Convincing DH that this is NOT a tight budget!!

[mrschicshadow]

Good morning,
Before I start, This really isn’t a stealth boast. I am trying to make my dh see that we are financially ok.

DH changed jobs recently and this has meant a take home pay cut of £600pm. His last job was terribly stressful and took over his life. I am 100% in agreement that moving jobs was the right thing to do. He is already much better both physically and mentally. The issue now is that he has this misplaced guilt things are going to be ‘tight’ financially. I don’t think that this is the case. Sure, we have had to make some changes - we have cancelled load of silly subscriptions, got rid of the sky package ( got an Amazon Firestick instead). We also made a few switches with things like insurances and utility providers which also saved us a bit of money.

BTW, we have 1 teen dd at home. DS is older and lives independently now. We are both 45.

Our new financial position is as follows….
My take-home pay - £2433
DH take -home pay - £3102
Total - 5434

Mortgage - £1276 ( 5 years left and thankfully fixed for the next 4)
Gas/elec/water/council tax/ house insurance/TV licence/Internet - £510
Mobile phones - £48 for 2 phones. This will drop and we will eventually move to sim only
Car fuel - £160
DD allowance - £50 - we are strict about not giving top ups and we expect her to save some and use it wisely
Car loan - £260
Bit of debt - £280 - all on low interest and not too long to go
Gym membership - £52 for both of us - we use this several times a week and I would be loathe to stop this
Food - £400. I am being strict about this and shopping at Aldi/Lidl. Seems to be working out ok
Union subs - £42
Emergency savings - £200 - we like to do this for anything unexpected that crops up
Christmas savings - £50
Pet costs - £54 - an absolute priority!!!!
Car insurance - £94 - 2 cars. Cheapest deals I could get
DS money - £200. We are supporting DS with living costs for a year as he has just moved into his own place.
Haircuts - £20 - sort of an average
School uniform/school stuff for DD - £40 - stupidly expensive uniform
Total - £3736
This leaves £1698 which I think it really good.

We do have some savings and we want to carry on saving as DD is talking about uni.

How do I convince DH that this is NOT a right budget and that we can still do fun stuff and enoy life

£100 a week each as purely spare cash is £800 per month- sounds ok to me. Certainly not tight

This leaves £1698 which I think it really good.

If it helps, I have roughly that much before any bills, for 3 of us.

It's not tight at all, but if its less than he's used to I can see why he might think it is.

Do you have a buzz cut?

You have a similar take home than us.
Were saving about £1000 a month.
And wo being tight/very strict etc….

@mrschicshadow have you worked things out the other way around? As in now that you’ve cancelled the subscriptions you didn’t need, found better dealer utilities etc…. Do you know much much you’ve saved?
How does it compare to your dh difference in wage?

I get where he is coming from.
He is thinking we had £6k a month to,I’ve in agd didn’t put that much aside each month. With £600 less, we’ll have to reduce our spending. Things will be tight.
What he is not thinking about is the amount of money wasted - yes like subscriptions you dont need, utilities but if you look closely at what you spend your money in, I’m pretty sure you’ll find a lot more.
It might help him to look through your spending together and find all those unnecessary spends. The stuff you dint have to buy and you’re not going to miss (so not the gym!)
Knowing it’s not going to be harder than let’s say not buying a paper he doesn’t read might put his mind at rest.

It sounds tight to me and it sounds like OPs DH is equally concerned.

Exactly, I'm not sure asking Mumsnet is helpful. Here many people seem to think a tight budget is one where they can't afford to buy the most expensive version available of everything and any compromise whatsoever is seen as unacceptably miserable.

Really? Once everything else is budgeted for?

I'd be interested to know what on earth are you spending £400 a month on. DP and I have about half that between us...!

It’s probably not helpful for me to to list how I spend my money because I have a high income and spend a lot and I accept everyone is different but as an example yesterday I bought:

new outdoor Christmas lights (£70)
fake tree for DDs room (£50)
coffees and cake (£18)
eyebrow pencil (£24)
Money to friend for an event (£35)
parking (£7)
OTC painkillers (£9)
3 x pairs of patterned tights (£26)

none of those categories were on OPs list.

but the point is OP is not listening to her DHs point of view. The key here is how did they manage when they had £600 extra a month? If they had plenty of cash sloshing around then I’m sure they won’t feel the pinch but I bet they didn’t feel that they had £2k+ of disposable income because if they did OP would not be driven to make the small adjustments she’s talking about

Possibly the fact you are making changes makes him feel guilty e.g. strictly spending £400 on food is maybe a reminder of why. I'm not saying it is wrong to do it (I would do similar) but might be worth a more relaxed chat about which things matter to you all. Your budget seems healthy enough to me that an extra £50-£100 food/TV subscription etc would be OK if it matters to you. Maybe that's something you can explore after a few months when you have seen your savings grow.

