What are your monthly outgoings/are mine crazy?

[tinyviolinforme]

I feel like every month I spend hours looking at a spread sheet. We do have a good income at £5,500.
we pay

mortgage and council tax £2046
phones incl device plans £96 (5 people)
utilities £498
tv and broadband incl extras like Disney £196
insurances (cat, cat, house, life) £166
gym £40
ring £8
milkman £151

im thinking that the milkman wasn’t as cost effective as I hoped. It was to stop me going to buy milk and eggs and then adding extras but I wonder if it’s a false economy.
tv is another one - it includes two tv licences as one of the kids is at uni and has some additional needs and I was worried they might unknowingly watch something that needed a licence. Maybe that’s me being over protective.

Sadly (!) your mortgage, council tax and utilities don’t sound insane to me - that’s pretty much what we pay here, thanks to Truss and everything that came after her.

Your groceries sound pretty high to me, but there are probably a lot of variables in there; we pay about £5-600 a month, depending on whether that includes eg cleaning products, toiletries etc. I’ll caveat that we don’t have have teens yet, but I’m really careful with meal planning and using up leftovers to make more meals for instance.

phones and tv are probably worth looking at as well.

Don’t think this seems that bad except for the milkman. Didn’t realise milkmen still existed

I never watch tv. I forgot to say that include Spotify which is a family plan and everyone uses, I listen to audio books all the time so would hate to lose that.

How fast do you need it for work?

I'm paying £25/month for FTTP 900mbs from Gigaclear.

I think prime and Disney may need to go

Also have a 4-bed with an electric car and my utilities are not much less than that, about £400/month. Dishwasher runs once a day but we do loads of washing with 4 adults in the house and 2 that do daily sports/exercise and shower twice a day 😬

Dishwasher once a day, can't see how it could be 3x a day. Still £380 is mad, even with electric car being charged presumably at a good overnight rate. Who are you with? I use Octopus who have good service as well as competitive rates.

In the summer months the gas usage must be extremely low

I’ve just had a look at our utilities - we pay (4.5 bed house):

£32 broadband
£140 fuel (went up to £330 p/m in Dec) 😏
£90 water
£280 council tax

do you have a smart heating system? I think that’s one way I’ve kept our fuel costs really low, may be worth exploring if not.

Okay if you don’t use the tv subscriptions they should go! I think they’re good value if well used (although I minimise costs by cycling between them).

All of those seem high to me tbh.

The milkman is having a laugh.

My tv costs me £16 a month (I think that’s what the tv licence is). My broadband and landline is £50 a month and that’s high I just haven’t sorted out changing it yet.

My gas and electric is £80 a month, water £50, what other utilities are there?

Your mortgage, council tax and phones seem about right for 5 people.

I'd be monitoring actual gas/electric usage to check you're not overpaying. Mine was set high by new provider as we messed up in January with our touring caravan on the drive and 'leccy heating on 24/7. Reduced from £270 to £170 when I quibbled.

Dishwasher 3*daily seems a lot. Once a day overnight in economy 7 when the kids were still at home.

Do you have an electric tariff tailored for people charging electric cars?

Do you actually need ring?
whats the breakdown on the tv/broadband?
also what contracts do you have with the phones? We buy phones outright and get cheap sims/deals from lebrara

£155 council tax (I’m in Scotland so this includes water)
£70 utilities (2B flat)
£69 car insurance and tax
£10 contents insurance
£13 ish TV license
£20 sky inc Netflix and Disney plus
£22 broadband
£9 mobile phone sim
£50 factors fee for block of flats inc buildings insurance

My mortgage is paid off and I don’t have any kids.

I have a 3 bed and pay £80 a month, you are paying more than 4x but only have 1 more bedroom. You need to swap suppliers today

the tv situation is madness, I pay £40 a month for broadband, liscense and Netflix. Again you need to shop around

meal plan and include the kids in this plan. Try and take £200 a month off your bill.

cancel the milkman, that’s a fortune.

look for other leaks in your budget. Are the household paying for coffees out? Is everyone taking packed lunch to school/work?

your income is really good, but you have huge outgoings. Getting those in hand will release a decent amount of money.

watch rebel finance school on YouTube as they will help you enormously with this issue!

