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.

Prime and Disney cost about £15 together if you choose the cheap plans. £196 is a huge price for tv and broadband.

Glad you've cancelled the milkman

Yes because it doesn’t include food or uni contributions plus neither of us have any kind of pension that will maintain the income so we really need to cut back.

@Pembano, I didn’t realise that at all, thank you - he only has his phone and a laptop. I think he watches TikTok probably to be honest.

I'd check your utilities... We are a not huge 4 bed with 2 electric cars and ours is less than half of that.

Also in terms of TV we do one at a time and rotate.. Disney for a bit, then cancel get Netflix etc etc.. also check if you can get any deals. We got Apple TV with DHs credit card.

this is all of our outgoings you need break it down more

Me 3100
DC 4100
CB 280
Total 7480

Housing
Mortgage: 1900.
Insurances(life, house): 150
Property tax: 50
Total Housing: 2100
Utilities
Electricity 60
Waste collection: 25
Broadband & TV: 70
Mobile phones x3: 60
Total Utilities: 215
Food & Groceries
Groceries & household food: 500
Dining out / takeaways: 200
Total Food: 700
Transportation
Fuel: 150
Car insurance & tax: 140
Maintenance & NCT: 100
Total Transport: 390
Education & Kids
School books, uniforms, fees: 50
Activities, sports, clubs: 50
Pocket money/treats: 60
Total Kids & Education: 160
Entertainment & Lifestyle
Family outings, hobbies, gifts: 250
Subscriptions: 20
Miscellaneous expenses (haircuts etc): 60
Personal spends:250x 2 = 500
Total Entertainment: 830
Savings & Miscellaneous
Emergency fund / Savings: 2,000
Holidays (monthly allocation): 500
Clothing: 200
Miscellaneous buffer: 300
Total Savings & Misc.: 3,000

DC is supposed to be DP 😆 if my dc earned that it would be great

Oh I see. I would absolutely both start a private pension (if you haven't got company one), even if you only put a bit in each month to start. Not sure how old you are, but it's really worth it for your future. You seem to suggest you got the milkman because it would stop you spending on extras when you go out and get milk etc. I would shop with a list and stick to it to keep on track of spending. The milkman seems a lot.

Our tv and broadband are the same as yours ( sky full package,sports,Disney,Netflix,prime etc )and our energy bill is £385 a month for 5 bed detached house .
no mortgage though

This is helpful thanks.
ive tried to simply my banking recently. I had a food bills one, about six rubbish savings ones and and a spending one as well as a joint bills account and my own current account. I used chat gpt to streamline it.

I pay £5 a month and then tesco deliveries are free. The great thing about this is then you can have 2 deliveries, as one a week for 7 meals for 6 people isn't feasible imo (storage space, stuff going off). Get one on a monday and one on a Thursday and really plan it out. It helps with my costs a lot, and I refuse to do top up shops except literally milk or cat food. nothing else. If there's no squash they'll have to wait!

Might be too late for you but in case anyone else can be saved. Don’t buy a Ring doorbell with its rip off subscription. Get a Eufy with an SD card. Those Ring ones must end up costing a fortune.

Get new broadband on an introductory deal and buy a Firestick from Amazon.

Too late I think, we have ring cameras set up plus a doorbell. Where we live there’s been a lot of car theft so we wanted to be safer

Ok sort of similar then. I probably need to look at cutting some of this though.

There’s lots missing from your list. Energy? Food?

We’re a family of 5, large 4 bed house, 2 electric cars and never scrimp on heating etc and ours is £303 per month, are you on a decent electric car tariff?

Energy I’ve put in utilities and food in the thread at around £700 a month although this month something has gone really wrong and I’m at £900.

Have a look at the first Rebel Finance School session, it’s excellent and helping you find leaks in your spending. A new course started recently free on YouTube.

£800 food shop for 6 is low in my opinion. Outs is over £1K for 5 though we have teens and eat buckets of fruit and veg

She’s not asked how she can spend more money though 😁.

I have always lived on minimum wage and everything else I get is a bonus.
including times when I’ve been earning 20 grand a month, I’ve never allowed the lifestyle creep
My bills are less than 2 grand a month

Unless the uni child is living alone, why pay an extra TV licence?

Utilities is eye watering

If you have an ev, do you have the cheap overnight tariff? Do some laundry and dishwashing then. get a timer for showers

We are with sky and pay £120 for sky multiroom, movies, kids and internet. It includes Disney, Netflix, HBO, Paramount and monthly Vue tickets as part of the package - I’m almost certain it’s standard for the basic package, you just need to activate them on your Sky app.