How much "mad money" do you have?

You don’t have £400 spare op. That’s money that should be going into repayment. Post again when you’ve cleared that.

DH and I have £500 a month each discretionary spends. Roughly £100 a week or so for personal spending that we don't have to run past each other and that we can do what we like. But it also includes personal bills like paying for our phones, haircuts etc.

I save a chunk of mine (£150) into my stocks and shares ISA each month which I view as my early retirement pot. Then I tend to save an extra bit each month to pay towards DH's birthday and Christmas presents and he does the same for me out of his personal money.

The rest I'm free to fritter (or save) as I see fit. I tend to spend it going out with friends or on the occasional new item of clothing or make-up. It works for us as it's none of DH's business that I spent £100 this month on a pair of new winter boots and he can crack on spending a fortune on his air fix models.

So what relevance has your question to your stated situation?

Your OP doesn’t make sense. If you have been spending £400 per month plus on top of that racked up £3000 debt on non-essentials, you clearly aren’t comfortably off with a pot of surplus spending money each month.

About £400 I spend it on meals out,coffees out,clothes,shoes/boots,bags,accessories,
books,magazines,getting my hair done,treats for other people,things for the house,fresh flowers.

I don't have any particular figure.

I have no debts - no mortgage, no car finance, no phone contract, etc. - and I max out my S&S ISA, pay loads into my pension each month and still have a good amount left after bills. But I never set a specific amount to just blow on...well...shit.

DH is similar.

I really wouldn't be happy wasting a set amount of money 'just because' but I do buy what I want, when I want, within reason.

When people talk about a specific figure like that it sounds like children with pocket money being wasted in sweets 🤷‍♀️

(I was brought up with less than sod all and struggled myself for many years, so I know exactly what it's like to be totally skint and also that I don't enjoy wasting money.)

Are you 16?
Have you never heard of the concept of saving?

I am fortunate enough to earn more than I need to spend on housing and feeding my family, but I have never (in 30 years of working) frittered any of it away. I saved towards a house deposit and after many years bought a house. I now spend it on maintenance or save it - for dental emergencies, school trips, holidays, pension. Nothing frittered. If I need trainers I buy trainers. I live within my means, have never been in debt (other than mortgage) and am quite comfortable.

So you can save for important things. You just really need to work at your credit card. I pay what I can by credit card because I get points but everybody should try and clear it off at the end of the month. The interest rates on credit cards are extortionate.

most of my £400 going forward will have to go towards paying that off next year.

OP: do you have a zero % credit card balance, and when does the interest start being charged again?

I'm thinking about what is "most" of £400... let's say that's £300/month. If you have zero% on your CC balance until next October (inclusive) you'll just about get the debt paid off by end of "next year" (assuming "most" = £300).

If interest is being charged, "most" must > £300 to pay off by end of October next year. Have you actually worked this out on paper or on a spreadsheet?

What does "most" mean to you, and when you say "paid off" do you actually mean just paid down, not actually completely paid off?

Why are people being arsey? OP clearly said that she needs to use it on her credit card.

Tbh I’m not the best at budgeting so I don’t allocate a certain amount, but all credit cards are cleared every month and I save a minimum of £150 but usually more, up to to £1k a month. I am very fortunate in terms of my income and outgoings.

I have no idea tbh, I don't fritter or buy loads of clothes, get my hair done whenever it's needed etc. Some months we have nearly 1k left by the end, some months we nearly get down to 0 just before payday, depending on what's been happening, birthdays, Christmas etc.

Pay off your credit card then, you crazy bint

Fair enough. Life would be boring if we were all the same ay.

We separate our direct debits into pots such as 'mortgage, tax, insurance' and transfer the correct money in each payday. It helps me know that they're all covered.

Christmas we save approx. £20 pm per child into named pots so that Christmas doesn't leave us in debt (as it used to). No credit cards.

We are spenders rather than savers though which is something I must work on.

Because in my mind, you don't have money to piss away on crap every month if you also have credit card debt. That makes no sense to me. We're all different.

But point taken.

We did not spend a lot on our holidays until we had paid for our children to go through Uni, paid for their weddings and given them some deposit money for their homes. OP, I don’t know if you have children but to us, these things are more important than splurging. Yes we had holidays, but not always abroad or expensive.

I definitely wasn’t trying to be sneery. I don’t count direct debits as pots, they just come out of my main account automatically and don’t need to be put aside into a pot. Everything else I just pay for with my credit card and pay off the balance each month, including Christmas (I only have a handful of people to buy presents for).

DH and I both get our wages paid into a joint account. £150 goes straight into a Revolut account for joint fun money every month. This can be coffee, meals, dates etc… but can only use that if we’re together.

Then we both get £400 each to spend on whatever we want. Going out with friends, coffees when alone, new clothes etc.

£500 in my personal account, but also have an excess of £1,600 in the joint account after all fixed bills are paid and after savings, and we don’t spend anything like that on food and petrol. So if I conservatively say there’s another £800 in there that we jointly get as “mad money”, I have about £900 a month.