Where does your money go?

[Blueberriesandbows]

I earn reasonably well - good job and not on min wage. In upper tax bracket. Yet I run out of money every month. I budget but could be better. I feel like budgets dont take into account what things cost now...my budget of a year ago isn't working. Nothing Has changed . I could easily afford 2 lunches a week out say ler week during work. Now my local sandwich shop wants 7 fucking quid for a blt!! It's a baguette but still. I never thought id be at the point of having to make all lunches myself for work. What are your experiences? Do u also find it tricky or just budget better? It's been a hard summer . Its not even the 20th and I have run out of money. My blt is tasting stale at that thought8

Everything has gone up I think that’s the problem, what was affordable- even for people on decent salaries ( not the top earners) but middle squeezed as it’s called is now not as affordable. I am definitely feeling it this year- not where I have to watch what I spend in a shop but more that my money doesn’t go as far these days, I’ve already started my Christmas shopping ( I know this is a privilege to some) because I’m anticipating an even more expensive winter.

Could you not make your own sandwich, or do you make your own most the time? We all have to watch what we spend these days.

The only way to find out is to sit down with your statements and make some lists or a spreadsheet. Then you can track where it's all going.
Most of mine goes on food/wine shopping.

You are right to be wary of buying lunch - packed lunches and homemade coffee/tea save a lot of ££ and are usually better quality/nutrition.

Cost of living is ridiculous now. Basic bills are so high. Agree something is not working and anywhere you can reduce costs eg by taking sandwiches to work/school we do.

I earn well but I rarely buy lunch or coffees out
always take a packed lunch to work
a coffee in Starbucks js £4.65! It’s outrageous and I won’t pay it

petrol has gone up so that is another expense

you deffo need to re look at your budgeting

Of course you could make your own sandwich but that’s not the point. If you’re a higher earner you expect to be able to buy a bloody sandwich don’t you?!??

Yes, everything has gone up. I buy a lot of reduced/sale items... both in terms of my food (anything that can go in the freezer does) and things to decorate/furnish my house. Most of my money goes on trying to sort my house out, even though I'll never own it (it's tied accommodation, and ridiculously cheap to rent, before anyone asks why I still live there).

I budget like a demon and can tell you where every penny goes. It’s a good habit: hard recommend. Mostly housing, bills, transport and supermarket. I don’t skimp at the supermarket but I also don’t buy lunch out for convenience- only if it’s a social occasion. Relatively healthy household income but supporting 3 DC and some carefully selected hobbies. We don’t eat out very often.

we have about 7k coming in a month, and honestly - we manage to spend the lot most months. My husband and I both work ,and we have 3 children, one with a severe learning disability. Our biggest outgoings are childcare and food. We have one big holiday a year and pay it off monthly. We do have direct debits set up to go into savings accounts and that comes out on payday so we don't miss it.

Some bills of ours are crazy - our electric bill alone is £320 a month and things like home and car insurance are just getting more expensive every year.

I always make my lunch, can't be arsed to be hunting down a sandwich with about 1387535798543 other people.
I'm alright, but I live very much below my means. Lovely but modest, cheap to run, house but in an excellent village, DINK, no new cars or tech etc I grew out of that stuff now, I don't change my car every 2 years like I used to. Zero debt.
Most of my salary goes into S&S ISA/Premium Bonds/Savings Account as I want to retire early and travel.
My big splurge are holidays, I book whatever I fancy (my OH is a passenger prince(ss) when it comes to holidays).
We have Sunday lunch in the pub, probably every week sometime but otherwise not many take aways/eating out.
I had a substantial pay rise about 2 years ago but I didn't upgrade my lifestyle.
I hate shopping so don't buy much in clothing/home wear department.
Also, not having kids saves so much money, who knew.

I actually refused to pay £9.99 for a ham sandwich with some crisps and coleslaw in a garden centre cafe this week, after a drink and a tip it would be £30 for 2 of us to have a ham sandwich and a cuppa.
I’d rather spend £30 on an Indian takeaway and not a ham sandwich I can make myself.
We went to the deli counter instead, got 3 slices of ham, a loaf of bread, tomatoes, and tub of coleslaw and went home. Still spent £10, but not £30 and had another sandwich today.

