Savings to be made on monthly outgoings?

Age: 30
Partners age: 26
Joint Gross income: 60k
Type of employment: PAYE
Expenditure pattern: Never seem to have enough money, spend more than we earn.

Rough Estimate value of home: 230k
Amount outstanding: 105k
Term remaining, 19 Yrs ish
Interest rate: 6.1 I think. Standard tracker BoI
Monthly repayment: 705

Other Borrowings:
25k equity release. Taken out in 2004. 11 years left
Monthly repayment: 170

Wedding loan 11k 4 years left
Monthly repayment: 250


Credit card: 2.5k. make minimum payments.

Savings: about 1k in CU

Pension: Yes. 3.5% SALARY + company pay 5%

Investment property: no

Ages of children: 2, 6.

Life insurance: Standard mortgage protection policy and 100k life each for me and spouse.

Other outgoings, usual stuff, basic sky tv package, home phone, BT, around 120 every 2 months. ESB around the same.

Not sure where our money is going. It seems to just go on normal day to day stuff. Trying to see where savings can be made, apart from the obvious credit card etc. Would changing our mortgage be of benefit or combining the small one with the big one? Is it worth it considering the costs involved?

Any info appreciated

If you are not sure where the money is going, then keep a spending diary for a month. Write down everything you spend money on, absolutely everything. Then categorise the spends (along with loan repayments, DDs etc) can see exactly what the situation is and where you can save.

You can't hope to make changes without taking stock of where you are at. But from what you posted you seem to have taken up loans very freely in the past. Please stop doing this

Once you know where your money goes, you can make a budget and track against it and you should see improvement.

1).....You have to get a good idea of where your money is going. - I agree totally with Diziet. There are countless threads on money makeover from people saying that they just dont know where the money is going.I found that the act of writing everything down made me spend less, and it also is a good pointer to where the black hole is (When i did mine i thought that most of my money would go on buying lunch at work but it was actually elsewhere)

2).....You need to get a better handle on your mortgage details if you want advice on your mortgage details! "ish" and I think (for the interest rate) wont really help. The first thing you can do is to phone them up and ask them what rate you are paying, and then ask them if they can do better.

3).....As you have already pointed out, the credit card is a big issue. interest rates from ccards are normally high. And the whole problems spirals if you only make minimum payments. You could change your card to one which has a zero interest period for balance transfers - this would help in the short term. You should use this period to pay as much of the balance off as possible. The risk with this is the same as with debt consolidation loans and mortgage top-ups (to cover the loans) unless you tackle the spending that created the debt, moving accounts and shifting loans around will only be a cosmetic fix.

4)....Look at the key posts for some basic pointers. particularly carrying savings (in the credit union) at the same time as expensive debt (ccard)

Anon 473

i recently rang my bank that have my savings and credit card, i have been dealing with them all my working life, i explained i didnt want to move but i need a interest free period on my credit card to allow me to clear it, while still using it day to day, i pointed out that they earn a commission on each sale i make so could they help me out, they instantly offered me interest free on the outstanding balance for 6 months, saving me the hassle of moving bank

I just received my interest rate letter from BoI. My new rate after the recent hike is 5.5%. I don't think this is too bad in todays climate?

colin79ie said:

I just received my interest rate letter from BoI. My new rate after the recent hike is 5.5%. I don't think this is too bad in todays climate?

Click to expand...

I get 5.2 with BOI (after the hike) on a tracker with low LTV. I negotiated it down a while ago though. I know it could be even lower but the hassle and expense of changing mortgages was not worth it for me. My mortgage is low though.