£412

[headaches80]

Hello everyone.

I’m quite meticulous with budgeting.
mortgage rate has gone up again. I’ve just done my forward planning calculation.

After all bills/ direct debits/ standing orders (all essential stuff like mortgage, energy, c tax, TV licence, life insurance) I have calculated that we have £412 per month left.

This is for food, clothes, gifts, any school trips and unexpected bills. also to include petrol.

I’ve not included the insurance (car, home/contents) etc which I tend to get annually (I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it).

I spend around £30 a fortnight on petrol (getting to work). I downsized my car to pay for Christmas.

How are you splitting your £412 in my shoes? This is joint income, 2 adults and two teens. Both adults working full time.

I’m thinking

£200 shopping
£60 petrol
£40 unexpected/ school trips
£100 left over (will get eaten up no doubt)

its not a lot :(

I know I can sell stuff on Vinted. I don’t have loads of extra to sell and intend to save this option for use ahead of birthdays etc, I made £200 recently ahead of sons bday.

I’m thinking of ditching the TV usage (making licence fee not nec).

if Martin Lewis is correct, I’ll save 17% on energy bills. This will save me an extra £42.50

Any extra income streams or savings that I’ve not thought of?

no parking so car insurance goes up when she parks on the road, etc.
Its not necessarily more expensive, I park mine on the road and it is the same as the drive, garage is sometimes the expensive option with car insurance.

Isn’t the point that in order to get a massive mortgage (which is what is implied in OP’s post, or else it doesn’t add up), you would need high salaries as how much you can borrow is based on a multiple of your income. If you have high enough incomes to qualify for a large mortgage you shouldn’t still be paying your student loan in your 40s (as repayments are a % of your income).

Of course you can still be in your 40s and still be paying your student loan, but that doesn’t make any sense in the OP’s situation, hence people calling it out.

One more thought- I was adding up how much a car costs to run- tax mot insurance etc and I think it’s 300 a month just for running costs, not including the cost of purchase . Something to review and definitely cut back where possible

Exam marking
Tutoring evenings or during the summer break. Some families look for tutors over the summer to keep things ticking along.
Summer job if you are teachers - the 6 - 7 weeks working a summer job would pay for some of the annual expenses like insurance etc and the other is home with children.

Good luck

That's for 2 people so £60k

No but there's two of them. If they both earn £30k each, their take home will be around £3500 pm total.

But without a breakdown of the OPs spending, it's impossible to say what's taking up their income and what changes are needed for them to be more financially comfortable.

OP, you only spend around £15 pw in petrol, which is hardly anything. Is there any way you could drop down to one car?

Nothing adds up and OP has conveniently got upset so left the thread

What does DH do, sorry if you’ve said but I couldn’t see. Your mortgage must be huge to only have that left assuming you have similar salaries. You could extend your mortgage out or even take a payment break? I’d definitely look at tutoring and to be honest (not sure I can say this on here!) you could just do that cash in hand, I know people who have done that.

Yup and within Y, three different fees. £1k, 3k, 9k. So massive differences within a few years.

1998: £1k
2006: £3k
2012: £9k

So, if a sibling went in 2005, £1k, a younger sibling by 7 years would have paid £9k. Or over 3 year degree, £24k more debt.

OP, you could sign up to a tutoring agency and charge £30 an hour. My son's tutor told me she tutors 3 children each night that is £90 per evening and 3 on Saturday morning too. She is putting all of her tutoring money to save a deposit for a house.

Could you check with your mortgage company if you could extend term of mortgage or remortgage? I know it's not ideal but next year if your eldest goes to Uni he won't get a full loan as you will be expected to contribute towards his uni fees.

With good death in service for you both, do you really need life insurance? Are there any other outgoings you can cut back apart from TV licence which is a start.

Could your DH do a couple of evenings bar work?

In a couple of years your DD could do babysitting.

