothing much else comes up for weeks on end and you can't make a consistent or dependable income from it. Oh, and that they usually pay out in something that doesn't buy food or cover mortgage expenses, such as Amazon vouchers. Subject to meeting the minimum earnings threshold, of course.

If you're looking for a stable and dependable way to earn money with your skillset, I'd suggest maths tutoring up to GCSE if you're well enough to do it either online or in person. Once you get some tutees they tend to stay with you for at least one academic year and sometimes several. You generally don't need to hold QTS to sign up to tutoring websites, but do need a DBS which you can apply for easily these days.

OP if you've got any skillset that lends itself to tutoring, especially English or maths, I'd recommend this to you, too.

The car is ridiculous. If you got a smaller car, you'd save a fair whack of the petrol bill and probably also substantially reduce the insurance too. Can't you part exchange it for a smaller/cheaper/older car, use the funds generated to pay off the loan, and then your fuel and insurance will be cheaper each month too.

Mobile phone costs also too high. You can get sim only deals for around £6 per month, so for 4 of you, that's £24, so half the £50 you're currently paying.

Children's activities, socialising, personal expenses, gifts, savings, etc are all far too high. You could probably halve those by economising and cutting out the unnecessary costs.

Do you have any tutoring sites you can recommend?

You don't need a DBS to be a tutor.
You can't apply for your own anyway

Is the loan repayment the one you took out for your car too OP? If so that means your sending £895 a month on your SUV?

Of course you can, lots of self employed need a DBS check and don't have an employer, so they have to get their own.

Some of these tips are never going to happen in the real world. No you can't spend £50-£100 per teenager for Christmas.

How much have you got in your savings? Use this to clear credit card and towards the loan to bring down the monthly repayments.

Have a 6 month mortgage break if you can.

I think you are going to have to choose between the car or dcs hobbies.

You could probably get your food shopping down by £100 a month.

I wouldn't give up your brows and nails. £30 for both sounds a really good deal and if that's your only treat then don't give it up.

*and whilst on mortgage break clear the rest of your loan and credit card.

You might also be able to use that money to pay off more of your car finance so you'll either not have a car loan or more money to put towards a smaller car.

OP this is a bit ridiculous!

Your nails, loan, CC and car loan are costing you over 6k a year. All completely unnecessary.

For context, if instead of wasting 6k a year on stuff you don't need you invested it you would have:

• over £85k in just 10 years
• over £240k in 20 years

Compound interest is magic, and that's assuming an average return. You're not just missing money NOW, you're paying for a huge opportunity cost of not having this money grow for you so you can retire early or do a million other things. Are nails/lashes/a huge car/stuff really worth it?

When will your credit card and loan be paid off?

Put the savings towards the debt.

Can the teens work and pay for their own hobbies?

My top tip is to get a Nectar American Express credit card for normal spending and you get £120 worth of nectar points if you spend so much in first couple of months (which will be your normal spending by the sounds of it) and then you earn points on purchases. I've got nearly £200 points now saved up for Christmas.

Some of these tips are never going to happen in the real world. No you can't spend £50-£100 per teenager for Christmas

Why not, if you don't have the money? They're all doing expensive hobbies, so it's not like they don't have treats.

Have a 6 month mortgage break if you can

Stop paying the mortgage to carry on with nails and other crap. Really?

I wouldn't give up your brows and nails. £30 for both sounds a really good deal and if that's your only treat then don't give it up

Her only treat, except the really spendy car and money for socialising?

50 to 100 pounf per teen for Christmas is so unrealistic and if OP made a budget of that she'd end up sticking loads on her credit card with the christmas twitch. It isn't realistic.

The £400 isn't just socialising or treats, it's the MOT, school uniforms etc and it needs to be broken down by the OP to see what it's going on

If you work in a public facing role, office job or people job then decent eyebrows are a need. It's the cost of working.

You're also being disingenuous @BarbaraofSeville to say her only treat apart from the car and socialising. We don't know how much socialising costs OP and I'd argue there needs to be some money in her budget for that so she doesn't get utterly depressed with shit life syndrome.

If you work in a public facing role, office job or people job then decent eyebrows are a need. It's the cost of working.

Not the topic of this thread I know but the above has given me the biggest laugh of the weekend. I’ve never bothered with my (by some standards very bushy and unfeminine) eyebrows and have worked in senior customer service roles for many years. Not once has anyone ever commented on them. But perhaps I now know what they’re all thinking 😂😂

OP - well done for recognising that something needs to change and taking steps to do so.

We don't know the terms of your mortgage but one of the options in the mortgage charter, I think, is extending the term. So say you only had 10 or 15 years left to pay you could look at extending it back up to 20.

If your mortgage is on a low rate you wouldn't want to do anything that meant losing that rate.

Is your mortgage on a fixed rate and when will it run out? I'm hoping your mortgage is fixed for some time but if it is going to come out of a fix and go onto higher rates it is something that you need to think about and prepare for.

What happens after the 6 months? Do you go on to the standard rates or back to the rate you were on?

If you work in a public facing role, office job or people job then decent eyebrows are a need. It's the cost of working.

😂😂😂

I like your fine tooth comb! Can you go through my finances too please?🤣