Cash Clinic saves single mum £1.6k to help buy a home after swapping £80 cinema tickets for £2.50 seats
SINGLE MUM and business owner Natalie Weaving is desperate to buy a home of her own but she’s struggling to stump up the cash to do it. The 37-year-old from Basingstoke earns £31,000 after tax as a director of her own marketing business. She’s currently living in a rented house with seven-year-old son, Alfie, but […]
SINGLE MUM and business owner Natalie Weaving is desperate to buy a home of her own but she’s struggling to stump up the cash to do it.
The 37-year-old from Basingstoke earns £31,000 after tax as a director of her own marketing business.
She’s currently living in a rented house with seven-year-old son, Alfie, but she’s keen to buy her own place soon to offer the pair security.
And that’s where our Cash Clinic expert Holly Thomas steps in.
While she can see Natalie has a strong grip on the purse strings, she says she should ditch the days out and takeaways to save.
Holly says Natalie could also switch insurer and her bank and savings providers – and by following our tips she could save an impressive £1,600 a year.
I want to get some help on where I can make some quick and easy swaps
Natalie Weaving
Natalie has already found her £260,000 two-bed dream home, which she can afford through shared ownership – where buyers purchase a share in a place and pay rent on the rest, usually to a housing association.
She even has a £25,000 deposit in place – a gift from her mother who sadly passed away from cancer earlier this year.
But Natalie doesn’t have anything extra to pay for stamp duty – £3,000 for a £260,000 property – legal fees for conveyancing, for the actual move itself, and also to furnish the place.
Natalie has been a homeowner in the past, so she is not eligible for first-time buyer stamp duty relief or any first-time buyer property schemes.
“I want to get some help on where I can make some quick and easy swaps that mean I can save an extra £5,000 to make the move,” Natalie told The Sun.
“I really want to buy a house for my son and I to have security.”
“But everything is budgeted for so there is not a lot of money for days out or holidays, let alone savings.
“And everything is becoming more expensive – bills in particular – and wages just can’t keep up.”
Natalie is also keen to take Alfie to Disney for his 10th birthday and her 40th both of which are in 2022.
Here we reveal how to save Natalie money each month and put her in a better position to get the home she wants – and a pot of money for the Disneyland trip in two years time.
Why we've launched Cash Clinic
THE Sun has launched its new Cash Clinic series because we want to help you, our readers, to save cash.
For some, it’s easy to get caught up with work and family life and to put our own finances on the back burner.
While for others, it needs an expert’s eye to work out where further cutbacks can be made to already tight budgets.
If you’d like our Cash Clinic expert to review your finances and to feature in our series, please email Holly Thomas at cashclinic@thesun.co.uk
Rent: £950 per month
New spend: £950 per month
Saving: £0 per month
Natalie and her son live in a three-bedroom house in Basingstoke paying monthly rent of £950 – although Natalie points out that the third bedroom is simply a box room.
The pair recently moved in so don’t want to move again to another rented place, and there’s no reason for Natalie to ask that the rent should be dropped so there are no real opportunities for savings to be made here.
Bills: £331.98 per month
New spend: £287.97 per month
Saving: £44.01 per month
Natalie has a Sky package including TV channels, line rental and broadband, which is costing her £51 a month.
She could switch to a Now broadband deal that would give her 14 entertainment channels – costing £23.99 a month.
She could also try haggling with her existing provider Sky, as it currently offers a package with 147 TV channels, line rental and broadband for £35.99 a month.
Even threatening to leave could prompt discounts that were previously not on the table.
Natalie pays £58 a month for energy bills on a tariff with Scottish Power that she switched to in April.
She regularly gives meter readings and so doesn’t build up any surplus or debt.
But a search on energy comparison site Energyhelpline.com shows she can cut her energy bills to £40 a month by switching to supplier Green’s Oak tariff.
Natalie has a Netflix subscription at £11.99 a month and a Spotify account at £9.99 a month. She maintains that these are essentials for her and Archie, and cannot be cut out.
The house has a water meter and she pays £32 for water, and her council tax bill is £108 a year (or £90 a month over 12 months), including the single person’s discount.
Her mobile phone is paid for by her company.
Natalie sees a counsellor twice a month for which she pays £80.
Do you want help in our Cash Clinic? Email CashClinic@the-sun.co.uk
She has been seeing her since 2017 when her mother was first diagnosed with cancer and has continued her visits since her death to help deal with the grief. Mental health, of course, is not something to scrimp on.
Groceries: £170 per month
New spend: £170 per month
Saving: £0 per month
Natalie shops in Aldi and Lidl each week both for the big shop and the top-ups for fresh fruit and vegetables.
She says she avoids the offers and sticks to her list each week to avoid waste and overspending.
Clothes: £30 per month
New spend: £30 per month
Saving: £0 per month
Natalie shops frugally for clothes and make-up in H&M and Primark.
Fuel: £80 per month
New spend: £80 per month
Savings: £0 per month
Doing the school run and getting to work and back clocks up a bill of £80 a month.
Natalie usually fills up at her local Morrisons which is the cheapest in her area – she checks using Petrolprices.com which alerts her to the best prices in her postcode.
Entertainment: £200 per month
New spend: £140 per month
Saving: £60 per month
Natalie reserves £150 of her earnings each month to enjoy life with Alfie and with friends. This month she will use some to take Alfie to see Santa at a local department store.
And in a couple of weeks she has plans to go to Secret Cinema, an experience in London which merges live, immersive experiences with watching films. A ticket is £80.
Natalie spends £40 a month on a local independent gym which she uses at least three times a week equating to around £3 per visit which is excellent value.
She also spends a tenner a month on a takeaway treat – perhaps a Dominos pizza.
If Natalie wants to get on the property ladder sooner, she could cut spending on days out by £60 and reach her goal of buying a place a little quicker.