We're struggling financially, we were already careful before the cost of living went up and are now in a situation where things are breaking/wearing out which we bought on a budget a few years ago and we can't afford to replace them. Tha car is on its last legs (had it since new 16 years ago), our wardrobes are dwindling, (although I don't let the kids go without), our bed frame is collapsing and we've been making do with the air fryer and slow cooker since the oven broke in February.
And the thing is we have professional jobs, we're not entitled to benefits, we have a modest amount of debt. It sucks.

I was only thinking this morning how much I'm struggling this summer. After bills I'm left with about £1000, which sounds like plenty, but my weekly food shop is now around £150-200 (appreciate it could be cheaper, but have two autistic kids who only eat home cooked meals, so need lots of fresh food which has gotten crazily expensive). No car, so saving on insurance and maintenance, but have similar monthly travel costs as what would be average for petrol. After buying 2 lots of secondary uniform, paying for a school trip that needed paying by the end of the month and buying all the other miscellaneous bits and pieces that they need for school I'm not even left with enough money for a night away, let alone a holiday!
For comparison, bringing in slightly less money last summer, we managed a biggish day out every week, regular little things like swimming/parks etc where I could buy lunch out without even thinking about it and one 4 day UK holiday.

I know what you mean, I’m divorced so just the one income, 1 DD, 50:50 custody so no maintenance. I earn about £52k, that sounds like LOADS. And yet I can afford less then when I was married in the early days and our combined income was about £35k. If we were tired after work we’d end up having dinner in a local marstons or somewhere like that, and it’d cost £30 for both of us with drinks and me having a dessert. I don’t buy takeaway coffee or lunch when I’m at work, I have to save a little each month towards Christmas and birthdays, and an emergency fund incase the washing machine breaks, so I’m thankful for that. And on holidays now I make picnic lunches for most days. And yes I’m happy I can go on holiday, but when I earn what I do I feel like I should be able to kick back on holiday and I can’t.

My friend earns considerably less than me but no kids, and I genuinely don’t know how she gets by.

I spend a lot going to London to meet up with friends: train fare, concert tickets, petrol £130 a month, lunches out £200 a month. At least £450 if not more a month feeding two teenage boys. Mortgage paid off, some inheritance, working 0.8 teacher salary. Money seems to go on food mostly. Recently upped my contribution to the joint account with my husband to £710 a month (we contribute the same amount) this covers electric, gas, council tax, at least one or two food shops, life insurance, water bills. Bus fares for my older son might be as much as £900 a year to get to college but may now be less if this £2 cap happens. Scopay school lunches, school trips. I spend about £70 a month on hair/ beauty treatments ( electrolysis), £40 on contact lenses but they are good daily ones. We are not high rate tax payers but on the cusp of that. It's easy to spend money. I have the NatWest app and seem to spend £100 a day no matter what (including money to joint account) especially with the school holidays. I do some examining so feel less guilty about spending a lot in the summer holidays. It's been a good summer and, having suffered close family bereavements, I tend to spend money on experiences: concerts, family holiday to Tenerife, lunches out with friends.

My money all goes on bills and expenses. You have to work with what you've got.
I pay the bills first then grocery shopping etc depends on whats left. Sometimes this means skipping a week and getting creative with what's in the freezer. If there's no money I go without. It is what it is.

I am.on similar salary. But 2 kids at home. Makes a huge difference when only 1 person paying bills. Never buy lunch out, rarely buy clothes. It is hard. Work hard and nothing to show for it

Not too bad for us as our electric and lpg prices are on a fixed contract so no increase this year. Water is ridiculous as SWW increased rates by 30%: pay more with fewer people living at home. Food inflation has the biggest impact on my budget and I don’t want to compromise on healthy eating so we are over budget every month on food, despite my yellow labelling hobby! We rarely eat out as I love to cook and it’s often very expensive for something I could do myself. Have also started Xmas shopping and saving up my sparks, John Lewis and Nectar points for December.

Our office is not close to any places to get lunch. You have 3 options, order in (expensive and tends to be a once a month thing to celebrate payday), grab something from the visiting food van that appear twice a day at random times (so if you are in a meeting that’s unfortunate, but the foods terrible anyway) or take your own.

So almost everybody brings their own lunch - buying lunch more than once a week isn’t normal.

Have you ever actually budgeted? You have to do it every month, and you have to figure out what is going where every month. It doesn’t just happen, you have to figure it out.