That’s helpful thank you, I have not heard of rebel finance I will take a look.
glad I posted as I have cancelled the milkman now.
the tv is £95 broadband and tv (includes now entertainment and Netflix) and then Spotify, Disney, prime and some sports ads on. Maybe I could cancel Disney to start with.

I get free Netflix and free Disney with my cheap sky package which is basic channels plus Sky Atlantic as an extra. Have a look on their website. Can't remember offhand but somewhere around £28 a month, then extra for broadband. Can look it up later if you wish but think both combined is less than £50 a month.

I would also investigate swapping utility providers as you might save a bit there. But agree with others it's probably your food bill.

I think your milkman and TV costs are very high but your utility costs are less than ours. If you’re spending £800 per month on food for six people, I think you’re doing really well!

https://www.sky.com/tv/ultimate-tv-package?irct=web-tv_tv-gbr-compare-packages-utv-learn

£24 a month with lots of extras. Broadband is separate so will depend on what speed you need. But as its separate you could look at BT or Plusnet etc to see if they have any offers.

Thanks all so it looks like people think tv/broadband, milkman and utilities are the main area to focus on.
ive listed a meal plan of things they all eat and am going to start in two weeks because some are away and also we have some fridge and freezer food I want to use up.
that gives me time to set up a regular delivery.
does anyone know if you can set up separate lists with a supermarket and alternate but also remove items as a one off?

We spend £600+ on food for three adults. I cook nearly every day. However I do buy portioned fish. I find I save money at marks and Spencer. We also freeze loads ( you can freeze milk by the way). We do eat expensive food as we don't go out much to socialise due to other commitments.
Duel energy is £300 for 5 bed.
Water £55

We have a huge mortgage but that will reduce with our planned move.

The ordering system with Ocado is very flexible. You can set your favourites to come weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, and also have separate lists.
you can also add or remove items in a one-off basis

So that seems to add up to a monthly spend of £3201.00 which is quite a bit less than you're bringing in? Are you just trying to save some money?

If your child at uni only watches live TV and BBC iplayer on a laptop tablet or phone, which is not plugged in whilst watching (I know! The rules are very arcane), then they are covered by your home licence. Were you aware of that? You could save on the 2nd licence.

Says so on the TV licensing website.

Your tv and broadband bill is excessive, I would say
Apparently a way to save is to keep alternating between streaming services, I am trying to sort this atm. At the moment we pay fibre optic broadband about £32 a month, one tv licence £15, and about £20 - £25 a month on various streaming services and that's it.

I also find that often if you go to cancel streaming services they offer a better deal, I went to cancel my Disney basic with ads package and they offered me it at £3.49 per month for 3 months. And Now tv gives you all the stuff you'd get on Sky for cheaper and they're always doing deals. The packages with ads are cheaper and you don't have to sit through many ads.

Don't have Spotify though, we find the basic Amazon music you get with Prime has everything we'd want to listen to. Your teenagers probably want the latest stuff though

Agree on your utilities and tv. 5bed Edwardian terrace here and pay £120 gas and electric. £10 boiler cover, £30 WiFi and virgin tv, £40 streaming services, £40 water, £10 tv license. So under £250 .

We have a large 4 bed detached , 3 adults
utilities ( gas / elec/ BG cover for heating / plumbing / electrics and water £ 300
tv ( sky basic so Netflix and Disney included , prime and tv license ) £ 82
fibre 900 broadband with BT £ 48
blink , insurances etc I pay yearly and I’ve just opted to pay Prime yearly as it’s cheaper . We all have bought mobiles and just have a monthly contract for data / calls etc so that £24 for all 3 of us .