We all have different monthly expenses ranging from the non negiotable’s like rent/ mortgage and bills to fun stuff like subscription and streaming services. It’s always good to revisit and look at your monthly expenses to check you’re getting the best value. This could be looking at your utilities to see if you can get a better deal. Or switching your mobile contract once it’s run out. But with things like streaming services etc are you getting the full value from them?
Non negotable monthly expenses
For us these monthly expenses which we can’t choose to be without include:
- Mortgage
- Council Tax
- Electricity/ gas supplier
- Water supplier
Without paying these we wouldn’t be able to live, or at least not in our house. And they’re things which we can’t even look to be without. I have all of them set up on monthly direct debits. So in the case of electricity/ water bills we won’t be hit with them every 3-4 months and have to pay a big bill.
Insurance policies
We actually have quite a few insurance policies which we may for. We have both of our vehicle insurances. Luke’s van is paid on a monthly direct debit, and for mine I save money each month to pay it off in one go.
We also have buildings insurance which is a must if you have a mortgage. When choosing we opted for both buildings and contents insurance to cover any situation. We also have life insurance for both of us as we felt it was very important having a joint mortgage to be covered if the worst was to happen.
With Luke’s job and him being self-employed we have a number of insurance policies for him aswell. The first one is income protection to cover us if he’s unable to work due to illness. Again due to Luke’s job he has to have business insurance so he’s covered which is another policy we pay for. I’m in the process of setting up tools insurance for him as well. I’d rather have these things and never need them than the other way around.
Monthly expenses for vehicles and work
Each month an expense we have is Luke’s van loan. We chose to get a small loan as it was the cheapest way of getting a new van for Luke which he very much needed. Then we also pay the tax for the van as a monthly expense as it’s an amount we wouldn’t notice as much. So these are two of our monthly expenses alongside a subscription to Quickbooks to help with tax submission.
The fun expenses
The final ones are the non-essentials the more fun ones. We both have our phone contracts. Mine is a sim only contract so is pretty cheap, whereas Luke’s is a full contract so a bit pricier. We have our Cineworld cards which I can’t wait to be able to take advantage of and use again soon. Then we also have a family spotify account which we share in exchange for use of a Netflix subscription. Great teamwork!
One thing I’ve not mentioned on here is our broadband as we’ve not yet set it up. But this would be a monthly expense we pay.
