How We’re Managing Our Budget Plan When Living With My Parents

Our move date is imminent – I’m hoping this month – so for us, it’s all about thinking ahead and planning what the next 12 months of our lives are likely to look like. I’m totally ready to leave the flat I’m currently in. I’ve been there for about 6 and a half years and it’s been incredible for me but as a home, for me and Luke, it isn’t quite right. Moving back in with my parents for a year was a decision we made in the bid to save money. This way we’ll have a lot fewer expenses – even though we’ll be paying a modest rent to them.

We’re lucky enough to have enough money for our future home deposit and money for the fee’s which will come with that from the sale of my flat. But we’re now going all into saving for renovation costs and in order to be able to do things to our home. We’d like to be able to do some things straight away as opposed to having to wait for everything due to money. Things like window prices, kitchen and bathroom prices and re-wiring price all add up so we want to be in a good position. The first part of our budget plan starts with thinking about any credit we might have and trying to pay that off. We’re in a fortunate position that other than our car we don’t have any, but if you do Creditfix can help make it more manageable.

Managing a budget plan when we move

Next up for us is thinking ahead and cancelling the things we no longer need. For example, as we’ll be at my parents we’ll no longer need our internet package as they have that sorted. We’ve decided to cancel ours from next week as it gives us a month of use before it finishes. If for whatever reason we’ve not moved by then we’re actually then on holiday for 10 days and we can worry about that when we get back. I’ve cancelled a lot of little things which all add up such as for our Now TV package I cancelled the Entertainment one as we weren’t watching enough TV shows and just kept the movies one. I stopped getting my monthly sub box from Treat Box as although I loved it I didn’t need anything from inside it.

Our contents insurance ran out this month so as we’re only going to be there for another month or so I didn’t renew this as it was a cost I didn’t need. When it comes to October/ November time both me and Luke’s phone contracts come up so we’re planning on moving to sim only contracts for the start to reduce a massive cost as neither of us needs new phones. If we do decide to get a new phone it’s cheaper to buy it outright on finance from Apple as opposed to paying extra within your phone bill so that’s always a nice option for the future.

Reducing bills and our monthly expenses

I have a list of all of the bills and monthly expenses that we need to advise that we’re moving out to ensure we only pay for when we’re at the flat, this includes our electricity and water providers who will need to do metre readings so we can pay just what we owe when we move. We’ve picked a good time to move as February and March are no payment months for council tax so we don’t need to worry too much about that.

Once we move into my parents we will have four key areas that our money will be going to:

1. Current bills which we still need- These are things we can’t cancel or will still need such as phone bills, car insurance, car payments, Netflix. Once the car is paid off later this year it will free up more money and leave us in a position where these costs won’t be very high.
2. Current living costs – We’ll be paying some rent to my parents and also storage unit costs for our stuff which we can’t bring with us.
3. Savings – We have a plan in place which should allow us to save a minimum of £1,000 each a month and anything extra we earn through overtime/ extra work will give us more we can add.
4. Disposable money- We don’t want to be left with no money so we’re both going to have some disposable money so we can have a takeaway, go out for a few drinks, buy a new pair of jeans etc. I think that by limiting yourself too much you end up resenting the savings process and I don’t want that to be the case.

How do you focus on saving?

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