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.

Yes octopus for ev, so cheap during the night.

So are you putting washing machine on etc at night?

So during this thread someone has pointed this out - I’m trying to put the dishwasher on at 11.30 but it does depend on someone being awake and for washing there’s so much we couldn’t do it through the night, it is several loads often

Several loads a day? Really? Sorry if I missed this but that seems daft - are you washing things more than really needed ? I know you get people who wash a pair of trousers after half a days wear but most things don’t need washing as much as people think

I think its the dishwasher the OP is talking about but I agree several loads a day is ridiculous.

Its also likely this will be a power hungry quick wash instead of the eco cycle as there simply isn't enough hours in the day to repeatedly run the eco cycle, ours takes nearly 5 hours.

Does your dishwasher not have a delay button OP so it can be set to come on later?

Dishwasher -2.5kwh would be £1 a day if 4 loads - that’s £30 a month

So what the hell is the other near £400 pm of utilities going on? The OP says it costs £498 pm for 'utilities' so I'm assuming water is £50 to £100 pm.

They’ve set it at £402 every month.
no hot tub , no pool, no sauna, just tvs, pay stations. Oven, air fryer, hob, etc

Oh and electric car

Electric car - 4 miles per kWh is 7p for 4 miles
40 miles a day ( twice the average ) would therefore be 70p a day which is £20 a month

Really need to know where your power is going OP

if you use the app you can look at single days and see exactly when your electricity ( and gas) use is high

i can tell when we have the oven on, the kettle, the washing machine, the car ….

i can that there are times when the usage falls below 0.01 kWh per half hour - the house base load of fridge and extractor fans comes to around 60p a day of which 50p is standing charge I think ( we had a couple of days holiday so that’s really easy to see the background load )

it’s not impossible you have a failing appliance or something big that has poor standby power

or a water immersion heater ?

dh has a four hour commute (return). I don’t know what else maybe there’s a faulty appliance? I don’t think it’s gas as that goes up and down all the time depending on weather.

One simple thing is to ground the house and turn everything off except the fridge ( and even that can go off for half an hour ) and look at your electricity usage then

turn things on only when you absolutely have to and monitor electricity use

4hrs a day - grim !

If your salary goes into a lloyds bank account they offer free disney. We are lucky some new broadband providers knocked on our door and we gor broadband way cheaper then we used to. Research into the new providers.

I love ring but we are not subscribed. My husband installed cameras and that all.gets saved to a drive so just the one of cost installing them

We pay dirt cheap for our phone sim only deals. I use lebara. Excellent service all deals are on hotukdeals online

Jeus even if you don't need to trim your expenditure £196 for TV and broadband is ridiculous. You need to look at bringing that package cost down and renegotiating every time your contract is due

I pay £79.99 for full speed with Virgin media broadband, full TV package, including all children's, sports, films and Netflix. It also includes landline cos it would cost more to take that off for some reason best beknown to Virgin

My monthly outgoings with £3000 per month incoming.
mortgage and council tax £174. No mortgage and rates.
phones incl device plans £20. (1 person. Tesco mobile)
utilities £154 (gas, electric, tv, broadband)
insurances (house, car) £100
golf club £100
ring £8
Monthly food shop - £240.

Total - 696. 2304 left over

a useful exercise.

We have more income and spend exactly half on mortgage to what you are paying. It is really high and that's why your combined income isn't stretching as much as it could. A few financial people I've read, recommend all bills and mortgage to be under 1/3 of income in order to enjoy life and invest. Nothing you can do about that now but consider budgeting better for bills and supermarket instead. TV is a lot. We don't pay TV licence and we pay netflix, disney, prime and rotate between apple TV and others every few months. No more than 45 a month and we never run out of things to watch between us ans kids. And no TV licence which also saves us. See if you can find a good deal for electricity and gas and check if you could get new deals for phones etc. Meal planning based on how much you want to spend a week, before the weekly shop and sticking to what you've got left in the cupboards until you're up to the 7 days mark can be super helpful. Saved us over 300 a month when we started doing it. Good luck it's tough times currently!

Mortgage £1400
council tax £260
gas and electric £250
tv packages and subscriptions (sky tv, Netflix, Disney, itvx, Spotify) £150
kids’ hobbies and clubs £400
Water £70
House, life and pet (2 cats) insurance £90
Groceries is close to £750 a month

Are you using this amount or paying off debt on your account? Or are you building up credit? What does your bill say about annual usage?

You say you live in a smallish 4 bed house. So it doesn’t sound like your bills should be anywhere near as high as they are.

If you are getting through lots of
plates, cups and glasses during the day can they not put the dishwasher on a quick wash? Ours has a 30m
wash which is fine for lightly used items.

similarly it may be worth checking if your washing machine has a quick wash (15/20 mins) for clothing that isn’t heavily soiled and needs refreshing.

Income around 8k between us
Mortgage £1,000
Utilities £300
Cleaner £200

Just me and DH with no kids.

I think your budget sounds reasonable other than milkman.

6 in our family - the youngest 16 and all living at home. We save a fortune by

Only buying refurbished phones in excellent condition and then all being part of a Smarty family plan paying £5.40 a month each so £32.40. We also have a bad mobile reception here so can only choose companies linked to 3. The youngsters very occasionally run out of data in last few days (if they are away) and we pay £1 to top them up till end of month.

My income goes into a Club Lloyds account I think it's called. There is no fee if you pay the minimum required in each month but I can choose a perk once a year. I opt for Disney + for the family so not paying for that.

My husband has just opened another Club Lloyds account in his name and chosen a magazine subscription which we were paying for separately so that cost has now gone.

Our utility bill monthly is approx £200, though council tax high at just under £500 for 10 months.

Finally, we are all just following the Rebel Finance school on YouTube at the moment. I've offered our youngsters (& husband asked to join in) £10 for each week's lesson that they listen to & at the end we'll all invest the £100 (10 lessons though they are asking for £10 per Thursday night workshop too!) and see who fairs best.

But our toilet rolls, dishwasher tablets & washing powder from Farmfoods in bulk as significantly cheaper for us.

I know you probably all know about social tariff prices, I thought it was worth mentioning to help people…

Social tariffs are discounted broadband, mobile, and water packages designed for individuals on low incomes or government benefits like Universal Credit.
These essential services are delivered in the same way as standard packages but are priced significantly lower (typically ranging from £10 to £24 per month) and usually come with no mid-contract price rises or exit fees.

Who is Eligible?

You can usually qualify for a social tariff if you or anyone in your household claims one or more of the following benefits:

Universal Credit
Pension Credit (Guarantee Credit)
Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA)
Income Support
Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or Attendance Allowance (varies by provider)