LQ - one book I would recommend - Home Economics, how to eat like a king on a budget - by Jane Ashley. In this book she gives recipes and shopping lists - sufficient to feed a family of four, three meals per day, for less than £40 per week. It is good, healthy, but also interesting food - and makes sure you have all the nutrition you need without breaking the bank. Even cake/biscuit recipes and a luxury Christmas dinner.
It is one of the most useful cookery books I own.
Hi LQ
Sorry to hear your hubby was laid off and that you still have a mortgage.
I offer advice as someone who retired at 48 and with the mortgage paid off. So first things first . . .
Mortgage
Don’t listen to your advisor suggesting equity release. That’s just a way for the bank to get its grubby hands on your house.
If you want rid of this debt then get an OFFSET mortgage.
This is a flexible mortgage where you put as much as you can afford in each month, ideally more than they are asking for. You also put any savings you have in there. The beauty is that you can pull the money back out at any time if you need it which is a good backup.
Meanwhile the interest that they charge you each time is based on how much of the mortgage remains and so if you have every last penny you can pull together in there, then the interest payments come way down. In the long run this shaves many £1000s off the total repayment and reduces the overall payment period by a number of years. This is how I personally saved £1000s and paid the mortgage off about 5 to 10 years early.
Now to money
You need to sensibly look at your life habits and make changes. You want to be able to generate as much cash as you can to cover your basic life needs whilst putting as much into that offset mortgage as possible.
Do you use Credit Cards? If so do you pay the balance dutifully each month and never get charged interestm or do you have outstanding balances accruing more interest?
If the latter, cut up the card, and pay off the balance asap.
Do you have Sky TV and or subscriptions to Netflix or other similar services?
If so get rid. Sky is ridiculously expensive imo and a real drain on available cash. That monthly subscription could be going into the offset mortgage to significantly reduce interest payments.
Do you have one or more Smart Phones on contract?
If so get rid of them.
Monthly mobile phone contracts are a money pit. Some people pay many £100s a year for phone contracts for their families.
Replace with simple PAYG phones using 1pMobile
This will limit your expenditure (phonewise) to just £30 a year plus :
1p per text
1p per min calls
1p per MB data
The money you save from monthly contract fees should then go into the offset mortgage each month. It will drastically reduce interest payments and thus the total mortgage period.
Get rid of any other monthly subscriptions if you have them. Papers, magazines, clubs etc.
How many cars do you run? If it’s more than one, ask yourselves if you could live with just one.
Others here have rightly suggested ways to save money on food.
Cook “tumbledown” meals in bulk to save money.
Large pots of chilli or bollagnaise which you free in portions. They can be used for Spag Bol, or on jacket spuds or to make a Lasagna and so on.
Grab cheap veg wherever you see it and turn it into large pots of soup. Again freeze individual portions.
DO NOT buy stuff from supermarkets unless you can’t avoid it.
Buy everything in bulk and put it in the garage or somewhere else. Get hold of a Macro or CostCo card yourself or from a friend or go there with a friend who has a card. Be discerning as not all items are cheap. Buy tea/coffee in bulk. I buy bags of 1200 Yorkshire tea bags at a time. Get any herbs and spices here too as they are large quantity and massively cheaper than supermarkets.
ALDI and LIDL are your friends.
You can buy a whole tray of 12 cartons of chopped tomatoes for pennies. Essential for those chillies and bolognaise. Toilet paper is cheap there and good strong quality.
Buy whole chickens to eat rather than individual breasts or thighs. Whole chickens are cheap and you can pick tons of meat off them. Eat 1/2 as a roast dinner and the rest for sandwiches next day or put the rest into a homemade chicken pie etc etc.
CostCo sell bags of frozen fish fillets of varying types at great value. Cod, Tuna, Sea Bass and Salmon. Stock up your freezer. Don’t buy crap expensive fish from supermarkets.