Ok is this thread sponsored by the Labour Party or the teachers union?
Either the op and her husband get a decent salary or if they are on a low salary they would only be able to get a small mortgage.
With five years in teaching op will be on £38000 assuming her DH earns the same that’s £76000 a year, with no childcare costs.
Something doesn’t add up.

Impossible to provide any advice unless the op posts accurate details of net income and gross expenditure. This has not happened.

DD as a very newly qualified teacher in her 20s earns £30k. Her outgoings are: netflix, £130 housekeeping, petrol, 02, gym, personal spends.

If I know that about dd's budget. Could provide spreadsheet copy for mine, and the op can't provide basic information I despair:

My figures were based on them both earning 30k. So 60k combined and a combined take home of 3k a month minimum. This was assuming they had large pension contributions.

It’s half term next week but are all schools near you the same week? You could do supply then. Petrol would cost though.

It would probably be too late now though as even though you have a DBS from your school they should run another. Then get yourself on the update service so you have it all the time. I’d contact some agencies and ask now, you might have a different end of term in the summer and pick up some days then.
Some agencies will try to get you to do ‘cover supervisor’ work which pays much less than teacher supply, so check on that. It can depend on your subject and what you can teach though on what supply you can do.

I would think it’s too late to mark exam papers now?

Tutoring is the way to go, again you are a little late in the year. But find out about it. I know a few teachers who do it. Do you teach a ‘popular’ subject like maths/science etc as that makes a difference.

Overall this is all very temporary though and you need to have more of a long term plan. You’ll have a teen going off to uni and unless you don’t give them a penny, it’s another cost.

Quite. We are only two and spend about £150 a week on Tesco plus top ups in the week.

Interesting that you have decided to leave the thread before saying what your mortgage is per month. Absolute load of tosh

If you are late 30s surely your tuition fees were only 1k? Im mid 30s and I was the first or second year of students paying 3k tuition.

This is the situation for many many people.

That's why it's a crisis.

Yes there's more than one of these "teacher on the breadline" threads at the moment and honestly my conclusion is that maybe they need to put on some budgeting lessons for teachers

Yes there's more than one of these "teacher on the breadline" threads at the moment and honestly my conclusion is that maybe they need to put on some budgeting lessons for teachers

I need to know what the company is! £800 a month more with only basic skills sounds incredible

I was thinking along similar lines about the other regular outgoings.

Have you got phone contracts, OP? If any of them are at the point where the phone is nearly paid for, you could go sim only and save quite a bit. Cancel Sky and stuff like that if you have it, Amazon Prime etc.

And do you check your energy statements? I had a client the other day who was paying shedloads for energy and her account was over £1,000 in credit. Got them a refund and reduced the monthly payment by over £100 a month.

Yeah it’s complete nonsense. I don’t know why threads like this appear… people are not stupid. There was a thread a couple of weeks ago by someone whose husband was a “very high earner in the City” and she was worried about costs going up by £400 a month and asking tips for how to cut the food bill for a household of 3. It was utterly bizarre.

I’m not sure what people get out of massaging the truth, if you genuinely need advice then surely you can post the truth on an anonymous forum?!

As a teacher could you do some tutoring, either in person or online? Depends what you teach, but I'm an English teacher and got in with an online company who are really good and offer me pretty much as many hours a week that I want to teach in after school time. On a decent month when I buckle down to making myself available every hour I can around school, I can easily make £400+. I also private tutor GCSE and A Level for £35/40 an hour. Got most of my clients through local Facebook groups starting out and now it's a word of mouth thing... I only need a couple of students on the go to make a real difference to my income.

Aside from this I do some clerking of meetings for the LEA; they're very keen on using teachers as we know the lingo. Might be worth perusing your local councils vacancies area on their website. I'm on a zero hours contract so take on as much or as little as I like.

Good luck!

Yeah, but not for two full-time teachers in their 40s living in the Midlands with no childcare costs it isn’t.