Similar to us OP, we save around 500 a month and still have lots of spare for fun stuff.

You similar take home to us - we live in Quite an expensive area and don’t take expensive foreign holidays but definitely fee comfortable and not like we need to watch the pennies…

I think for your DH it's probably more of a mindset as £600 is a lot to "lose", so maybe less about things being tight but more around the feelings of having less available, which is a fair feeling I think if you're used to having it.

Agree. He probably needs to go through the process of getting used to it and is panicking a bit.

One surely has to presume that if the DH is earning about £50k a year (so a management level position), he'll have the braincells to compute the price of the odd meal is affordable on the £1700 residual.

Of course it isn't tight when you have almost 1700 surplus each month. And with that amount spare you don't need to be talking about strict food budgets and shopping in Aldi. You can afford to live well.

Be careful about his mindset. DH and I have a joint income that's way below yours, but we still live well, put a good amount in savings each month and don't need to scrimp. We have as much surplus each month as you do. But DH is constantly wanting to economise and "cut down". We barely have the heating on. He buys everything as cheaply as possible, including food. He gets his clothes from charity shops. He's reluctant to go on holidays or have days or nights out unless it's something very cheap. He'll shake his head sadly and say the cost of xyz has gone up and we "really need to cut down". But we really don't!
I have quite a well paid job, we live very modestly and I don't want to live like we're low paid and financially insecure. He's obsessed with it and has got worse as he's got older. At times I've thought I don't want to be with him any more - I'd like to be able to book a holiday without him making disapproving faces about it being "too expensive".

Have you shown your DH your calculated monthly budget? Can he see how much is left over? I'd want to nip his mutterings about money being "tight" in the bud so he doesn't end up like mine.

It's not "the odd meal" though is it. There are loads of things not included in OP's listed budget categories that they might want or need to spend money on.

So are you trying to say that o/p’ s income is not a comfortable amount?

she’s listed all the essential costs that must be paid. Anything else is optional and £1700 should cover it easily. Many people don’t have much more as net income and manage fine.

if I’m getting through £1700 a month on shit like fake trees, fairy lights and cake, to use the above example, that’s all stuff that I can just not buy. Painkillers are under a pound a pack so if they’re heavily impacting the budget medical advice is more important than finances.

Dh has gone from a constantly stressed out state to one where all that stress isn't actually needed. So it would be wierd if he just instantly switched to being constantly calm.
IMO this is more about recovering from stressful life. with maybe some guilt about not earning as much as he "could" thrown in.

Your budget might not be complete - those bigger annual costs and one-off things. But you should have plenty in the kitty for those anyway! Maybe put some more into quick access savings accounts.

This leaves £1698 which I think it really good.

This is more than my entire take-home

You'll manage.

I would agree with others that there are missing items. Check out MSE budget planner and go through your actual spends from at least 6 months. There should still be surplus but not as much.

Can you really do food for £400 a month? No top up shops or extra milk etc?

Otherwise you are absolutely fine. It is always an unpleasant feeling to have less then before, but once you start living in an economically efficient way it's quite a pleasing thing (unless you are really skint. I am not pretending poverty is a pleasing thing).

We have £100 pw personal "fun money" (but it needs to cover things in OP list too like phones, exercise, haircuts)

I'm not swimming in cash but it's certainly enough.

We have £100 pw personal "fun money" (but it needs to cover things in OP list too like phones, exercise, haircuts)

I'm not swimming in cash but it's certainly enough.

if I’m getting through £1700 a month on shit like fake trees, fairy lights and cake, to use the above example, that’s all stuff that I can just not buy. Painkillers are under a pound a pack so if they’re heavily impacting the budget medical advice is more important than finances

We can all not buy “shit” but never going out, purchasing a gift or birthday card, sticking a bottle of wine in the trolley, getting your nails done, replacing the tyre on your bike, agreeing to a school trip or ballet lessons for your DD, having a takeaway coffee, going to the cinema, fixing your washing machine, replacing a new duvet cover and yes christmas decorations and coffee and cake with a friend sounds pretty depressing over the long term.

a budget that doesn’t include variables like clothes, parking, birthday celebrations and the occasional treat is not sustainable and not a helpful start. If you don’t include what you actually spend it’s going to be hard work