Living on 1k a month advice please

[Debtgalore]

Hi MNers, long term poster but name changed as embarrassed.

Due to corona we've had a massive drop in income. We're still very lucky that we have £1,000 a month to live on (but that's significantly less than we're used to). Can we have any advice on how to make it stretch? There's two of us, two 10 year olds and a dog. It'll need to cover all food, petrol for 2 cars (we commute in opposite directions) and everything else.

Using the MSE boards we've made a budget for all our bills, switched energy suppliers, cancelled Sky, etc etc. The thousand is what's left over.

We sometimes shop at Aldi but will do this as our main shop now.

All help appreciated, I'm worried it won't go as far as we need.

Thank you,

Shouldn’t be too difficult to cut some corners OP, although as with anything it’s tricky to advise without knowing what you usually spend it on.

Food is usually something that you can cut costs on a lot (assuming that you don’t normally need to budget in this way). Choose cheaper versions of some things e.g. shops own brand. Buy larger packets and either split them up when you get home or cook and save half for later. Bulk out meat with cheaper protein e.g. if you make spaghetti, use the same amount of meat, but add finely chopped mushrooms so that it stretches to 2 portions. Big bags of dried beans are much cheaper than tins. Processed food is always the most expensive, buy more “ingredients” rather than “food” (my DH’s descriptors!). Bake your own treats instead of buying them - more fun too! A bag of porridge oats is cheap and lasts a while, swap a couple of cereal breakfasts a week for porridge (if you have kids, I bet you get through a tonne of cereal!). Home made rice pudding is a lovely cheap dessert. DON’T buy takeaways! Seconding frozen veg as others have said. Basically, if you have these things in mind and then put together a meal plan followed by a shopping list, you can probably significantly reduce your food costs. Have more meat-free meals - jacket potato’s with cottage cheese or baked beans are tasty and cheap!

Free days out whenever possible. Trickier at the moment because of restrictions, but depending on your area there might still be quite a few options.

Christmas is another place that you can make big savings without too much pain, but it depends on what you usually spend the money on. Have a think about what the main costs are of your usual celebrations - the big ones are the easiest ones to reduce. Alcohol is expensive....

Good luck OP. With a little bit of planning, it’ll be a lot easier than you think.

Well this turned sour quickly. Even people on higher incomes still need to live within their means, why is the op wrong to ask advice on that?
OP, I think you just have to budget and be careful until it feels a bit more normal.
We cut out takeaways, clothes unless essential (bad habit for me!) We saved and saved and paid of all finance items. That took an age, believe me! Cancelled any unnecessary dd. No longer have a tv license as just watch the odd bit of tv but now only Netflix. Cheaper phone and broadband contracts.
I tutor in the evenings 2 times a week and DH reduced the amount of time he spent on an expensive hobby. Dd is only 3 so funding will kick in soon for nursery. We initially reduced her hours from full time to 2 mornings a week. We have a little one on the way and DH is looking for part time evening work after being made redundant. The silver lining was that he was able to be a sahd while I wfh. It's been hard but you can and you will do it!

@feathermucker

What EXACTLY does it need to cover? Your OP isn't that clear, I'm afraid.

Food. Petrol. Dog food. Clothes. Haircuts. Days out. Pocket money. Birthdays. Christmas. Presents.

The £1k is to cover all of the above.

All fixed bills (rent, utilities etc) are covered first and can't go any lower/payment holidays etc. Once all them are paid there's £1000 leftover for the above list.

We spend about £200 a month on petrol which is a huge amount unfortunately out of the thousand. We drive in opposite directions to work, can't get public transport where we live and need to drive the DC to school too.

You haven't said how much your petrol is? Surely that's not a crazy low amount to live on? £250 a week seems plenty

£1,000 left over is more than a lot of people have. It's manageable, especially for the size of your family.

The title is misleading, I thought you meant you were living in 1k alone. Not after essential bills.

You having a laugh? Asking how you can live of 1000 after all bills are paid! Take off petrol divide what’s left by the number of weeks to next pay day and there you are. However you have lots left so what’s the issue

Also to all the snippy comments, 10yr olds aren’t toddlers, free attractions/ days aren’t that appealing. Planning is the key OP- plan for the month and try and under the amounts you set aside

We have a £300 a month budget now thanks to Covid. Just done our weekly shop at Aldi for £36. We still go out and do things. We also have a personal budget each for the adults to spend however they like on top of the food budget. Everything else has to be squeezed from both budgets.

It won't be any use over the summer but in term time I get my hair cut at the local college in their salon by a trainee. It's really cheap, they usually open a couple of evenings a week and they're under close supervision. (Obviously not sure what this will look like this September).

