If you were about to be poor, what would you spend your money on now?

[TargetPractice11]

To make life easier when your income drops?

We have some savings that can be spent on things that will save money in the long run get term.

I've just bought a slow cooker, for example. And I'm thinking about getting our windows upgraded to save on bills.

Yeah I must admit my first thought was HOLIDAY!!!!!

Your DH will have the time to do it since he’s working less.

why are you taking on an extra job and all the extra housework and mental load whilst he’s working part time and fucked the family finances?

what are his suggestions for how it will work? What are his thoughts on how he supports you having to work more?

keep taking all the load and he’ll still be part time and ‘working it out’ in 6, 12 and then 18 months.

If it’s enough to have a rental property, I’d do that. If it’s not that much, I’d keep it in case I had emergencies. An emergency fund is always essential imo x

I'd get a decent pair of hairdressing scissors in anticipation of cutting my own hair to save on hairdressers and a hair clipper for DH to save money at the barbers.

@sandragreen

He's had to find a job quickly and the only one he wants to do involves a backwards move to gain experience he doesn't already have. They've also only got the budget for him to be employed part time.

Not really a luxury so much as the way the chips have fallen.

I feel like I need to take on the mental load because he's made such a mess I don't think I can trust him to make good financial decisions.

He was already bad at small ones - eg would go to the shops and buy every ingredient for a recipe rather than checking the fridge and seeing we have 80% of it already.

If I leave gift buying to him, he leaves it into the last minute and then buys whatever is around for whatever it costs- whereas I stock up on Lego, cards, wrapping etc during the sales.

So I can't outsource things like shopping to him.

I thought he was good with the big financial decisions but he isn't. I drew up a budget the other night- he didn't even realise we were losing money every week because we spend more than comes in. He thought the mortgage was 25% of our income- it's actually over half.

I trusted him with all of that and now realise that was a mistake.

His former coworkers owe us almost a years pay- he won't pursue it. I'm sure we are one of many people owed money but I would at least like to try.

I would try to hang onto savings.
Make sure your roof is well insulated. It’s a cheap job to do yourself. We doubled our roof insulation and it made a big difference. We have never had heating on overnight as some people do. Your husband can do all the nappy washing and hanging out if he is just working part time. This would save on the dryer. Get your husband to do the batch cooking while he is at home.
Upright freezers are easier to see where you have put everything compared to chest freezer.
Check settings on boilers or immersion heaters.
Cut out all frills. Get cheap SIM cards for phones. Get rid of a car if you have 2.
Go through all outgoings and cut everything that isn’t a necessity.
If you work two jobs and then you burn out how are you going to manage then?
Go onto MSE site to pick up lots of ideas.

Heated airer instead of the dryer, it doesn't take much longer and it doesn't shrink everything!

I have a second freezer, we live in a flat so no room for chest freezer. It's helped a lot, no noticeable bill difference and cost less than £200 I think.

Thanks I'd not heard of that. I'll look into it.

Are they safe? No chance of it catching fire?

Not windows. Too expensive
Reserve money for replacing a boiler or other emergency.
Reduce mortgage
Thicker curtains etc to keep house warm
Chest freezer for batch cooking
Electric heated blankets
Good coats and outdoor shoes for winter.get from vinted.
Service car if you have one.

A decent dehumidifier.
This will help drying damp clothes and keep house warm.
Not expensive but get a good quality one.

Insulate roof

If husband is useless shopping, meal plan buy everything online eg Asda. He then just has to follow meal plan and tell him everything is bought. If he can’t control his spending he will bankrupt you both.

@TargetPractice11 I would strongly suggest you start a new thread in relationships to discuss the real root causes of your problems.

This one is just going to fill up with people giving tips on how to spend your way out of poverty (and why that’s clearly not possible).

That isn’t really going to help you at all, because your real problem is your DH.

I was kind of thinking this way about when I retire and no longer have a regular income from work. I would

pay off the mortgage
replace the bathrooms and kitchens - they need doing now, or at least will not last until the end of my retirement years.
new boiler

Look at mortgage..can you get a better deal.
At least be able to redeem 10%.
Think of free and cheap fun activities.
Parks
Local farm
Trip to beach

Get a paddling pool
Picnics
Get their friends over and vice versa.