Do you have a huge mortgage? If so perhaps downsizing might help. Few families actually need more than 3 bedrooms.

Do you meal plan? Get takeaways? Do you regularly just go for a wander round the shops for something to do? Book weekends away? All these things need to be budgeted for. Do you budget for car expenses (tyres, MOT, service, repairs), do you budget for birthdays/christmas/holidays/home repairs? Or do you just wing it?

I decided 15 years ago to buy a horse and haven't had a penny since! I do also have 3 or 4 holidays too. I earn enough to have money, but between many holidays, horse costs and various vets bills I just dont! And I make my own lunches! 😂 Hey ho....

I'm going to be a bit the voice of doom as well, this summer's weather in UK and Europe is likely to push up food inflation as well, farmers are feeding winter feed already and there isn't as much crop growing which is likely to hit Dairy and meat costs.

It's worth putting your core foods into Chat GPT or similar and getting a view on what it thinks. I've just taken early retirement with a huge hit on income - we're starting to stock up on tinned tomatoes, oats and other products, we're also likely to move to UHT Milk which we'll bulk buy (we don't have much dairy milk anyway). We'll continue to bulk out meat meals with lentils, pulses etc. Yes you've got to have the income to buy ahead of time and the space to store but I can't see food prices improving.

We also take coffee and snacks out with us and practically never buy takeaway coffee. When I was still working I mainly took leftovers fire lunch as I'm not a sandwich fan.

The issue is that everything has gone up much faster than salaries and you can’t change much with your outgoings as most are things you have to pay - mortgage, energy bills, water bill, council tax, insurance and food!

For us a mortgage that was £1200 went up to £1750 when fixed rate ended (due to world events) and we had to secure a new one, that ended and is now down to about £1450.

Energy bill was £180 and is now £250. Water bill has gone up, car insurance, house insurance, pet insurance have all gone up (despite no claims on any of them).

Food bill has gone up, after school childcare has gone up, cost of DC clubs have gone up. Cost fuel for car has gone up, we’ve just swapped one to an electric car when my
old car died.

The last one is the only thing we can really change but I also want DC to be able to do their 2 x sports clubs per week.

We only have a three bedroom house but do live in a higher cost area, but not as high as it could be, our 30 min commute is the difference between a 3 bed costing £350k and £500k plus (when we bought 5 years ago). People on MN always say ‘move somewhere cheaper’ but the reality of that is the logistics of finding jobs for both of you, selling a house, buying another, factoring in money ‘lost’ due to stamp duty, moving fees etc etc and also the fact that even higher cost areas still needs teachers, healthcare professionals and lots of other professions that don’t earn large salaries and so we expect everyone with those professions to all move away from high CoL areas!

Ultimately 10 years ago on our combined current income we’d be able to have two nice holidays a year and save up a decent amount. Reality is very different, as our outgoings are double what they were 10 years ago; we do have money for the kids to have days out and treats but they don’t get big holidays abroad and eat out far less than we used to. All of this has a knock on effect for the wider economy.

My money goes mostly on my horse and top up food shops. I don’t really ever get meals out. The food is mostly rubbish. I can make something nicer myself. Of my £1000 of personal spending money, I pay about £450 for my horse. It used to be commuting costs (more than the horse!), but I don’t commute anymore.

Most of mine goes into savings and holidays as I've always been frugal on the small stuff.

I make my own lunch, costs about £5 per week for a pack of rolls, ham, couple small tomatoes, slice of cucumber etc. Take my own coffee to work, never buy takeaway coffee at work. Generally cook from scratch as I don't really like takeaways.

I never buy expensive things that go down the drain or go on fire! E.g I stick to supermarket own brand cleaning products, candles etc. I don't buy what I call Primark landfill plastic fashion so all my clothes tend to last for several seasons resulting in a very low cost per wear. It's not as exciting a life as my friends who head to Primark every weekend and grab lunch on the go but
what I save having a frugal day to day life plays for my 5* holidays every year and that's more important to me.

Your lunches are probably costing you £1500 per year and thats before extras like drinks and cakes/crisps etc!

I don’t struggle but I know how to budget.

You’re not budgeting properly. You should track what you’re spending to see exactly what you spend your money on and after that you budget, when you know what you want to prioritise and reduce or eliminate. I also find that having x amount as ‘misc’ in my budget helps.