I can feel guilty not doing days out in the summer holidays so I end up spending lots of money on theme parks etc but this year is a great excuse to not go to these places and think about places you can go for free and take a picnic.

I won't mock you OP @Debtgalore , but it should be very easy in your situation.

Two DC and a pet here as well, and our entire monthly income is £1300. My rent is nearly £600.

Just get rid of everything that's non essential basically. You'll still want treats for mental health purposes (it's amazing the amount of people who think people on benefits should never be allowed a treat), but make them very small treats and choose only what's most important to you eg is it a bottle of wine for you each week or some cheap make up, for DC it could be cheap art supplies or an ice cream out.

But otherwise only the absolute essentials. You can also try changing to the best deals on bills and shopping for food more cheaply.

Not read the full thread but my total income is around that, a fraction more but not a lot. I get by but only just.
It’ll depend how big your mortgage / rent is and then essential bills but i wanted to give you hope that in theory it is possible.

After petrol i would imagine food is up next big expense , it may be best to start shopping elsewhere like Aldi /Lidl if you don't do that already.
Meal planning is essential to cut costs and also opt for less meat meals and swap to some veggie meals instead . Going back to tasty simple meals like jacket potato's , pesto pasta and meals like that will help too .
I recently went through all of my family's clothes , sold lots on eBay which were unwanted and then only spent the cash I made on buying new clothes for us all . You could use this idea to put towards Christmas / birthdays

If you’re used to having a lot of disposable income it can be tricky to cut down initially, some posters are being quite rude tbh.

It doesn't offend me - but it is a little insensitive to be lamenting having only 1k a month after bills and having no idea how to live on that amount of money. You are very fortunate, especially compared to some people at the moment who have lost their jobs.

I'm sorry if some posters have been nasty but your first post did come over a bit like "Golly gosh, I have no idea how you unfortunate paupers can bear to live like this full time,".

Tbh It’s £800 after bills for a family of 4- take away £250-300 for food - thats c£500 left- yes that’s tight

So my advice as someone who has the rough same income as you after essential Bill's is this. You say petrol is £200.00 per month which takes you to £800 for days out birthdays chrIstmas as well as food so if it were me I would budget £150 per week for a food shop (in aldi mine is usually £80 for 2 adults 2 children and a cat so perfectly doable) and then put the rest aside to cover other bits as needed.
Look at bulk cooking, and freeze leftover overs rather than chucking them out.if you can freeze 1 portion per day then on nights you are busy etc you have a quick easy meal.
When you clear out the kids clothes sell as a bundle on face book, then try and buy a bundle if needed online again.
Things like music magpie buy old electronics/CDs/Books etc. They may buy for very little but it all adds up in the end.

I think if work out how much a year all the clothes and shoes your family needs would cost and divide it by 12 and save that in a pot.
The same with birthdays, Christmas, haircuts etc. Then see how much is left and then work out a weekly good budget, entertainment budget etc.

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

Tbh It’s £800 after bills for a family of 4- take away £250-300 for food - thats c£500 left- yes that’s tight

No, it's tight in your opinion

For many people that's a hell of a lot of disposable income.

And I say that as someone who's household income has dropped by a not insignificant amount in lockdown.

food budget

I get it OP, we would struggle to get used to that change. As everyone has said, meal plan. Perhaps eBay old stuff and put it away for Xmas presents, perhaps buy some now why stuff is in the sales. When we were skint we used to have a £20 for entertainment and take it in turns on a Saturday to think of the best way to use it, such as a takeaway, rent a movie and buy popcorn or maybe a game like cards of humanity etc, it makes it fun for the kids and adults. We try to entertain at home too instead of meals out with friends etc if things are tight.
I try to use cash too as it makes you really think before you buy something if your weekly budget is in your purse, that helped a lot for me. Hope it goes ok!

£250 per week is still a huge amount of disposable income, even ifs a big change in lifestyle
All I can say is concentrate on things you actually need, not want
Count your blessings and be glad you have the basics No apologies if that sounds "twee"

£1k a month after bills is ample, you need to view it as how lucky you actually are.
Our income completely went for one of us and significantly dropped for the other with covid and there's been no gov support as recently self employed (despite being PAYE for over 30 years previous). I would love to be in your situation.
We're about £800 short a month and struggling to live with two kids to support.

That doesn’t seem much to me, so not sure why people are being so rude. A life of free days out, no takeaways, no meals out, no alcohol or treats doesn’t sound much fun, so I get where you’re coming from.