Film nights
Bulk buy
Look at cheaper supermarkets
Look on olio
Vinted for clothes
Facebook market place for household items and kids toys.

As someone else has said, heated airer for sure. I have 2 (family of 5) and I haven't had a tumble dryer for nearly 20 years. I haven't missed it (only just bought 2nd heated airer, DC are 22, 19 and 14).

Why can't he hang the laundry out if he's not working full time?

Don't get caught in the trap of "spending money to save money." It generally is self-delusional. Better to hang on to every possible penny and live frugally with the infrastructure you currently have.

It's like when people want to get "organized" and waste all sorts of cash on storage containers to house crap they never look at again. Just get rid of the crap in the first place.

Same with frugality. It's behaviour that needs addressing, not freezers and windows and stockpiles.

I recently upgraded to a heat pump tumble drier and it's loads cheaper to run. They're not overly expensive to buy now either (they used to be £800+). Maybe do a (free) trial Which subscription. They have pretty good guides r.e. costs of running the appliances they review.

I feel your pain r.e. cloth nappies, we used them too for two children and even the modern shaped ones are much softer tumble dried than hung up to dry, so as an eco warrior I still TD'd mine.

I also recommend YNAB or other good budgeting app to manage money and to plan ahead. I've used YNAB for years and it saves us loads of money and headaches on planning upcoming expenses.

Get any spare cash into the highest interest account you can. It will probably be similar or higher interest than your mortgage rate, so you're informally 'offsetting' your mortgage but the money is still there for emergencies/illness etc. Formal offset mortgages sadly still have stupidly high rates.

Pay for (phone/online-much better choice and more convenient) therapy for your DH and maybe have a free legal appointment to check that the money really is lost to you/him.

Electric throws and heated bed underblankets, good coats etc are great, but you can buy them nearer Winter if your money is saved, plus it will continue earning interest until you need to spend it.

Good luck, it sounds like a real eye of the needle situation, but things generally improve with time, as long as a you can both work as a team.

Solar has been very efficient for us. Our monthly dual fuel wasn't mega expensive at £127 but has dropped to £67 in a big Victorian house. You will be able to get some kind of idea on payback time. Replacing some windows has also help keep the gas element of our bills down, as it's much warmer in the bedrooms now.

I had 3 kids within 3 years, did cloth nappies for a fair bit of that and have never had a tumble dryer. I had one of those Victorian pulley drying racks over the stairwell and it took a full load and dried overnight. All the house heat rose through the stairwell. But in the 2 houses since then I have just had a whirly gig outside and large airer inside. A couple of those hangers that clip on the radiators for the thicker things are useful. I also have an airing cupboard. It can be a bit tricky in the autumn when outside is damp but heating not yet on but apart from that it is fine. Recently got solar panels too so enjoying unlimited free electricity at present.

I certainly wouldn’t be spending money on big ticket items like new windows or solar panels or heat pumps or more efficient appliances which would take decades to pay for themselves.

The first thing I would do, and did actually do when I was made redundant a few years ago, is go through all my monthly subscriptions and cancel them all. Sky, Netflix, Spotify, Gym, Apple, magazines, veg box etc etc. Everything.

I might consider changing my car for one which was much smaller, more economical & cheaper to run but only if my current car was a big gas guzzler and I was going to be driving a lot of miles. Eg swapping a Range Rover for a Toyota Yaris.

The best money to spend would be to invest in re-training so I could earn a good living after my current circumstances changed.

you are hilarious. You are buying more stuff when you are getting poor. Slow cooker eats up energy. Sandwiches and cold meat, dear.

I'd get any niggling dentistry issues fixed. I just had a year of being poor while I retrained for something - 3 months in I needed root canal treatment. That was in September last year and I'm still paying it off on a credit card.

On the off chance - do you have a driveway, are you able to park on the road or elsewhere, and is there demand for parking where you live? Have a look at justpark (there are at least one or two other similar companies I think), consider if you have a parking space you can list. We have to pay for a residents' parking permit but make about 10x its cost renting out our driveway.

Your situation sounds a little similar to how we grew up, my dad was good at some things and hopeless with money, and the only way my mother kept the house was tight control and working all the hours she could. It's hard work and tough - even now my mother is in her 80s it is hard to persuade her that she should spend money on herself at long last.

Good luck and I hope you pull through the next difficult period, and that it proves shorter than it might be.