The family
Ally, Sue and their daughters, Swindon.

Video transcript

Ally: Hi my name's Ally. This is my wife Sue, sitting on my knee is my daughter Victoria and over to my left my daughter Aeron. We've lived in Swindon now for about five years. I have two daughters, they both go to local schools and at the moment, we're sort of quite comfortable with life really, financially. Although, along with a lot of people, I think we have a lot of concerns as to where things are going and our financial commitments really.

[Family at home playing Monopoly, dad says 'Oh, I owe you some money do I?']

Ally: Every day seems to be 'how many jobs have been lost', 'another institution has cut 1,000 jobs'- that is a major worry, it really is.

Sue: I work at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon which is the main district hospital and I'm the medical secretary.

Ally: I work for Stan James the sports book-maker at the moment and things seem fine but you never know what's going to turn up the next day when you see an institution like Woolworths going down then you wonder, could it happen to your own company, which is a worry.

Sue: We have to be careful. We haven't go as much excess money as we used to have with rising utility bills, food prices, so you have to watch what type of food you're buying. You want to provide healthy meals for your family but with the rise in costs on some food products that's harder. Well, we're fine from day-to-day, month-to-month, but for those extras, they're just on hold at the minute.

Ally: Our mortgage is with Cheltenham & Gloucester in eventuality that I was going to lose my job, that's why we took out a mortgage protection policy. We pay a premium of approximately £30 a month which in the event of me losing my job, would pay us approximately £1,100 a month.

Sue: You can't risk losing your home in this insecurity. You need to insure and safeguard your home and your family.

Ally: I think one positive really that's come out of it all is that it's made us so much more careful with out money and made us more cautious with how we're spending it, you know with car insurance, utility bills, that sort of thing, actually reduced my annual premium, both my annual premiums, by about £100. [To Sue] Yours was about £50 wasn't it? So it does pay to do that and it's something we never used to do but nowadays I think you have to really.

Ally: We've really become more financially astute (?) I suppose you could say.