Budget for young couple with baby.

Hi All,

Hope you can help..I am a young professional. My partner and I have just had a baby...beautiful 3month old baby girl...she is a carer for a fmaily member with special needs and was studying nursing up untill she got pregnant.

My salary after tax per month is roughly 2800 no idea what that equates to p.a gross...as i work in a commission based job (housing market) that is not in great shape at the moment...market not the job.

My partner gets rougly 700 p.m as a carer plus child benefit of 160 p.m.

Heres where it gets tough, at the moment making ends meet is tough.

Mortgage of 245k on my own interest only of roughly 1100 p.m
esb and gas roughly 150 p.m
Car loan 200
Fuel 400 p.m and its a diesel car
Lunch and cigs roughly 450 more than half being a 7.10 daily habit which i really need to give up.

Can anyone please give me some advise/tips how to survive/budget.

Kind Regards

B

All food bills are taken care of by my partner.

Congratulations on the new arrival.
The main advice you are going to get here is to give up the cigarettes and start making your lunch each day - €450 extra per month would make a massive difference.

my2leftfeet said:

Congratulations on the new arrival.
The main advice you are going to get here is to give up the cigarettes and start making your lunch each day - €450 extra per month would make a massive difference.

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Good advice - If the youngster is only three months old, you wait until you get tugs at the trousers wanting the latest Barney toy etc, not to mention upgrading the car seat, pram etc in the coming months..!
Congrats btw..!

Thanks a million folks...
A trip to the docs today I think is on the cards..Ive tried everything else so I must give thease new drugs a go. I foregot to add in theres another 300 in expenses between pension and insurances p.m

From looking at it currently you've 500 to play with out of your funds, do the 300 in expenses come out this too?

yes 300 comes out also..and so does 90 on insurance not leaving any money for tax and or emergency/clothes etc. I work a 60-70 hour week as is.

Your gas and ESB bills seem to be rather high. Ours is about E60 pm.

About the smoking, I'm not a smoker so this is not something I've tried but if I had a habit I was trying to break I would give hypnosis a go.

wow..I wish we could cut ours down to that, ive even gone out and bought all the energy saving light bulbs, its made absolutely no difference to the bills.

Ok smokings got to go
Lunch down to €25 per week would be great

stumped, I really do not know how to stay out of the overdraft each month.

€100/wk on fuel seems like an awful lot too! Is getting the bus an option for you?
Its easy to reduce your lunch bill to €25/wk...make up big servings of different pasta dishes at home at the start of each week!
Giving up the smokes..or at least majorly cutting down would pay for your esb/gas bill!

Re energy costs - are you using a condensor dryer and/or plug in heaters (they eat electricity).
Do you always ensure that you have a full load when switching on washing machine or dish washer.
Do you use the immersion and do you have 2 good quality lagging jackets on the water cylinder.

Along similar lines - do you have rads on in bathrooms or seldomly used rooms? Do you use the immersion to heat up water?

Are the readings estimated readings? If you think they are too high you can take a reading yourself and submit it online for both ESB and Gas.

Cheers for the advise...much appreciated. I need my car for work and do roughly 2000 miles p.month. I wish sometimes I could get the bus lol

do you get mileage expenses from work?
are you in the habit of buying a snack or drink when you are filling up the car?

As a smoker, very curious to what these new drugs are. Apologies for going off topic, and congratulations on new baby

Re the smoking, in my opinion the Alan Carr is the way to go. Even if you stopped before using hs book or the course and have gone back, you can do it again and it will work as it's based on common sense decision-making, not brainwashing or scare tactics.

blanc said:

Thanks a million folks...
A trip to the docs today I think is on the cards..Ive tried everything else so I must give thease new drugs a go. I foregot to add in theres another 300 in expenses between pension and insurances p.m

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Give the Nicorette patches a go. I was a heavy smoker and I went on the patches for 3 months and haven't been on the cigarettes since. That was 7 years ago next April....

I can also reccommend Nicotine Patches. I smoked 20+ per day for about 6 years, and tried quitting many times.

Are the drugs you speak of called 'Zyban'? I tried that, and it worked very well. They seamed to block out the effects of smoking. I mean, they are not nicotine replacement, so you can smoke away while taking it, but you notice that you dont get that nicotine hit the same as before, and you kinda go through cold turkey so to speak, even though you are smoking. By the end, you can stop the smokes altogether, cos you feel that they do nothing for you except give your clothes a bad smell etc.

