yet again a bugeting thread!

[Munz]

I posted one a bit ago to see if I could make it work being a SAHM - our first month without my money and we're failing miserablly, so am after any ideas of either shaving things down here or money saving tips - I know I should menu plan more, we're doing more food from scratch but her'es out budget.

DH money - 1150 (ish)
Tax cred - 95
C/B - 69
total income - 1314 P/M

outgoin we have

Debt repayments £350
car finance £120
Car ins £ 42
petrol £ 50
house ins £ 35
Washer ins £ 15
BT (tele/BB) £ 40
sky £ 35
TV licenece £ 12
Food £170
dog food £ 20

gas/eelc £ 70

total there is £959

so in theroy we should have £350 left over after bills - in truth we have 0 left so I have no idea where it's going to or anything.

i'm looking at going back to work which would provide me with approx £400 p/ after childcare and petrol etc, (obv credits would drop thou) DH is due a lump sum in march time which will pay off the car, some debts (those will come down to £280 so a combined saving of £180, ooh and the washer ins runs out so that's another £14 bringing us up to a fair old bit) but I have no idea where it's going to.

waht can I do? does anyone actually use the white board idea which they recommend on the spendoholics programme?

if I could find this £400 and get these few bills sorted out then I won't have to go back to work - which to be truthful is what i'm after but I don't see much other choice at the minute.

(I do do avon as well, this moth I earnt £80, but spent $40 paying for my started stuff and also some demo products as I was wanting to do avon partys on a night - failing that they'd be xmas pressies for the family )

food is for 2 adults and 1 baby, includes nappies - i'm switching to the tescos ones and formula - I was going to switch the the follow on milk as my friend tells me they do offers on those once he's run out of these lot of the normal stuff.

from that money £40 ish ios meat at the butchers the rest is at tescos/asda.

My top budgeting tip is an envelope with the weeks cash in it. Then if you run out, it's only a few days till the next lot of money is due and paying cash for everything makes you realise exactly where it is going. And Lidl shopping slashes my shopping bill when I get round to going there.

we do .com - I think the nearest lidl is quite far away. I guess it doesn't help everything is paid out monthly so come about 10 dya into teh month we're thinking right x no of days till this goes in or that goes in and i'm fed up with it.

Why have you got your washer insured ??

Ours is all done monthly but I work out (well in theory I do !) what we will have left after bills and split this plus the food budget into 4, then that's the cash I take out for the week. That way I know there will be enough in the account to pay for all the bills etc.

thats' a good idea KP.

LG - basically it went tits up just after joey was born (3 weeks old actually) big poweewr cut and the motor went, or something I don't udnerstand it all, anyhow we couldn't afford at the time to buy a new one or the repair bill which we were lookign at being 100+ so hotpoint insured it for us for the year, we don't have any charges if it needs to be repaired this year, and didn't have to pay out in feb - althou once it's finished in feb we won't be having it anymore.

So at the end of the year you will have paid out £180 for what ??

Not fighting, just trying to figure it all out.

Message withdrawn

Write down everything you spend, no matter how small on a spreadsheet and then see where the money is going.

I can remember being really skint when my last partner was made redundant. I didn't buy magazines, we never had meals out or coffee while shopping, I took my own lunch to work. Absolutely everything I went to buy I thought "do I really need this" and if I didn't then I wouldn't buy it.

Cancel the washing insurance. It's been found they virtually never pay. Cheaper to pay a man when you need one.
May be cancel sky and get rid of the TV but that may be a bit extreme. I won't suggest getting rid of the dog.

surfer - DH has started coming home on a lunch hour so that save s a bit and he cycles to work, joey's food is rarely shoip jars - I have a few - normally the 8 for £4 offer to last in case of emergancies etc.

yorkie - we have the £35 package witht he movies cos they give u 'free' sky plus with it, if we reduce the package down to the £21 one they charge u £10 for the plus box so from that point of view we're not saving a great deal iycwim. we only took out the plus box in august of this year so we're stuc with it - same with the BB.

