Monthly Expenses at an all time high. Advice sought.

i meant that each of those payments for different inssurace etc is paid monthly, and i think that some of them charge a small interest fee for that facility so i would save money by paying each of them once annually

Yes - paying annually is usually more cost effective. However even if you pay annually you should (as far as I know) be able to switch to another provider mid year if you find a more competitive premium offering a similar level of cover.

Does your Partner have a car as well? As others have said Cars are so expensive to run. We have 1 car between us an 8yr old one and I have a Scooter to get in and out of work about 10 miles both ways. I have 2 kids so she uses the car most of the time - I use it when need it.
They are very cheap to run I spend about €6 on petrol a week, tax €37, insurance cheap and you can get a second hand one for around a grand. Plus if you live in Dublin saves me 7hrs of my life a week stuck in traffic
Don't worry there are cool ones if you were embarrassed or you could a motorbike.

ClubMan said:

PGD1 - have you ever calculated the total annual cost of ownership for each car including tax, insurance, fuel, services etc.?

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Yes, in fact I'm probably a bit anal when it comes to that. For the purposes of this example we can assume that road tax, insurance and petrol costs are going to be more or less the same not matter what car he/she would downgrade to, so my point is that you can easily run cars that cost hardly anything to buy.

I would second the planning for meals and the Lidl/Aldi thing, for example, Lidl ham is good, and if you have it for sunday dinner, you can probably get a couple of days sandwiches out of it.

I found insure.ie quite good for car insurance quotes.

If you are planning on starting a family in the next year, then I wouldn't get rid of the health insurance, otherwise you lose the qualifying period for maternity benefits.

On the annual budgeting thing, set up a spreadsheet and start logging all expenditure and categorise it - down to the last cent! Make sure you always get receipts so you can do it accurately (especially important if you are paying cash for something). It will be tough for a year until you have a years worth of data behind you and you can see things like: spent x on clothes, y on haircuts etc.

HTH. Best of luck.

Only problem with old cars is they can end up costing more to maintain. Though parts may be cheaper, and reliability may be an issue. Running cost will depend on how good an old car you can find. If you are on a tight budget older cars can be big money savers. As they don't really depreciate after a certain point.

Sorry to hear that things are so tight!

Have you considered moving credit card balance to a company such as Halifax who offer 6 months interest free on balance transfer and purchases...it only puts off the payments but may give you a bit of breathing space. You have to be disciplined and use the interest free period wisely ..i.e not simply allow debt to build up and be worse off in 6 months.

Also there is a wide difference in interest rates on credit cards is yours the vheapest..if not shop around and change..

Unfortunately though you have had a bad month most months tend to throw up something unexpected..be it a medical bill or a wedding present.. if you can at all try to set up a rainy day fund so that there is something to fall back on.

I'm in a similar situation, 14 months into the mortgage and things just don't seem to be getting any easier. I have an old car, cheap insurance, no wild social life or expensive shoe habits... but still at the end of every month every penny is gone, often with a couple of hundred quid on the credit card (which I always pay off on payday).

To be honest all the weddings are killing me! I'm at that age... 5 so far this year! Anyway, good to see all the advice here!

Stresshead, take the credit card out of your wallet and leave it at home.(Use it only to book tickets etc.) I was doing same for last 6 months and each payday I was paying up to €400. It was crippling me. At last my next pay cheque is all mine!!

you could also look into upgrading your job! is there anything out there with a better salary that you're currently earning?

This might be something you are already doing but I found it useful in reigning in expenditure I wasn't even aware of. I found after taking on a mortgage my budget seemed to disappear out the window and I seemed to be spending a great deal more each month than I had prior to the mortgage. Before taking it on, I had gauged how much I was happy to afford and had accounted for the bills etc or thought I had. After a few months though it seemed to be much more expensive than I had anticipated and after another few months of worrying about why I wasn't doing as well as I had thought I would I started watching my bank account more closely. Checking balances and latest transactions twice a day (morning and evening) on both my bank account and my credit card has made me much more conscious of where the money was going. Previously I would have had a ballpark in my head and it would have been pretty okay but after buying a place it seemed to skew badly. I found that I was spending cash on both cards in fairly intense bursts (a lot of shopping at one go) and not totalling things properly, or forgetting whether it was on the credit card or the laser. Literally watching myself was enough to stop me over-spending.