This doesn’t mean less fun for Alfie, they will just need to be more creative about activities for a little while. The end result will be worth it, after all.
There are plenty of tips on free stuff for kids on this website and also on the deals section of MoneySavingExpert.com.
Local businesses often have stuff for kids. As a cat lover Alfie might like the free workshops for kids aged five to 11 at Pets at Home.
Children are shown how to keep pets happy and healthy and there are hands-on experiences with the animals.
Natalie could save £60 a month by cutting back on takeaways and days out
Cash Clinic
Also, children aged two- to 12-years-old can get cinema tickets from £2.49 at Vue (in Basingstoke) with Mini Mornings screenings every Saturday and Sunday after 10am, and every morning during school holidays.
Even better, accompanying adults get in for £2.49 too. So Natalie and Alfie can go along and watch a movie for under a fiver.
Debts: £117 per month
New spend: £117 per month
Saving: £0 per month
Natalie owes £8,000 on her student loan and repays £107 a month. She only started repaying again in the last couple of years since a gap when going on maternity leave.
She is also in debt by £1,200 to the tax credits office after she was overpaid during the year 2018.
The error was only picked up earlier this year and Natalie has agreed to pay back £10 a month until the debt is cleared.
Since it’s an interest free debt, there’s no hurry.
Though it could impact her borrowing power when it comes to a mortgage as it will be classed as a debt, along with her student loan.
Benefits: £82.80 per month
New spend: £82.80 per month
Saving: £0 per month
Natalie puts aside the money she gets from child benefits to be spent on Alfie for clothes, shoes, school trips, birthday presents for friends and books for school.
She spends it carefully to make sure he never goes without.
Natalie uses the H&M Kids three for two offers as the prices are affordable but good quality.
For shoes, Natalie always buys Clarks as they will last longer than cheaper alternatives which need replacing more regularly.
But she could try looking for Clarks shoes being sold for less elsewhere, for example, on very on the Clarks Outlet website.
Insurance: £40 per month
New spend: £36 per month
Saving: £4 per month
Natalie drives a Vauxhall Corsa Energy which cost her £278 to insure this year. A search found this was a very competitive quote.
Her contents insurance is up for renewal next month. She paid £90 for 2019.
A quick look on GoCompare.com shows that she could cut that bill by more than half by switching to One Insurance Solution where the annual premium is £42.
She also spends £111 a year on pet insurance for the family cat, which sounds high but Pickles is aged 13 which bumps the premium up.
Savings interest paid: £6.25 per month
New interest: £31.25 per month
Boosting her income: £25 per month
Natalie has a savings balance of £25,000. She originally received £33,000 from her mother but used £8,000 to clear a car finance deal on her Vauxhall Corsa that was costing her £181 a month.
The remainder of the money is ring-fenced for a deposit on a house, so Natalie has promised herself not to touch it for any other spending.
Since it’s money she can’t afford to lose, keeping the money in a deposit account is a sensible choice, rather than risking it on a stock market investment.
Natalie could boost her income by switching savings and current account providers
Cash Clinic
However, it’s currently in an easy access savings account with Barclays paying a paltry 0.3 per cent earning her just £75 a year.
She can earn more by switching to a better paying account, such as a Marcus Savings Account paying 1.5 per cent – or £375 a year, meaning she will be £300 better off.
What has Cash Clinic managed to save Natalie?
We must applaud Natalie’s savvy approach to her finances.
She has spent considerable time and effort to ensure she isn’t paying over the odds for her bills and monthly outgoings.
But we still managed to find savings totalling £1,596 for the year, which will go a little way towards helping reach her goal of saving for buying a home and maybe a trip to Disney World.
It will take Natalie another three years until she can reach the £5,000 sum she wants.
But should she manage to buy the £260,000 house she has her eye on at a nearby development, her monthly outgoings would drop by £200.
That’s because she plans to buy 50 per cent of the property with her £25,000 deposit and a mortgage for the remaining £105,000, with her local housing association owning the other half.
A quick estimate shows that she could pay a total of £750 a month for the mortgage and her rent payment to the housing association.
How we saved Natalie £1,596 a year
HERE'S what we've saved Natalie:
- Bills – £44.01/month or £528.12/year
- Entertainment – £60/month or £720/year
- Insurance – £4/month or £48/year
- Savings interest boost – £25/month or £300/year
TOTAL SAVINGS: £1,596.12 a year (£133.01 a month)
We have put Natalie in touch with L&C Mortgages – a fee-free mortgage broker – which can help her find the best deal when the time comes that she’s eligible to buy.
However, her salary may well increase during that time which would allow her to put away extra cash.
And there are other ways she could boost her earnings – tax-free.
With a business to run and a seven-year old, anything extra she takes on needs to be something flexible.
Some online surveys operate a reward scheme where you earn points for surveys completed that can be exchanged for shopping vouchers at the likes of Amazon and John Lewis.
Others pay up to £15 in cash for each one, which typically take around 30 minutes.
Natalie can try Crowdology, i-Say, LifePoints, Survey Compare, and YouGov.
Many market research companies will also pay anything between £10 to £350 to take part in a focus group session.
Some projects may involve product testing. At Paid Focus Group registration is free.
TopCashback is another idea to help Natalie free up a little extra cash.
Clarks is among the many brands on the website that pay cashback on purchases. And the deals on cashback websites get far more generous as Christmas approaches.
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For example, new customers of Sainsbury’s can get £11 cashback on their first purchase over £40, while new Tesco customers spending £45 or more can get £8 cashback. And if you’re new to TopCashback it’s currently offering £15 cashback on a £35+ spend with Iceland.
Natalie could also have a clear out of Alfie’s toys and sell some things on eBay.
Every little helps, as they say.