Done to death but how much is left for the average person!

[procratinationstations]

Following on from last week's huge thread about 100k earners, it got me thinking is what we have left over after bills considers average or fortunate. DH thinks everyone else is better off but I think he'd be shocked.

Family of 5, 3 teens. No school fees, no clubs or hobbies. 2 dogs who are small and cheap
own! An old car that isn't used much and an average house, with average mortgage and costs.

We have £300 after household bills left each to cover anything that isn't food, toiletries or supplies (dog food, prescriptions etc) so that's clothes for all of us, haircuts, takeaways (we never have these though!) going out anywhere for any of us, travel, kids lunch at sch, birthday presents etc.

Is this normal - I'm not moaning - I just want to know where we are in the scheme of things.

I don’t know why we have as DH refuses to live within our means, and uses a credit card if necessary.

Usually after all bills are paid we have around £1500 - £1800 left a month but food spend does come out of that... (I am fat but don't eat 1k a month of food!). No children but a menagerie of animals.

Is £300 each, you and DH or including the kids as well? So £600 or £1500 a month leftover?

I have about £500 a month after all bills, food, petrol for me and 2 teenagers and it feels like a struggle tbh.

About £1100pm after all food, bills and childcare are paid. Me and one 8yo DS at home, I earn minimum wage and receive tax credits but get £600pm maintenance so that is included in the figures. It's more than enough, we have holidays, takeaways, days out and DS can do whatever hobbies he wants (horse riding - costs a bomb!)

Without the maintenance it would be more like £500pm and we wouldn't be able to have as many luxuries. Exh has his faults but financially supporting his child is one thing he never lets me down on.

Worh mentioning though that I have no car, no pets and mortgage payments are only £300pm.

Nothing. We have nothing. It's a real struggle. I'd love to have £300, hell, I'd love £30!!

I have arund 1500 left after I've paid everything but I am older and live on my own. My DS is grown up. I'm retiring in 7 years so every penny of that goes into retirement savings.
I've never been badly off because I had one child and was a single mum working in NHS full time. I think the more kids you have the harder it is. 5 people in one household is a lot of people.
I dont have any debts or credit cards and own my own home which is very energy efficient.

@NuffSaidSam it’s clearly £300 a month, total.

I’ll need to work out what we have per month left over, OP, but I suspect it’ll be around the same. We are not well off by any means and can’t afford many luxuries, but I’d say we are doing ok.

Nothing at all, I've got £354 a month before bills and everything so there's never anything left out of that.

Oh, groceries come out of our £300ish as well.

Could someone possibly link to 100k thread? Thank you

I found I wasn't earning enough at one point so I went to university in my 40s to retrain for a better career. Degree specific. It was worth it.

I don’t actually know, but we do both use our overdrafts each month

Must, must budget!

Between us we are going to be paid nearly £6k a month (from this month on). Mortgage is £1k, childcare is £1k. Paying far too much on bills but aren’t grown up enough to shop around and change providers. 4 kids.

We take in 6200 bills are approx 1500 so we technically have 4700 left. But we have no mortgage, car payments or debt. We save a lot of it though.

We save about £1200- 1700 a month. We have £2500 spare after bills and food. Me, DH +3DC 2-6 yrs.
We move £1200 of it as soon as DH is paid into savings and that leaves us £1300 for extras- that includes petrol, clothes, nights out, DC activities, weekends. Usually we spend about 800-1100 of that and move anything that is left into savings at the end of the month.
We have no debt and no overdrafts- if we want something we have to be able to pay for it- no credit.

Blimey I'd kill for some of the amounts mentioned on here! We have run out of money half way through the month. We're a family of four with one car, no hobbies that cost money and very few if any trips out etc. Dh was made redundant after lockdown no. 1 and now stays home to look after our dc because our childcare provider went out of business and we couldn't find anything else so we rely on my wage which, as a supply teacher, can be very hit and miss. I also broke my hand and couldn't work for a few weeks. We're up to our eyeballs in debt and live in our overdrafts. We do have an exit plan and are working towards being debt free but it's all long term.

Probably about £1500 to £2000. That’s only happened in the last couple of years since I retrained and went full time.
Two teens, one dog, two cars, big mortgage.

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

I found I wasn't earning enough at one point so I went to university in my 40s to retrain for a better career. Degree specific. It was worth it.

Good for you but lots of us can't even afford to do that!!!

Absolutely nothing after bills / food.

Costs gone up massively and income remained the same

We have about £100 a month left and £50 for the kids combined. So £250 in total as a family.

About 4k

1900 after mortgage bills and food are paid. A lot of that goes into savings and overpaying mortgage.
Both work FT, no kids though. We share a car, I'm very tight with groceries and we're not huge spenders. Took 2 years of discussion to buy a new hoover.

About £3,500 after everything has been paid. We put loads into savings (and we could / should cut back on food and going out as we have slipped into bad habits there)