Of course, willpower is the only route to success, and you seem to have it right now. My reccommended course of action is as follows:

1. Get yourself to the nearest Chemist.
2. Throw out your cigs and smoking related stuff on the way.
3. Buy the STRONGEST nicotine patches you can (ie. 24 hour patch for heavy smokers).
4. Now, dont rush to throw the patch on, wait until you feel like you cant go on any longer without a smoke. You need to train yourself to get your fix from the patch now.
5. When wearing the patch, do not be surprised if the area around it gets a little itchy, and from my own experience and the reports of friends, be prepared for some weird dreams etc., seriously! You can kinda press on the patch from time to time to "increase" the dosage, but I reckon that this just gives you a psychological satisfaction rather than actually more nicotine.
6. Since its a 24 hour patch, you can forget about smoking for at least 22 hours. You wont want to smoke during that time because the strength of the patch makes you feel like you would puke if you had one.
7. Again, dont rush to change the patch on the stroke of 24 hours. Allow yourself to feel the craving begin to build up again, and believe me, after 26 hours, you will definitly notice that the patch is used up. Then, whip off the old patch and put a fresh one on a different piece of skin.

During your time with the patch, you kinda forget about smoking, and since you are getting way more nicotine now than smoking ever gave you, and getting rid of the cough, smell, brown fingers etc. you wont want to go back to smoking. Like I say, without willpower, you WILL NOT succeed. Nothing can stop you from giving in to temptation except yourself.

The major downside of any stop-smoking aid is the cost, which usually runs the same as your smoking habit, but you were spending it anyway. In my experience, the patch got me used to not having to constantly satisfy cravings. After one week, seriously, I weaned myself off the patch and moved to lozenges, and then after a further two weeks, I reduced the lozenges to one at bedtime. In time, you will kinda "get over" your lozenge addiction, since you start to realise that you dont depend on them as much.

Best of luck quitting, and remember, you will have 100% support from everyone, for about 2 days! Then they mostly go back to their own problems, and wont be interested in yours anymore. Do this for yourself, you are the one who will benefit most. It is a powerful addiction and the feeling of self-control that quitting brings really makes you feel like a new person.

Good Luck!

sadie said:

Re the smoking, in my opinion the Alan Carr is the way to go. Even if you stopped before using hs book or the course and have gone back, you can do it again and it will work as it's based on common sense decision-making, not brainwashing or scare tactics.

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Absolutely in favour of the Allen Carr book. Smoking is all in the head, not a physical addition. I read the book 6 years ago and never smoked again. What's more, I felt a 'non-smoker' rather than an 'ex-smoker' after reading the book, which makes a big difference, as any smoker who has been "off the cigarettes" for a period will testify

I would also caution on the impact of passive smoking on your young girl, no matter how careful you are stale smoke in your car etc may end up affecting her health. Not nice to hear I know, but nevertheless...

With regard to your expenses, I think yes you should try to impose some discipline on your lunch also. you can bring a packed every days and see how it goes, you might be surprised at the results. Also if you are in the car a lot, the temptation is as another poster noted, to buy snacks and coffees when you are filling up with fuel. Look at ways to avoid this.

Another thing to look at is signing up for a fuel card, as on your mileage you could save quite a bit.

With regard to 'other expenses' of 300 euro, I suggest you retain EVERY receipt for EVERY item you pay for over the next month. This should apply to your wife also, and at the end of the month tot everything up. You will probably be surprised at what the data shows.

Best of luck and congratulations on the baby

annR said:

Along similar lines - do you have rads on in bathrooms or seldomly used rooms? Do you use the immersion to heat up water?

Are the readings estimated readings? If you think they are too high you can take a reading yourself and submit it online for both ESB and Gas.

Click to expand...

Congratulations on your new arrival Blanc - I would totally agree with the above post - we moved into our (second hand) house last May year and in that time just went along with paying the ESB bills as they came in. I eventually phoned them with our actual meter reading (turns out all the bills had been estimated), they corrected our account and we are STILL in credit with them! We reckon they had been estimating it on the family that lived there before us and now there's two of us living there of course we would use less. Have had 2 bills and still have about €100CR left to go - so haven't had to pay an ESB bill for a while now which is great!

HTH

M

I know that it's probably not ideal with a young baby, but have you thought about taking in a lodger? Easy way to get some tax free cash, and if you can get a young professional from the country they might be out at work all day and go home for the weekends (if you're really lucky!)