To ask how people afford plumbers or new fridges?

[coldinside]

I need a plumber to look at a drain blockage in my bathroom (have already tried to clear it myself to no avail) and my fridge has broken so needs replaced. But I’m wondering how I can even afford these things. I earn £1979 per month and my bills are as follows:

Mortgage £620.48
Council tax £125
Income protection insurance £17.48
Car tax £16.62
Gas £20
Electricity £40
Broadband £23.99
Mobile phone £10.50
TV licence £29.08
Counselling £100
Petrol £150
Parking £80
Dentist £20
House management fee £20
Car insurance £45
Home insurance £43.25
Credit card £200

This leaves me with a total of £417 per month to feed myself and a dog, to buy clothes, shoes and toiletries. I can’t save any money each month and I have no idea how I will pay for a fridge (£530) and plumber. AIBU?

I bought a new fridge recently for £200. It’s great!

Times are tight right now for everyone, especially on a solo salary. All you can do is your best to save, pay off your debt (avoiding future debt) and live as frugally as possible whilst you accumulate some funds to get you through. As a single person, I’d think you can keep food shops very low for a while. It’s tough though.

I don’t spend on £500 worth of those things monthly (no counselling, no debt, no tv licence or home management fees). My car insurance is cheaper, maybe £350 a year. I do have a much larger mortgage though (£1700). The answer is honestly just earning more, but there is a lot you could cut back on.

I buy a couple items of clothing a year (basically when things get holes that are no longer repairable) and I’ve not needed to buy shoes in a couple years. I wear the ones I have until they break. Never paid £500 for a fridge. I think ours was £250 brand new and freezer was £50 secondhand.

It's a waste of money, most died during transportation and you can't get a refund.
OP, if you are buying you, check how much the insurance is, my washing machine broke in the 3rd year, it was replaced, I bought insurance on the replacement and got another one after 2.5.
No insurance on my current one, it was a bit more expensive and is going strong 5 years.
The lifespan isn't long enough anymore to buy second hand. My DM had a washing machine for 20 years.

British heart foundation have an Ebay page where you can buy tested appliances

this fridge freezer is less than £150 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/389098931450?itmmeta=01K7P171SEF9NJRNQDDJSVX9R0&hash=item5a981a84fa:g:L6wAAeSwndRo75Js

They have others available too

Don't know about plumber - I just DIY pretty much everything

I have a similar income to you. You don't need clothes and shoes every month and our food shopping (for 4 - 2 adults 2 kids) is no more than £70 a week - so presumably to feed you and one animal would be significantly less.

Definitely a cheaper fridge and possibly second hand if you can get one - people are often selling them v cheap on local Facebook. I do find buying and selling bits online helpful if you have time.

Your monthly outgoings are high and I wouldn't suggest stopping counselling if that is making a difference to your mental health. Are there any of the bills you haven't compared recently that you could get a better deal on?

I think it’s reasonable people respond to posters suggesting a struggling OP partake of illegal activity which could lead to a stiff fine and ultimately, if they can’t afford to pay said fine, a criminal record.

If you don’t want derailing to happen, don’t advise other posters to break the law.

Or at least suggest something relevant. I wonder if this poster would just steal a fridge if they needed one - I suspect so - most thieves don't differentiate.

You can’t really afford a dog sadly but I understand why people have them. What do you do for vets bills?
Remortgage over a longer period.
Find free counselling.
Could you get a lodger in for a while to build some emergency savings?
There are umpteen fridge freezers advertised on Next Door/Facebook. You’d only need to find money for a van/person to lift.
Cost of living sucks.

Agreed

"Counselling is a luxury" said the person who's never been desperate.

Your Council tax is quite high for a single person. Are you claiming single person discount? Also, if you're a high band, would you be able to move to a cheaper property or take in a lodger?

The BBC did not create a fee for watching TV. The government of the day set up the BBC and decided that instead of everyone paying a subscription it would be financed by the licence fee (originally for radio). Afaik, it works well (though BBC is too captured on trans ideology and pro-Palestinianism IMO, but at least I can see the bias, Al Jazeera hides its biases unless you speak Arabic) and provides the Proms, for which I willingly cough up c.£150 a year. It also provides local radio and radios 1,2,3,4 and 5 (I listen to 3 and 4). I am currently watching Celebrity Traitors and starting on Strictly as well. No bloody ads either! Crikey, it's a bargain and also, since everyone can watch these programmes free at the point of access it is unifiying and cohesive for the nation. Not everyone wants to pay Sky et al for programmes and they are much more expensive and Netflix is dripping in trans ideology more than the BBC.

