Why are our bills so high? 6k a month...!

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Is anyone able to workout why our bills so high aside from suggesting we move house?! Are other people in similar size houses (5 bed, very old single glazed farmhouse) paying similar?

We pay about:
2k nurseries fees as work full-time (cheapest local village nursery, another year still school starts!)
£400 electricity bills each month (this is so high as bloody kitchen is only heated by underfloor heating, no radiators, which we didn't realised cost so much when we moved last year, we set it to 17 degrees so always freezing still)
£400 oil (thermostat to 17 daytime, 18 evening, single glazed house)
1.3k mortgage
£35 tv subscriptions
£35 Gigaclear
£100 for x 2 phones (£50ish each)
£265 car (Renault Clio)
£368 council tax (!)
Rest on food and baby wipes and trains to work etc.

Don't get me wrong we live in a gorgeous 5 bed in a village and appreciate we have a wonderful life but we moved from a terrace house in London and just can't workout why our bills have got so high. Especially as never eat out or anything like that anymore. Struggling to afford everything but on our salaries it shouldn't be so hard... am I missing something blindly obvious we can change (besides selling the house!) or is life just crazy expensive?!

Change your phone contract. Lebra or tesco do something for Bout £15 per month.

See if you can get a radiator installed in kitchen

How much on trains and do you have a car op? So insurance, tax, then life insurance, that sort of thing? Add in things like doctors bills

A few thoughts:

• How many children do you have? Surely at least one of them qualifies for 30 free hours plus tax free childcare unless one or both of you earns over £100k? If the latter and you're only a bit over then consider upping pension contributions to get back into eligibility. If they're not three yet then you'll need to wait it out - but it makes a big difference when it kicks in!
• Radiators are cheap - get one installed in your kitchen and turn off the underfloor heating (or follow the advice above re making

it more efficient)

• £400 a month on oil is ludicrous. We have a 300 year old five bed, four reception room house and run a forty year old aga and still pay nothing like that (it is double-glazed though). Maybe £2k per year depending on current prices. Oil is about 65 ppl right now. When was your boiler last serviced? How old is it? Something is clearly going wrong there.
• old fashioned thick insulated curtains and only putting the heating on first thing in the morning and in the evening will make a big difference.
• if your heating is on during the day because you work from home then it might be worth looking at a coworker space. Or get a little electric oil-filled radiator and just heat one room whilst you are working. Remember to shut the door!

Get an au pair to reduce nursery costs you have the space

Thick curtains and draught excluders. Curtains over internal doors too. We are planning to put in double glazing in old 5 bed house. We have underfloor heating in kitchen but it’s wet and doesn’t cost much to run so we live in there. But our oil bill still went up massively last 2 years.

woodburner in sitting room but the kiln dried wood is expensive.

Plus check that your loft liner and loft insulation are at least up to standard. See what grants you can get for updating your windows

Are you claiming everything you should be? Look up on gov.uk, entitledto.co.uk or moneysupermarket or moneysavingexpert. 🌹

council tax bill is huge
try paying over 12 months instead of 11

Do you actually need to heat the kitchen? The only heat source in mine is my oven.

You can bring your phone bills down, get a SIM only deal next time your contract is up for renewal, you can get SIM only for under £10 a month. Yes you pay out when you get a new phone, but how often do you need a new phone?

Invest in double glazing. If you can't afford that then thick thermal curtains and the temporary stuff that looks like cling film.

Get heated throws, they make a huge difference, my heating has been on 3 times this winter. I appreciate that is more difficult with a child / children.

Buy jumpers and slippers and start wearing them.

if your heating is on during the day because you work from home then it might be worth looking at a coworker space. Or get a little electric oil-filled radiator and just heat one room whilst you are working. Remember to shut the door

YY to shutting the door. I'm horrified about how much heat we used to waste by leaving doors open, mainly so the cats could wander around unimpeded

When gas prices rose, we started closing doors and put a cat flap in the living room door and our annual gas usage has fallen from 13000 a year to 8500.

5 bed, but newer house than yours.
The nursery fees will drop when school starts (not dissappear, as you will need wraparound and holidays).
Your electric and oil is prohibitive! We've just switched to the octopus tracker, and are down to £150 a month - gas and electric combined - and I drop it each month still as we get used to thenew pricing structure. So, I'd suggest looking at a dynamic pricing electricity tarrif that suits your house. And insulate, insulate, insulate!

Go SIM only on the phones - I'm £10 a month without shopping around for years.

How much longer on the car loan? Once thats paid off, keep the car as long as you can.

What is gigaclear??

Trains to work - is that both of you? So you have a car sitting on the drive, and pay for a train??

I live in a 1990s 5-bed house and I don't think your expenses are ridiculous. I don't have kids in nursery but 2k is cheap. We paid more than that and my youngest is 9. Your electricity and oil is higher than my combined fuel, but that's expected with a single glazed farmhouse. (We pay £300). Everything else seems normal. I think everything is just expensive now.

An au pair should only be working 35 hours a week max, and have no sole care of under 2s.

Exploiting a young woman to enable someone else's choice to live in a large farm home is not a solution.

