Can you help a family feeling the 'squeeze'..

[curlysouffle]

As a family with two young children, we are experiencing a squeeze on our finances. I'm sure many parents are in a similar situation. Essentially costs are going up everywhere, and wages in our industries (NHS and private health) are not increasing at the same rate. Our costs are mostly rising in our fuel, food and energy.

My questions are;

We currently pay £75 p/m for our gas and electric. Our supplier e-on is suggesting we increase to £100 p/m after reviewing our usage over the past year. Our current tariff deal ends in December. We have heard e-on are increasing their prices by a lot. What would be a good step to take to ensure we do not get ripped off? My wife recommended we choose a fixed 2 year tariff with e-on (around £106 P/M) to ensure our price is locked in for that time. Is that a good idea, or should we look to go elsewhere?

In addition to batch cooking and shopping at Aldi/Lidl has anyone got tips for reducing the food bill? We currently pay around £120 p/w for a family of four.

 

[newander]

@curlysouffle You should use https://clubs.moneysavingexpert.com/cheapenergyclub every year to get a new provider.

Energy prices have gone way up, everyone is more expensive than last year.

The “suggest” thing isn’t what you need to be thinking about - you need to look at your usage, the direct debit is just an averaged guess.

 

[zach123]

@newander Yup, this or, if you have trouble/nervousness about navigating switching, you can try .

https://lookaftermybills.com/

Both options get bulk discount deals from suppliers.

From what I've seen the MSE option generally gets slightly better deals, but it's a bit more DIY.

 

[yankeebo]

@zach123 Mse have a version of look after my bills now as well. Not sure how the two compare though

 

[jessicadee84]

@zach123 Look after my bills is great. But that's because I'm lazy.

 

[isang]

@curlysouffle You can definitely cut the food bill, but only if you're willing to restrict your diet a bit.

I'd suggest writing it a weekly food menu, and cost everything out. Then look at individual ingredients you can swap out to make things cheaper. For example, buying half the amount of mince and bulking it out with either lentils or barley. Or replacing fresh mushrooms with frozen mushrooms, as they are often cheaper by weight. That sort of thing.

The r/eatcheapandhealthy subreddit is really good for suggesting swaps like those, or for suggesting entire recipes if you're stuck for ideas.

Your biggest struggle point on this might be your kids, if they're fussy eaters it might be hard to cut costs past a certain point and still feed them.

 

[jeronimo890]

@isang Doing a weekly food menu saved us loads of money. You buy everything at one weekly shop and so don't have several trips to the supermarket where you inevitably buy crap you don't need.

 

[albertacamus]

@jeronimo890 Adding to this. We found doing our shop online and collecting we saved a small fortune as we didn't buy junk we didn't need as we didn't see it. Also never shop when hungry!

 

[jeronimo890]

@albertacamus Yes this!

Click and collect is great for not spending what you don't need to

 

[somespirit2]

@jeronimo890 Yes to all the above. Family of four, with a 6 and 2 year old girls, and our weekly food shop is £70-£80 by having a three week meal plan and weekly click and collect from Asda.

Oh, and I've also lost weight

 

[schaf]

@isang Agree, can definitely cut that food bill. Looking for cheap ingredients to plan a meal around and avoiding convenience foods and snacks. If you meal plan well that cost can come down quite a bit.

 

[barefoothannahb]

@isang

You can definitely cut the food bill, but only if you're willing to restrict your diet a bit.

I'd suggest writing it a weekly food menu, and cost everything out.

We use a list app from Microsoft called To Do. The app lets you create multiple lists that are live synced for multiple users across desktop browser as well as mobile app. We then create widgets on our phones for them, so it's quick and easy to see/edit. The widget lets you switch between lists, or you can just create another widget for each additional list.

Example widget on Android

Basically, we list every meal we enjoy making and put them all in the above list. The ones that are ticked show as completed items, but you can make it so that they remain visible if completed. Unticked ones are the meals we're choosing to have for the week. When we're done for the week, we untick the ones that we want for the following week.

It's also great for weekly shopping if you need a physical list of some kind for when you go in to the supermarket, or before you do your weekly shop.

edit: fixed quote

 

[andee]

@curlysouffle Those areas may be the rising costs, but may not be where you can reduce.

Are you on mobile phone contracts? Can you reduce those or move to a sim only deal?

What about TV/internet? We recently cut Sky TV out because we realised we didn't use it much except to access Netflix and Disney+. We can access both in other ways, so that cut a good chunk out.

Take a good look at all of the payments coming out of your accounts for 2-3 months and ask yourself if you will really miss those things/services. We get so used to paying £X for whatever and we stop questioning it.

 

[resjudicata]

@curlysouffle Your energy bill is reasonable, there has been an increase in wholesale gas/electricity prices which is more likely to have increased your direct debit, not your usage. That being said you're with e.on who might not offer the lowest tariff. Have a look at some of the lesser known suppliers they are usually cheaper but I wouldn't anticipate you'd save much.

Your food bill - £120 a week if you're shopping at Aldi seems quite a lot. Are you buying stuff off those random middle aisles?

Do you waste much too? Maybe you need to plan your meals and only buy what you need.

 

[swedishnewchristian]

@curlysouffle Just to mirror the other poster's sentiments - get your real KWh figures off of the EON website (providing you've been submitting your meter readings all year then they'll be accurate) then plug them into MSE. It'll give you the best cost based on your real world usage.

As for food, honestly that doesn't seem like a totally unreasonable amount for a family of four (if you're including non-food household essentials in that). If you're already batch cooking and using the budget supermarkets then it might just be cutting out impulse buys and reducing meat. Depending on what's on your shopping list you might also benefit from doing some bulk buys in Costco (since one of you is NHS that option is open to you). You would have to weigh up whether the £33 a year is offset by potential savings of course. Also look into NHS discounts where applicable.

Outside of those elements have you shopped around for the rest of your household bills? Stuff like switching to sim-only deals, cutting TV packages, reassessing stuff like Spotify/Netflix, etc?

 

[yankeebo]

@swedishnewchristian I’ll add for Costco, some also sell petrol a pence/litre cheaper than the supermarket so factor that in when working out if it’s worth it for you if your local one sells it. I worked out that I could cover most of my membership cost with the fuel saving, especially as I regularly drive past it anyway so it’s not a detour for me.

 

[labanswe]

@curlysouffle Reducing food bill - if you don’t already, eat less meat. You don’t have to go full veggie or even cook more vegetarian meals. For example, if you make a spaghetti bolognese, half the amount of beef mince and add extra veggies to bulk it out. You can do this with almost any meal. Do you meal plan?

 

[drita]

@labanswe This. But also don't go for the fake meat replacement stuff that's also expensive.

Lentil Curry, Chickpea Curry ftw!

Source: Partner is vegan, I meat occasionally and don't really miss having it every meal.

 

[lomam]

@labanswe Just add to this - carrots/Broccoli/cellery/onions are all dirt cheap and great for bulking out most meals.

 

[blitz659]

@curlysouffle Also a family of 4 here, we spend around £100 per month on elec /gas partially because south west rates are higher than the rest of the country, but also lockdown caused a surge in usage at home that should start to go down again now.

We spend around £60 per week on food, school dinners can get expensive quickly at £2.50-3 per day, packed lunch might work out cheaper. We have a chest freezer in the kitchen that helps with meal prep, and if you find useful bargains you can buy lots at once.

I try my best to avoid top up shops for stuff like bread, milk etc and buy it all in bulk instead. I always end up spending around £30 even if I only went in for milk, that quickly eats through the grocery budget