Can anyone review my outgoings and advise on any cutbacks I can make?

[dovegrey18]

I think I've cut back what I can but I've listed everything anyway just in case I've overlooked anything.

Mortgage - 673 (100k on base rate and approx 100k on fixed rate per staff discount)
Council tax - 258
Factoring - 10
Electricity/Gas - 55
Tv, phone and broadband plus 1 mobile contract - 43
Tv licence - 19
Food - 200
Cleaner - (3 hours x 3) - 90
Sofa Finance 0% - 48
Nursery - 522
Car 1 - 453
Petrol x 2 cars - 400
Road tax x 2 cars - 40
Mobile - 30
3 x CC on 0% - 396

Car insurance x 2 is paid until July 2019
Home insurance is paid until November 2018

Ditch the cleaner and the cars.

I disagree jonty, interest rates aren't high at the moment but it's still worth having savings and a 0% credit card.

From what you've said OP there doesn't seem to be much scope for cutting down.

You haven't allowed anything for:
Car maintenance
Birthdays
Prescriptions
Clothing & shoes
Christmas
Birthdays
Holidays
Haircuts

Thanks for input all. I just wanted to know if there was any scope to cut down on gas/elec for example. I'm going to check tv licence out.

Cleaner: reduce to x2 per month??
You need to get a cheaper car
The tv and broadband is expensive so get rid of the tv bit and use freeview plus Netflix’s etc.
There is some flexibility to reduce considerably so you are lucky.

I think the gas/leccy is a really good price, mine is more than that in a 3 bed semi. Honestly at £55 pcm that's a tiny proportion of your expenses!

Is this just you looking at this op or is your H also on board? Just saying this as you seem to be worrying about saving money yet your H seems to be costing you the most with the ridiculous car finance. It's not far off the mortgage. And also with him not being on board with the cleaning.

If you're serious pop over to the debt free diaries on the MSE website and post your SOA. I don't have a link but you can easily find one on the website. Lots of practical advice. The proper SOA lists all the things you spend money on but forgot to budget for, very sobering.

I should say that we have chosen to pay x amount of cc payments so that when the 0% offer finishes we will be debt free

We were just doing a review - we know we have the money to finance it but My post was just to whittle down any costs we hadn't already considered. I included the cleaner , cc payments, car payments etc JUST in case there was something I hadn't thought of.

How much are you looking to reduce your spending by?

What about car insurance?

House insurance?
What is a CC?

We have a saner alternate weeks and it works well for us.

*cleaner

If you can afford it, keep the cleaner, it sounds as though it keeps you sane.

If you do lots of takeaways I think your £200 food bill is too low. That amount will have very little leeway for convenience food, and the change from takeaways to labour intensive meals will be difficult to sustain. Cheaper long term for you to include some ready meal type of things to avoid the temptation to get takeaways.

Gas and electricity is likely to go higher I'm afraid. The only way to keep that low is to be extremely diligent with turning things off. For example. Depending on the make of TV stand by mode can use 30-70% of the electricity it would use when on. Our BT Vision box has a quick start and slow start stand by mode. The quick start mode - it uses around 80% of the electricity on stand by it would use if it was on, so we use the slow start. So things like that.

@LuluJakey1 I've assumed credit card

Not sure if it's the same in Scotland as in England, but do you pay council tax over ten months? If so ring the council and change it to pay over twelve months, that helps. We did this when DH lost his job suddenly a few years ago and haven't changed it back.

Thanks I'm checking re council tax and tv licence!

Cc is credit card yes.

My car is drinking an insane amount of petrol but I am thinking of buying a Kia Sportage with savings. We have a large inheritance we haven't touched yet either as thinking of starting a business.

if you have a large inheritance I would seriously consider firstly paying of all debt apart from mortgage, then placing 6 months living expenses in an easy to access savings account ( to cover redundancy etc or indeed sudden big expenditure like boiler car failing MOT etc) if you are going to be self employed and starting a business I would up it to 12 months living expenses

in scotland water and sewerage is part of council tax not a separate bill, ( on average 10 payments per year April till Jan)
TV licence is the same in all UK

Thanks for the feedback

Make sure you have enough money left to get out if the business doesn't work out voice of bitter experience

@jonty I disagree - always important to have savings in case one of you loses your job - you need to be able to pay for mortgage & food if that happens.

If you are in a city do you need two cars really?

The car debt seems the biggest problem. Doesn't seem there is a lot you can do outside that except get rid of your cleaner or cut down to twice a month. Petrol expense is huge £200 a month for each car is a lot. So running two cars is costing you nearly £900 a month add to that your credit card debt and then nursery fees.

I think you are just going to have to ride this period out and breathe a sigh of relief in two or three years when the nursery fees go down and the loans are paid off. And try not to take on more debt.

Dh actually gets reimbursed for his petrol so I prob shouldn't have included that. As I mentioned my car drinks a lot!

Thanks for the feedback.