LG - actually it's 10 months not 12 - my mistake, it's basically speading the cost of the one repair we needed, aty the time DH said I could have had a new washer but as outrs is only 3 years old and we have more than enough debts already I didn't want to get another washer and have more credit over a longer term iycwim, and we didn't have the cash ready avaliable at the time.

i've treid doing the cash book which tbh just worked out to be a waste of money - something I don't want a board to be if we went down that route of getting a board with all the incomings and outgoings a month on it - althou then I guess everyone would be able to see it who came to the hosue

Are you definately on the maximum Tax credits you are entitled to?

do you draw cash out or use switch? if you use switch you can see where it all went on your bank statement. otherwise you could do what i used to do. have one account that your bills go out of. work out how much needs to be in it every month. then divide the rest up by however many weeks there are in that month and only draw your budget out each week. if it's spent it's spent and that's it.

also..shop around for your insurances, you can do it quickly on line.

lol xenia- i'll suggest that to DH - but I know what his responce will be! lol.

in the dogs defence they don't actually cost us much (fingers crossed and all, just their feed and a bit of love) apart from that just jabs and worming. doens't work out to that much on balance of what it could cost iycwim.

are we able to cancle the policy for the washer mid term esp as we've had one claim on it.

What about ditching Sky and getting a Freeview box, that way you only have a one of payment of about what you are paying for one months Sky at the moment. And do you have to eat so much meat, there are loads of tasty veggie meals that you could do.

Check sites such as quidco and freefivers to see if you can change any of your insurances and get cashback

dis- we have an army policy for the insurance - not many civvy ones will take on the tennants liablity, nott o mention it also covers DH's kit that he uses in work - again not many civvy insures will do that. car I looked at in sept when we took out the new policy.

fred - apparently so - but my god that pissed me off, I was on mat leave all this financial eyar, so I said to the bloke i'm not working my maternity pay will be about £2K this year and thats all, ok he says so he has me down as working all year when I shouldn't have been and DH@s wages were £18K approx, so when he got his pay rise and I got my P45 thru I ring up and say ok, i'm not working this is actually my mat pasy amount (she says that shouldn't have been included form april so we were under paid form april to sept iycwim but then wiith DH's rise which will be approx £20200 p/a (a whopping 200 more per year than we origionally stated in april) they've dropped our credits from £106 to £95, for the one child on an income of £20200 apaprently cos we're over the bracket it's changed our award. don't understand that when it's only 200.

Sorry, my computer is slow, didn't see the bit about the Sky package.

try using own brands/budget for a while and use your local market for veggies and stuff. get a sack of potatoes etc.... if you don't already of course..

we have meat pretty much everynight kitty - althou i'm trying to bulk out stews etc with pulses and lentils but DH is not willing ont hat front at all. i've started to get more off of the chicken as well on a sunday and givin it to DH in his sandwiches and basically cutting portions down.

sky - I think we're tied to till next august. - althou I transfered and upgraded so not sure does that count as a new contract?

there are a couple of things that made a big difference to us

• changing our phone from BT - to Primus and 1899
• changing gas and elec to powergen (go on moneysavingexpert to find best for you)
• menu planning and buying what we need to the letter

oh and get a digi box

nup spook - just getting to know my way aztround down here - at the old house we could get a sack of maris piper spuds for £3.50 - god only knows where i' get those down here - everything's from tescos or the green grocers in town - but their fresh goes off quicker than we can eat it.

Might be worth looking into cancelling the Sky. If you had a freeview box, that's one months payment to buy it, then you could do something like join the Amazon DVD rental thing where you get 6 DVDs to rent per month for a tenner, which would still work out better than what you paying. And tell your DH that he will benefit healthwise from not eating so much meat and not to be such a miserable bugger !

Munz, was it you who moved to Blandford ?