Thermal curtains, including door curtains have been really helpful in our drafty old house. We’ve also got an open chimney, we’ve got a wool chimney plug (chimney sheep!) which has made the room at least 5 degrees warmer. All downstairs doorways have sausage draft excluders.
Our combined gas and electric is about £450 per month, our council tax is £389(!) for 10 months, so similar to yours. Running drafty old houses is expensive, we are slowly adding in as many energy saving/insulating options as possible, but we have to battle the council to change anything, so progress is slow! Absolutely love where we live though and for us the expense and cost cutting elsewhere to facilitate (cheap phones, fewer holidays, lots of diy/maintenance) is totally worth it

I’ve lived in a single glazed old house.

Having the heating on in the day is necessary. They’re bloody freezing.

And the heating bills were the reason l moved out of my old single glazed house.

Constantly freezing below knee level.

I do! I have it set to 19C. I'm not going to sit in the cold when I can afford it. Both DH and I WFH.

Get double glazing or that insulating film you can get for windows.

If the walls are cold, get insulating plaster board.

Are you home in the day? If not, why is the heating on?

Do you not have a wood burner or open fire with it being a farm house?

I'm afraid that additional heating while your children are small is another expense that gets better as they get older. In the interim do all you can to heat the person not the air.
Living in a big old house is a bit like camping: heating the space is a waste because it all escapes, so concentrate on insulating and warming each person.( this gets easier when they are a bit older.
Socks and slippers always. Snuggly dressing gown, clothes warmed before you put them on, hot water bottle to warm your bed. The invention of oodies has been a godsend for us as they are so warm and fun!
As pp have all said; look at ways to insulate; double glazed secondary glazing if you're in a listed house; thick curtains over doors and windows; close doors between rooms. Lining bedroom walls at least with insulation board ( or even just the foam lined paper 📄 f you have solid walls which are completely ld to the touch.
Spring is here so use the money you won't need to spend on heating on insulation for next winter. Good luck!

Ultimately you've moved into a house that isn't really fit for purpose for modern living! Single glazed, no heating in the kitchen etc. £800 energy is a hell of a lot.

Short term your only real saving is to try to get that down. Do you use every room all the time - are there rooms where you can turn off the rads? Do you have really thick, lined curtains - although these are hardly cheap themselves I appreciate.

Long term you need a plan for investment to modernise the house - triple glazing, better insulation and radiators in the kitchen. In addition you may well find solar and heat pumps good solutions. Maybe once out the childcare years you could put £1500 of the £2k you spend on childcare each month towards this sort of thing.

Everything looks about right aside from heating bills. But that feels like a predictable cost when you bought the house you did. If you're bringing in £20k a month it's kind of a moot point though as you can easily afford it. If your bills are coming to £6k and your net monthly income is £6.5k then that's different.

My parents had a similar house. Not allowed to do anything to the windows because it is in a conservation area.

Mum had thick thermal lined floor length curtains at every window. In the evening, when you closed the curtains the temperature rose 10 degrees in the house. Those single glazed windows are a killer. During the day the house was always cold apart from the kitchen which had an aga.

They also had an open fire. They had to install a block in the chimney to keep the lounge bearable. Mum always sat under a blanket in the evening. When we had Christmas etc we relied on the open fire.

Old farmhouses are crap to heat. And they take ages ot heatup because the stone walls soak up the heat so much.

Big radiators would help even if it costs a bit you'll save in the long run
Secondary glazing
Thick curtains plus door curtains
SIM only phones
What is gigaclear? Is it essential?
Go through your incomings and outgoings and see what you actually need. Wants are extras

£400 electricity bills each month -
this is loads I would try turning under floor heating off as suggested by others see if plug in radiator is less
£400 oil - this is loads we spent about £700 a year on oil, assuming the single glazing is the issue I'd look to get a quote for double glazing even if you can only do a couple of rooms at a time.
If you have money to invest I'd recommend solar and batteries
£35 tv subscriptions this could easily be reduced
£35 Gigaclear don't know what this is
£100 for x 2 phones (£50ish each) this could easily be reduced

Other have already talked extensively about energy and childcare bills.

You seem to have over £1000 unaccounted for (if you really spend that much on baby wipes, I would heavily suggest using reusable ones). You probably need to break that down. I know it covers food but 2 adults and 2 nursery age children shouldn't have an enormous food bill.

I would forensically look at everything you spend money on and work out whether you are getting value for it.
Basically you are at the expensive childcare years and you have a fairly expensive lifestyle. If you don't want to move you'll be only saving smallish amounts until the children get older.

Wow. Electricity and oil are obviously mahoosive. Have you always checked you're on the best rates etc,

No idea what Gigaclear is.
Do you really need the TV subs?
£50 each per month on phones is a lot. If you can afford those bills, you can probably find the cash to buy a handset outright and sign up to giffgaff for a SIM. £10/month.

I would only heat the rooms you use. Do you use a tumble dryer? Change to a dehumidifier that will cut your electric bill. Use a slow cooker and airfryer instead of oven.
Change your mobiles.
Are you in an old house would you be eligible for any grants for insulation.
I would be trying to remortgage and get double / triple glazing.
Shop from a list some people keep a massive stock pile of food and a full freezer or even two. Eat the food you have and don’t over stock . All these little things help in the long run.
go through the stuff you don’t use and sell it. Don’t buy stuff on a whim. Are you both buying lunch every day? are you buying coffees every day? All these little bits add up to a lot of money.
keep a notebook of all spending for a whole month and put what you spent it on. You will be horrified.