Hi everyone, so I’ve just completed on my first ever property which is very exciting but also I get very stressed and overwhelmed by financial stuff so you can imagine now I’m feeling right now lol.
Trying to get to grips with everything - council tax, utilities, insurance etc - has been really hard and now that things are actually in place it’s definitely a bit much. It’s not necessarily that I don’t understand these things, it’s just that there’s so many different documents to read and policies to understand for every single service provider and my reaction is to just shutdown and ignore it all, which obviously doesn’t help lol.
I just wondered if anyone has come across any resources or guides for new home owners that they found helpful? Or just anything you can recommend that makes everything feel a bit less overwhelming and scary. Thank you in advance :)
#1 is make sure you have house insurance ALL THE TIME, it's a requirement for your mortgage. Choose buildings and contents. Just overinflate your house rebuild value, your purchase cost will be fine, and £50k contents covers most stuff for a single person.
The rest is easy. Use moneysavingexpert website to save money on utilities etc. There's not much more to it than that. T&Cs are kinda irrelevant for energy. Only complicate it if you want to, for example solar panels, evening use, and electric car.
Just keep up with maintenance on your house, that is also another insurance and mortgage requirement. It will save money in the long run too.
Good luck.
I've also just bought my first house. And I'm also very overwhelmed... not completely lost, mind, just overwhelmed enough that I'm not as on top of things as I'm comfortable with. The one thing that helped me to understand is that nobody is banging on your door to get these things sorted yesterday. And they each generally only take a small amount of time on a single day to sort.
So, important thing on day 1 is to get photos of all your utility meters. Then just take it one day at a time. Make a list of things that need sorting and then put it away. Most days try to make yourself free for an hour and pick one thing off the list to do. Count researching *how* to do one of those things as it's own thing.
Insurance can usually be back dated. Utilities just need to know what the meter reading was on the day you completed, which is what the pictures are for. Council tax will take weeks if not months for them to process anyway, they will probably not event have any concept that someone else lives in the place for months.
Genuinely, you'll be fine as long as you *don't* shut down.
The things I keep forgetting to put on my lists in previous moves, though, is online purchase accounts, i.e. Paypal and Shop Pay, and changing the address on my license. The latter probably needs to be done sooner than later, but you've got about a year to sort the license? (Which is exactly why I forget it)
Council tax is easy to handle, you set up a direct debit that pays it automatically on a set date and you're done.
Utilities is the same, but I would suggest you use a price comparison website like Uswitch or Compare the Market, or whatever makes more sense to you to decide on providers, also aim for utility bundles, such as gas and electric from one company or something. Think about the standing charge before deciding, also think about whether pay as you go meters make more sense than paying a monthly bill.
Insurance I have no clue about, none of the houses I've rented had any insurance on them.
Regarding the reading of the policies, I don't think anyone actually does that, most people skim read or just read when they need to.