Overspending please help

[SunConure]

To be losing £500 per month. I am overspending by about £500 every month and I need some help to get it under control.
£1100 mortgage + council tax + electric gas etc
£110 phones for me and dc (in contract! )
£500 food (I am addressing this - joined a larder!)
£360 medical bills
£280 cleaner
£200 utilities on holiday home (no mortgage)

£200 travel to work
£100 pet insurance (high b/c of past claim)
£100 dc pocket money and activities
£200 loan repayments
£100 car
£2-300 on general living

When the phone contracts end buy a phone for you and your daughter and get two SIM only deals, I own my phone and pay £10 a month for the sim. I'd never go back to a contract phone.

£280 per month on a cleaner is high. How often does she come, could she come bi weekly to halve that cost?

Food wise you need to be strict. Batch cook, and repeat meals plans with small variations weekly. Prepare lunches at home / packed lunches. Think about where you can save money e.g meal kits, jars of sauce, fancy yogurts etc all add up. Make meals from scratch with lots of veg and beans and pulses for bulk. Cut out the snacks. Have fruit and something homemade flapjack. Make homemade ice lollies. If it's only 2 of you what on earth are you buying that adds up to £500. I can feed a family of 4 (two hungry teens) on that.

Clearly being offset by your financial stress
How often do you use the holiday home, do you rent it out,sounds like a money pit I imagine travelling is fairly expensive.

The 200 on the holiday home includes 100 council tax, 50 insurance (compulsory in France and v expensive) and 50 standing charges for elec and water. Will try and rent it asap

Those are non essential luxuries. Use the clothes you already have. No (or v few) restaurants, no decorating at the moment, holidays can't be afforded. Many people don't do any of those 4 things because they can't afford to. Or only very, very occasionally.

If you sold it and invested the money, plus dribbled that capital yearly into a S+S ISA you'd probably get a better return.
Don't sell it now for a loss unless you absolutely need the money. See if you can at least get it to pay for itself untill the timing is better to sell it.
Do your friends pay to use it? They should

You could advertise the holiday home amongst people you know and even charging mates rates cover the overheads. Your DS is plenty old enough to help with cleaning. If you feel the cleaner is hugely beneficial to your mental health I might not cancel completely but cut down to once a month. Re your food bill, Lidl and Aldi are cheaper even than Tesco. Have you anything you can sell on Vinted? The general living costs can probably be cut easily if they include stuff like buying coffee and lunches regularly. It's very easy to get used to living up to your income but you've got quite a few 'luxuries' you can trim.

Bloody hell, it takes me well over an hour just to do the kitchen (worktops, sinks, cupboards, hob, outside of oven, floor, window sills, windows). And that's on a good day, when my arthritis isn't too bad!

£500 a month for isnt very much for a family
I'd keep the cleaner,they need the money.
Could you let your holiday home? That would bring in a great income.

I don’t have lots of spare money so I don’t go to restaurants often, my house is decorated and will stay as is and I clean it myself, I rarely buy clothes unless they need replacing and haven’t had a holiday since 2019.

Cut your coat according to your cloth.

Can you reduce the cleaner rather than bin off altogether?
When are the phone contracts up? Because sim only contracts are a fraction of the amount you are paying. (Mine is Lebara and is £6 a month)
Meal plan, huge savings to be made on your supermarket shopping.
Also although not on your list taking a packed lunch not buying from the school canteen for Ds, and you if you tend to buy lunch when out and taking a coffee in a thermal cup rather than buying whilst out is a fairly easy win that can add up to significant amounts of money.
Agree try and get some kind of income from the holiday home if selling it isn't an option.
Go through your spending with a fine tooth comb, it's boring and takes ages, but really shines a light on the almost daily small purchases from Amazon, or the meal deal from Tesco or the 13th streaming service that you seem to have signed up to. (Or whatever frivolous things your family spends/wastes money on)

Op I'm going to be blunt. You don't mention saving or pension in your outgoings. But do mention decorating the house, restaurants and generally living a typical middle class lifestyle. You need to get the mindset in place now that you can't do it.

You need to reset and be pretty brutal...can you cancel the phones I mean £55 each. I'm on a SIM only deal for less than £7 a month.

Food. Bugger Tesco, try Lidl and or Aldi....look at money saving expert for tips on this
Don't eat out...if you must spoons
The cleaner goes
Don't redecorate or spend on anything new for the house, make do and mend

Act as if you're on the dole, having never had a good job. Your list of what you spend is good, now set up a spreadsheet and everything you spend, every cup of coffee you write down as you spend it and you will see how much you can do without

You can’t be serious? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I have no sympathy at all for you.

Contrary to what others are saying - are you sure that you've actually captured all your costs?

Even without a mortgage, I'm very surprised your French house costs you so little - ours costs around 3x this a month (and also no mortgage). What about taxes?

I think you need to sit down properly with a spreadsheet and work out your real costs. There is little point trying to budget if you don't know your true spending.

I agree - and the work it took to get out of my phone contact that I had before!

Im never having one again

Champagne lifestyle on dinner lady wages. You need to cut your cloth obviously.

To be fair, I don’t think she wants sympathy. The OP has come back and thanked everyone for being brutal so not like she’s whining “oh poor me” or batting away suggestions

Ignore everyone who is saying drop the cleaner if they help support your mh.

I am sure you can make savings on phones and food.

And agree that French holiday homes can take six months to a year or more to sell. But you could start the process? ´

Can you car share to work? Make any extra income with a side hustle? Have a lodger? Pt job at weekends or evenings?

Phones, medical bills, cleaner and holiday home can be cut. Thing is, you have a cleaner to reduce stress and therapy to do a similar thing, but surely going over budget by £500 is far more stressful? I could really do with therapy or a weekly massage but not spending the money is the better option currently.

I don't actually think £500 for food is that much. That's about the amount I spend, and it just pays for basic, healthy food without any expensive bits and bobs.

The good news is, you have so many unnecessary things that you can cut out that you should end up with some spare money to spend on nice things.

For just two people??

I disagree about not selling the holiday home at a “loss”. If theres no mortgage on it you are getting the market value - and markets change. People get hung up on what they paid for a property not what it is worth now. Let’s say you paid £200k but now it’s only worth £150k. That means you get 150k that you currently dont have access to and protect that money or spend as you need to. A home sat empty, incurring upkeep costs isn’t the investment you might think it is.

Apologies - I thought it was £500 a week!

Cook mostly vegetarian/vegan food. Get a decent modern cookbook like one of Anna Jones's. That will make a huge difference to your food bill. Also, no to Waitrose. Only buy what you know you will eat, I bet you are wasting loads.

I'd cut out the cleaner, but if you don't want to do that then you need to cut all the treats, concerts, meals out whatever. Your child doesn't need new clothes all the time, that can be cut too

I don’t think community larders are (or should be) intended for people who own a holiday home and spend £280 a month on a cleaner.

I don't think you should reduce your therapy until the redundancy/job search/settling into new job are over. If your mental health takes a dive, everything else you do will be very hard to manage and you're about to go through a stressful patch.

I would also try and hang onto that holiday home, if the thought of a beautiful place to retire makes daily life feel more worthwhile. It sounds like you do not currently have much opportunity to use it. You could rent it as a holiday let, but each tenancy carries damage risk and cleaning costs. Have you considered long term renting to someone who actually lives in the area