Finally, determine what cash you need each month for food, the odd coffee out and so on. Draw that cash out at the start of every month and use it rather than bank cards. Stick to it. Manage it as a budget or cash kitty. It will help stop you reaching for the debit card and over spending.
By such frugal methods and with that Offset Mortgage, you will soon be the owner of your house and have security.
There is nothing more worrying in older age (apart from bad health) than the prospect of losing your home. Get it paid for and be the owner, then it can’t be taken off you. All you then have to worry about is basic food to live and the mandatory taxes.
Best
Realist
LQ
There is a useful mortgage calculator here which will help you
understand how much you could save with an Offset Mortgage
and some additional general info here on Offset Mortgages:
LQ sorry to read your sad news .
I have no suggestions on how to save money but I would advise you to seriously consider a point you made about possibly selling your house and moving into an over 50’s complex .
That’s what I did so give it some serious thought .
Thank you so much for your kind words Swimmy, your words are lovely, made me fill up, you are such a nice man.
You are right, we will come through it, thanks for making me feel confident about that :hug:
Cheers Bes, do you know, I would just love to do dog walking too, can you imagine getting paid for doing something you love
Thanks Tabs, I’m going to google that, that sounds brilliant! x
Thank you for your advice on the previous post you posted to me, I hadn’t heard of an offset mortgage before, I’ve told my husband and he thinks its a good idea.
Also thanks about mentioning bulk buying, we’ve been to Makro today and bought a very large box of washing powder, a 5 litre washing up liquid, 6 jars decaf nescafe coffee and 48 Andrex toilet rolls LOL. They said it was 24 rolls buy one get one free for £13 but when I came home I compared it to Tesco and they were selling them for £16 for 48 so it wasn’t really buy one get one free but I still saved £3! I’ve saved a packet today in bulk buying, go me!
I also bought a very large tray of chicken breasts, I don’t like leg, I saved a fortune on them as we eat a lot of chicken breast and I spend a lot on it at the supermarket.
Thanks for all your advice, its greatly appreciated.
Hello .queen
Have you thought of renting a room in your home as an Air bnb
Hi Ripple
We only have a very small 2 bed house one which is used as a computer room. We don’t like the idea of bringing strangers into our home but my cousin in America rents her room out with AirBNB
Thanks for the idea though x
What about renting out your garage as storage space .
If you have one !
Lots of good advice here which I can’t improve on, except to reiterate what Realist has suggested, like looking at your outgoings and what you can ideally cancel, or get deals on.
I wouldn’t move into a retirement complex, if there are management/service charge fees still to pay. I still pay rent and service charge on my flat (small mortgage paid off in 2004 when I took the voluntary redundancy) and can’t wait to sell up, buy my own house and not have to pay the fees and have the constraints/problems of living here. The management do eff all to improve the site and I’m sick of complaining.
Do consider the dog walking, that you could do together, but also think of insurance first. Maybe test the water and see if there is a take up.
Your OH will rightly feel down and possibly depressed. Don’t be impatient with him, but be supportive and gently coax him into seeing what he can do with his time. Both go for walks, which might make him feel a little better, and you might get ideas, or inspiration. I do a lot of thinking when out with the dog.
Good luck.
Don’t forget Poundland. Posh and well heeled canny people even go there!
Do you have the space and means to grow your own veg, salad?
Check out Miguel Barclay’s Meals for £1 books LQs
My son tells me it was one of the best Christmas presents I ever gave him!
Hi
Rely on your commonsense, there are no quick fixes.
That’s a good one - and it works!
I wouldn’t do anything regarding your house until you’ve checked how any extra cash in your account would impact on benefits…I’m assuming your husband has claimed unemployment benefit…it might be he is entitled to assistance in other ways too…I would suggest you both attend an advice centre and check out what your entitlements are before making any financial decisions.
I know Leeds City Council run one stop shop advice centre’s you will need to make an appointment to see one of their benefits and financial advisors…they will advise on the best way forward. You have both paid onto the system all your lives…now is the time you need help and good advice…don’t pass it up.
Good luck LQ…you really deserve some right now.
