I've listed our essential expenses and and our personal spending allowances. As you can see the amount is less today than it was back then, due to the most part to there being 3 of us in the house now, compared to 4 previously.
Mortgage: stayed the same....thankfully
Council Tax: Annual increase of £30.72
Water: Annual increase of £13.80
Gas/Electric: Annual decrease of £312 (one less person in the house)
Line Rental: Annual decrease of £15 due to paying an annual, not monthly bill
Contents/Building Insurance: Decrease of £144.48 (now a combined policy)
Life Insurance: stayed the same
Grocery: £999.96 less due to one less person to feed
Digital TV: £10 of that my daughter pays for so our cost has increased annually by £60
Tv Licence: about the same
Social: Now included in personal spending
Gifts: Increased by £180
Personal Spending: Reduced..but I forgot to included my iphone cost (£35) so this makes this about the same.
I'm not perfect when it comes to getting the best deals, but I do try to get them when I can. My main aim is always to keep our essential expenses as low as possible - I have this dream figure of needing less than £1,000 a month to live on - we're not there yet (by a long way!!) but if we manage to clear the mortgage, then we will be. We could obviously get a lot nearer if we gave up TV, but that would be one step too far for us both. ;)
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Wow that's great that there was a decrease!
ReplyDeleteThanks Michelle - I'm constantly working on our budget so I'm glad to see the work paid off! :)
DeleteI did a comparison of my essential bills in 2010 and 2011 here:
ReplyDeletehttp://anexactinglife.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/8-cost-of-living-increase-for-essentials-in-2011/
I cut back on use of heat, electricity, water etc but still ended up paying more because of rate increases.
I've switched our gas/electric supplies around to save money - are you able to do that in Canada?
DeleteInteresting to see! Ours is definitely UP! We're now in a house with more bills! But our food/everyday expenses are much lower!
ReplyDeleteYou did move Carla so that's to be expected, but decreasing food/everyday expenses is brilliant because it's so easy to overspend on these
Deletethats amazing that there is little difference in them. What about electricity and gas? thats where I see the biggest difference in our budget.
ReplyDeleteThe decrease in our electricity and gas is definitely due to my son going to uni. I tried al sorts of things to decrease it before and it didn't work.
DeleteThat's a really interesting comparison Laura!
ReplyDeleteHope you get to your £1000 per month goal, sure you will.
Sft x
I hope so too lol!
DeleteThat's an interesting comparison. I don't see our expenses going down.
ReplyDeleteGill in Canada
You moved house as well Gill - did it make a difference in household running costs?
DeleteYour decrease in grocery spending is an accomplishment since prices have went up so much. We've really noticed it here. I know you are feeding one less but still.
ReplyDeleteThanks ND - the one less was our biggest eater though, lol. His leaving home would have made more of a difference if food hadn't gone up so much!
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