You've got some extra costs in there that some people won't have - £200 on credit card bills, £100 on counselling.

Your income is barely above minimum wage, on such a low income you probably can't afford a dog. Do you work full time? Can you do anything to move to a better paid role?

If you could avoid adding to the credit card debt & pay that off, you could start to save £50 a month and build up a pot for emergencies. For now, see if you can get a fridge second hand.

Don’t buy clothes and shoes for a few months

As you’re on such a low wage, do you not qualify for universal credit? My DH earns the same as you and he qualifies.

True, you don't know. I'd probably play the averages and try to find somebody in a wealthy area/street who was getting rid and maybe doesn't need the money but just environmentally-minded.

Somebody who would instantly take something off the tip the instant it broke (after all, many people do that with stuff that's perfectly fine but they just don't want it anymore) and it simply wouldn't be on their radar to try to scam somebody (who may be 'assertive' upon finding they've been ripped off), just to gain what would be, for them, a triflingly insignificant amount of money!

@coldinside

Get yourself one of these, pneumatic unblocker, amazing:

https://www.amazon.com/Pneumatic-Pressure-Detachable-Assembly-Bathroom/dp/B08T6NG16W

Was just going to say this.

The problem with Homeserve and the like, is that they offer a really cheap rate for the first year or two, but then it shoots up dramatically.
I know this because I had Homeserve when I was renting (paid for by the landlord) and they were pretty decent, so I looked into taking them on myself when I moved into my own mortgaged house. It was something mad like 50p a month for the first year, but then jumping to something huge in comparison like £20 a month after that. That sort of money was out of the question for me, as I was already on a pretty tight budget after moving, and it was just too much to give to a "might never happen" category.

What I did instead, and what might help OP moving forwards, is to set up a savings "pot" to save little and often towards paying those sorts of bills when they happen. My "pot" is called the "this is shit" account, and I'm able to put about £30 a month (most months, but not all!) into it.

I think life is just really expensive now which sucks. I have fixed no end of plumbing clogs so would highly recommend YouTube. Get the youbend off. Most clogs are there. Screw fix drain unblocker will clear most clogs too.

I agree with this. I'm privileged enough to never have needed it, but I can't imagine too many people without lots of disposable income would be desperate to pay for it, just because it gives them a bit of a buzz.

Plenty of things are wholly unnecessary for most people, but utterly essential for others.

I would be very careful about getting a 2nd hand fridge. Our fridge freezer was working fine, as in keeping food cold. But it had malfunctioned and was costing us an extra £180 per month in electricity😱

I would look on YouTube for help with plumbing fixes before writing your own efforts off. So far we have used it for plumbing advice (most recently for fitting a wall-hung toilet) redecorating advice, roofing advice, furniture fitting advice and tiling advice. Haven’t used a tradie in years, and have picked up some great skills (building, plumbing, decorating)
As pp have said, look for a 2nd hand fridge too - I’ve seen a few at <£150 recently…

The problem is, though, that if you're struggling to make ends meet, an annual big cost is just out of the question for many people.

It's not even like you can save up each month for a year to buy lots of things, because you have to buy them now.

I think it's a con for things like insurance, because if I buy a 12-month policy in January, I couldn't possibly claim on the 12th of the cost that I (theoretically) paid for the December element of the cover for the next 11 months. The commitment to pay the agreed sum for the agreed 12 months (with legal action if you don't) should be sufficient. It's not like when you get an entire item to use/enjoy from day 1 and then pay for it over the next 12 months, having legitimately 'borrowed' the later payments from the start.

The worst of all is VED, where you have to pay extra for paying monthly. It's one thing for private companies to deliberately profit from poorer people, but the government doing the same in plain sight is absolutely disgusting - especially as, again, you're only 'using' the tax one month at a time.

Looking at the list, should pet insurance also be an outgoing?

I've never paid for a fridge. They're always popping up on freecycle.
Being skint is rubbish.