My Monthly Budget….

Every few months or so I review our monthly budget to see where we can save a bit extra, it’s always me that does this as Mr Frugal genuinely does not have a clue about money. As long as the ATM always gives him a tenner when he wants it then he’s a happy bunny
I have done this since last August (here) so I’m hoping there’ll be loads of tweaks I can make:

Income details
Salary (after tax) – £2440(combined)
Family Allowance – £125
Child Tax Credits – £40
Total – £2595

Household details
Food Shopping – £250 (Getting better here lol)
Mortgage – £812
Council tax – £134
Gas / Electricity – £110
Phone / Internet – £35
Water – £20 (on a metre now and saving loads_

Financial Products
Card payments- £197
Home Insurance – £30 (Just got renewal and its increased so I am going to try and get a better quote)
Life Insurance – £5 (Need to get this sorted)

Leisure
TV licence / Satellite – £40
Mobile Phone (both phones) £50

Travel
Petrol – £160
Car maintenance / tax – £20
Car Insurance – £30

Budget Summary
Total Income – £2595
Total Spending – £ 1893
Total Left Over – £702

Things are definately looking up on the financial front as Mr Frugal is going to be working nights Monday-Friday for a little while. It’s not as bad as it sounds because he used to start work at 5am, come home and have bit of a sleep and then pick the kids up from school, whereas now he starts at 11pm, comes home at 7am and has his sleep when the kids are at school. We don’t see each other any less really and he gets extra from his work to do the nights. He says it also means his job is much easier as he can just get on with it. I have included his extra money in my budget as it could be permanent but as it could just be short term we need to make sure that we don’t get used to it.

There are a few things that stand out as areas where I can reduce our costs though:

• Card Payments – I am going to pay extra to them each month to get these down as quickly as possible. I have worked out which ones to pay first using the snowball calculater here)
• Home Insurance – We just got our renewal through last week and its gone up although we do get £50 cashback if we stay with them. I am going to have a look on Quidco to see if I can find a better quote with a bit extra cashback.
• Mobile phones – I have one of those cute LG cookie phones in pink on contract for £15.00 a month, I rarely use it so I’m happy with that deal. Mr Frugal has a Blackberry at £35.00 a month and he’s actually out of contract so he should be able to get a pretty good deal. If not he can cancel and go pay as you go!
• On a more long term basis, I want to pay some extra off my mortgage each month, using the calculater here, I can see that if I pay an extra £50.00 a month I will knock three years off my loan length and save £15645.00.
• I also need to sort out some life insurance as the cover we have is clearly not adequate at a fiver a month!
• Also, as a way of earning a bit extra i signed up to Usborne books but never really got into it. Now might be the time to sort myself out with that and I could use the extra to pay off some of our credit cards.

Even though it looks as though we will have about £700 left over each month after our bills, we need to remember that we always overspend and spent most of last year (and this year to date) well into our overdraft. I am due a bonus this month that should go some way to sorting that out and we need to make sure that we are super careful that once we are out of this position, we don’t ever get back in to it.

Sorry for the long boring post, normal service will now be resumed lol.