One way or another we’ve not had the best start to the New Year, but we’re keeping our chins up and have lots of things to look forward to help us through.

The weather hasn’t been the best and the hubby has been nursing a cough, cold and sore throat. Whilst we’ve  been snuggled on the sofa, him snoozing and feeling a little sorry for himself, I have been putting my time to good use, by undertaking my annual budget review.

Quite often I manage to save us a few pennies on our current deals,  but this year I’m aiming more, for our renewals not to increase too much 🤞

1. House Insurance – This actually renewed in June. Living in a large property has previously meant we needed a specialist insurer and used the help of a broker to secure the best deal. 2021 – 2022 our annual policy was £1016 😬, our renewal letter came through in late May, at £1560 😬😬. The broker assured us this was the best deal they could find. We decided to look elsewhere and discovered we could now get quotes through comparison websites. After a lot of searching and comparing cover to our existing policy we got a quote for £1000. Due to the multigenerational aspect of our house and additional information we needed to provide, our details had to be passed to the underwriters for approval. Win win, they came back with comparable cover at £917 👍. A £100 saving on the previous year and almost £650 on our renewal quote.
2. Energy – 🤬 The bain of everyone’s life over the past 12 months. Our bills have flown up to around £1000 some months 😭. We had the benefit of economy 7 so with the help of an extra large load washing machine, plus a heated airer, started to do most of washing, drying, dishwashing and car charging overnight whilst the unit price was a LOT cheaper. I nag about turning lights and tvs off and when people hit the oven and hob at different times 🙄 However it’s me that has had the constant battle with our energy provider to maintain our direct debit at a reasonable £400 pm and make additional payments as and when we could. Their customer service has been extremely poor. In November with a debit balance of £20.81 I got an email saying I was £1192 behind where they expected my account to be and said I should pay that amount via debit or credit card to avoid a significant increase to my direct debit. They got short thrift with that idea and agreed I needn’t pay that sum and to leave my direct debit as it was 🤬 Hoorah for automated systems 😡 It has been very stressful.
   However with the ofgen price increase due to hit us on 1st January I was offered a fix price deal. The rates were cheaper than the rates we were already being charged so it seemed like a no brainier really. We are tied in for 12 months but we will be saving for at least the next three months and at the next review, rates will need to reduce by a larger amount than the recent rise for us not to benefit for the following three months too,  so 🤞 it will be the correct decision. Last Decembers bill was £1131.52 compared to this Decembers of £792.32. Still high but we seem to be winning the battle.

   

   

3. Mortgage – Our daughter and son in law still have a mortgage on the house. Although they don’t have too many years left, the borrowing was on a tracker rate. We were awake enough to realise that interest rates looked like they were heading up and advised them to fix their rate. Getting in just in time they secured a five year fixed rate of just 1.89% 😮‍💨 They have saved £1000’s already over the past two years and with three years left to run we are hopeful rates will be on the way back down by the time it expires.
4. Car Insurance  – After saying goodbye to Kenneth the campervan, we now just have the one car to insure.(everyone else can sort themselves out). Having been with the same company for three years and made no claims,  I was expecting just the usual inflationary rise. Last year’s premium was £364 so I was absolutely astounded when my renewal came through at £574 a staggering 157% increase 😳. So it was back on the old comparison sites to find a new policy. Absolute nightmare, every time I dipped in and out, the premiums mysteriously went up 🤷‍♀️. Make sure you clear your cookies people.!!! I finally managed to secure a comparable policy for £454 although this was £90 up on last year it also includes breakdown cover and as my AA policy expires on 1st Feb with a premium last year of £89 I will at least be breaking even 👍
5. Tv Package –  Our Sky package expired at the end of 2022. We always negotiate a deal, so when our renewal rose from £96pm to £130pm we weren’t going to accept that. Initial negotiations didn’t go too well and they weren’t offering any discounts unless we dropped some of the services. We were happy to lose a couple of channels but still weren’t happy with the price. I took to the internet to find out what they were offering new customers (not easy as it kept picking up our account). I finally discovered a great package with everything we needed including sports, Netflix, HD, phone line and broadband for £84pm which they reluctantly agreed to match. We had to sign up for 18 months but hey who cares, during that time and including annual price increases, we will have saved around £800 and kept the whole household happy.
6. Food – In a household our size, with a huge variety of tastes, our weekly shop will never be cheap. What we spend in a week a lot of people spend in a month. I do feel though that at £17.50 per person per week, which includes all toiletries, laundry and cleaning products, we don’t do too bad. As much as possible, the adults in the household all eat, or a subtle variation of, the same meal each evening. Left overs are frozen so on evenings where someone doesn’t like what’s on offer there is an alternative in the freezer. The bulk of our shopping is from one of the budget supermarkets, using one of the larger ones just once a month, to buy bulk packs of teabags, washing powder, fabric softener and pasta alongside some branded products for household members with sensitive skin 🙄. We also buy in bulk at the butcher’s whenever they have offers on. At this time of year the slow cooker works overtime and our newly purchased airfryer is great for quick meals when the kids are “starving”. The majority of our meals are cooked from scratch, and we menu plan around what’s in the freezer, peoples shifts and different tastes. It is hard work, and occasionally depressing, but if it keeps the costs down it has to be worthwhile.

   

I can do nothing in respect of the council tax bill or water rates, but we’re  feeling pretty smug with ourselves. A few hours spent surfing the interweb and we have made some HUGE savings over the past couple of years. I am hoping these savings will more than cover any increases the mandatory bills might bring.

I understand businesses also have spiralling costs with energy, materials and wages rising, but that doesn’t give the large companies the right to exploit the little people. 

My Company gave its poor pensioners a miserly 5% increase in each of the past two years, well below the rate of inflation, so I will continue my mission to get the very best deals from all my service providers and move my custom elsewhere if it means saving money 💴 

If anyone has any money saving tips and/or success stories, please share in the comments. If we can help each other save a little here and there, we will all be able to continue enjoying the nicer things in life.