The bottom line on the April 2025 budget was £1,553.82. I know because I made it bold. The bottom line on this month's sheet is £1,939.68, and I have not made it bold.
It's the same kind of list, eighteen months apart: only the money that leaves the joint account for the house and what lives in it. Food, petrol and my occasional bad decision in a bookshop are on another tab. April 2025 had ten lines. This one has thirteen, or fourteen if I count the £100 overpayment on its own, which the spreadsheet does. The difference is £385.86 a month, and almost all of it is things we chose.
What we added
Four lines didn't exist in April 2025. The kitchen fund is £250 a month, started in May. The mortgage overpayment is £100, which I wrote about at the start of July. The life insurance is £31, the £14.20 and the £16.80 together. And Pickle is £50.40: £24 for food, £6 for litter, £9 for flea and worm treatment and £11.40 for her insurance. She arrived in May last year, which is why she wasn't on the first sheet, and she now costs more than the water.
That's £431.40 a month for four things we decided to do. None of them arrived in a brown envelope. I should have marked every line "bill" or "choice" on the April 2025 sheet. I added that column this summer, and it has changed how I read the total: the part we can argue with is much smaller than the part we signed up for.
What went up
- Council tax, £165.40 to £173.70: up £8.30, a rise of just under 5% over ten instalments.
- Broadband, £31.99 to £34.99: up £3.00, exactly as the contract said it would.
- Home insurance, £24.70 to £26.55: up £1.85, and that's after switching. Had we accepted the renewal at £389.10 it would be £32.43.
- TV licence, £14.13 to £14.54: up 41p.
Together, £13.56 more.
What came down
- Water, £49.60 to £28.50: down £21.10, because we asked for a meter.
- Phones, £45.00 to £18.00: down £27, because we moved both to SIM-only in January.
- Gas and electricity, £119 to £108: down £11, on the second fixed deal.
Together, £59.10 less. Set against the rises, the old lines come out £45.54 a month cheaper than eighteen months ago. I worked that out in April and it still pleases me.
Three lines didn't move at all. The mortgage is still £889, fixed at 4.84% until the end of February 2030. The boiler pot is still £15 and the house fund still £200, both leaving the joint account on payday, the 25th, alongside everything else. Those are the lines I can read without wincing.
The useful thing the sheet shows, more than the total, is who did the moving. Council tax and the licence went up because a letter said so, and I couldn't haggle with either. Every line that fell did so because one of us rang someone, filled in a form or sat through a comparison. Nothing came down on its own.
The line we can't control
The energy line is the one I can't make behave. £108 is a direct debit against a fixed price that runs until 9 March next year. We can change how much gas and electricity we use, and we've been trying. We can't change what a unit costs when the fix ends. Ofgem sets the cap every quarter, and I have stopped guessing where it will be, because the guesses have all been wrong.
There is also something that isn't on the sheet. The waller starts on Monday, £2,900, and that money is about to leave three different pots at once. The kitchen fund will not enjoy it. I'll write about it afterwards, and I'll bold the total again in April.
