Is having £2,000 left after bills each month a lot?

[glarryone]

Today I was chatting to my sister about the cost of living. She mentioned that she and her husband 'only' now have about 2k left each month after bills and food.

Am I out of touch or is this a huge amount? We have about £700 on a good month!!

I’d say that’s an awful lot

Yes 2k left after everything is loads.
I can only dream!
Good luck to them though x

The average UK take home salary is around £2k per month. Let that settle in. Not left over after bills, to cover everything. She needs to give her head a wobble.

Yes, a lot.

without an actual breakdown or clarification what ‘bills’ are included, I think it’s hard to judge if that’s a lot. For example, we pay mortgage, electricity, council tax and broadband/phone monthly, everything else (insurances, car service, heating oil etc) is paid yearly. I wouldn’t consider kids’ clubs, gym or food part of the ‘bills’ either.
2k left for all the yearly expenses, food, regular activities is a good amount, but not huge surely.

Its about 2200 more than i have as a teacher of 30 years

the fact you dont know this is weird

im guessing you’re not the person making the money ?

Depends what each of you means by "bills". If it's simply mortgage, utilities, food, council tax, internet and insurances then it isn't a lot.

If it includes childcare costs, school lunches, out of school activities, money aside for uniform and clothes, money aside for pet food and vet trips etc then it's a reasonable amount.

I often find what one person thinks of "bills" can be different to another and can then massively sway how they feel about remaining funds!

Yes it is a lot.

Is it 2K after everything or 2K after utility bills and food?

i.e. does the £2K need to pay her mortgage, council tax, holidays, maintenance on the house, car finance…

It could be cf 2 people on 30k with reasonably small mortgage/rent. Tbh it could be 2 cf minimum wage workers with low mortgage/rent actually. So yeah it's very healthy, but it doesn't mean theymake big bucks.

We have between £500-£2k a month after all bills, regular outgoings and spending money is accounted for, so the above constitutes our savings. The amount fluctuates each month due to shift patterns. This income is relatively new to us and it's not lost on me how fortunate we are. We never dreamed of being in this position

Depends on where you live, what their incomes are, how small her “bills” (mortgage rate, “extras” like Netflix etc) are.

I know people paying £400 per month for their mortgage. If she has a mortgage like that, and perhaps earns fairly well and is otherwise very frugal, then £2000 per month isn’t hugely shocking to me.

My husband and I have high salaries, no children but a £1500pm mortgage and bills reflective of a four bedroom house. We just naturally came together on how we live and just don’t do daily frivolous spends - we have travel coffee cups, make lunch for work every day and possibly eat out 1 meal every week. I don’t pay for nails or brows or facials or tweakments and I thankfully don’t need to dye my hair yet. I don’t buy random decor for our house and it’s actually still quite a shell new build except furniture (changing shortly!) I don’t buy new clothes regularly but maybe £200 seasonally (so in winter and again in summer). We spend a LOT (a LOT) on holidays every year but I’ve happily take the same clothes for the last 8 years if they’re in good condition and fit me.

We’ve just worked it out and have a shockingly huge amount spare after basics - mortgage, utilities, all insurance…. So £2K is believable depending on more details - sounds a bit tone deaf speaking about finances to you if you’re struggling.

Yes that's loads. We usually go into the overdraft in the middle of the month.

Wow! I don't even start with that amount...

Lots of people underestimate their outgoings, I'd want to know if that's truly left over, are savings and investments accounted for? Annual bills like car MOT, service repairs etc, we buy logs in for our fire that's a few hundred pounds but doesn't really feature on what I'd call our regular bills list. What about holidays? Childcare? DC activities and social costs? I set aside an amount every month for travel but she might not be accounting for that either. Also things like dentist, hairdresser etc.

After all of the above is accounted for other than Spotify and mobiles (both on SIM only) DH and I had about 1700 left between us this month as disposable income. I think we are pretty comfortable

Interesting, we do it the other way around to you - allocate a discretionary spending amount an the remainder is for saving and investing. Means we have less discretionary spending that if we did it the other way around. Though depends how much you allocate for savings and investments I guess.

Have they paid off their mortgage

The method stems from when we had a lot less disposable income and were saving to have a good cushion and for particular things, renovations etc and it just stuck, I also have a DH who fritters money ....

What are we counting as bills?

If its literally completely spare money then yes its a lot. If its covering everything bar utilities and food then I wouldnt say its masses. If its got to cover savings, car costs, insurance, holidays, clothes, house repairs/maintenance etc. then I dont think 2k is rolling in it, I mean they are fine obviously but equally the difference between 700 and 2000 could be what your classifying as bills

If it's two people, no dc, small or no mortgage so even with a fairly average £4k/month incoming it sounds feasible

It sounds a lot but if it’s a family of four and that has to cover petrol, car service, clothes, after school clubs, days out, holidays etc then it will soon go. Do they have savings for when the washing machine breaks down?

After all expenses we have around £500 left and that’s usually already allocated to house repairs or kid costs like clothes etc

We never even got £2k per month, let alone after bills- that's far more than average.

I don’t think “is that a lot?” Is the point here.
The question is “why is my sister so insecure that she’s trying to win some imagined competition by trying to drop into conversation that her life is much easier than mine?”.
That assumes that you didn’t actually ask her for details of her household finances?
I don’t understand why people name numbers like this. No good comes from friends and family knowing this much of each other’s business.

That's more than I get paid in total in two months. Of course it's a lot.