To ask how much disposable income you have...

[idontbelieveanymore]

I have been wondering how much others have for disposable income. When I see people put in their threads 'we are comfortable, live comfortably' etc I wonder what that means...

As a family, after all the bills are paid etc we have approx £800 per month for food petrol/ entertainment and clothes etc. I am sure to some people this is pittance and to others a fortune!

Would any of you like to share what your disposable income is??

We never have much left. I don't consider myself a spendthrift. But if we have extra it just seems to er well evaporate is the best word I can think of.

I am extremely pathetic and have a spreadsheet that lists my monthly outgoings, it also forecasts for the year (or as long as I want to look ahead).

I save monthly for birthdays, christmas, holidays, MOTs, insurance etc etc so we are never hit with a massive bill.

I have often helped friends out by sharing my spreadsheet and it really helps as they can never believe how much they have left over when they budget properly. Actually maybe I will sell it to people and make some more disposable income!!!

Nothing...but we pay a horrific amount in school fees so it's entirely our own decision to have bugger all left!

We run at a deficit. Which is weird cos aren't you supposed to be rolling in it on benefits?

I'd say it's between £500 and £700, judging on what we save and what we spend on frivolous things. Definitely enough to feel comfortable but the aim is to really push up the savings. We don't cut many corners in the food spending, though my wine cellar is gradually being depleted and the days of £15-20 a bottle are gone :( That is one area I believe we could budget much better.

I have no idea, but not enough! We pay £1650 in rent though, we are moving at the end of our tenancy, although I don't think we will get anything for less than £1450. We already live in a much less naice area than we would like. But that extra £200 a month would make things much easier. At the moment we don't go without clothes or decent food, but there is nothing left for holidays or dentistry

Or pensions or savings

After all bills, food and school fees we have about 15k a month spare. we both have our own businesses and work very long hours sometimes.

We donate every month a nice sum to Tommys but would really like to do something worth while with what is left. Neither of us are big spenders and realise that sat in the bank it's just dead money.

Every month, I think, 'right, we have plenty of disposable income, we are going to be able to save this month'.

Every month I end up having to pay for this, that or the other incidental thing and every month we end up with fresh air pie for dinner and a zero balance the night before payday!

A large portion of these things are probably luxuries that others can't afford, like school trips or hair cut or friends birthday presents. So do I have disposable income? I suppose I do! Does that make sense?

Nothing that doesn't come out of savings or overdrafts/credit card. So I try to keep it as little as possible.

Iwantapig - You can sponsor me to do a phd if you want :-)

We have somewhere in the region of £500-£700 each month after rent, bills, food & petrol but not clothes. We don't buy clothes every month so I tend to think of new clothes as a luxury rather than an essential. I do make sure we save a minimum of £100 per month.

OH and I spent years clawing our way out of serious debts after redundancy and a subsequent house repossession, literally years of having not a penny left over. In 2010 we achieved freedom from debt. We don't have any property assets (in private rental) but having no debt and enough money to eat out occasionally, go out for the day, get my hair cut every couple of months etc is just miraculous. It might not be the amounts enjoyed by some on this thread but we're grateful for every surplus penny and it's more than we ever dreamed we would achieve.

I'm not exactly sure as DH and I keep our accounts separate. However, I have enough to pretty much buy what I want and put £1K in the savings each month, so I guess about £1500 a month. DH definitely has less left over although I don't know how much.

oh accounantsrule....any chance you could be so kind as to let a lady trying to sort out her budget see a copy of said spreadsheet? pretty please?

This month after all bills plus food plus work travel we have £300 (£100 of which we have put aside for a birthday present for a family member with a special birthday this month). Next month we will have £300 again but come about August it will go up to £400. We have just moved so at the moment are paying off lots of bills. In September we will have paid off a loan so will have an extra £154 and by The end of the year we will have paid off some money we had to borrow from family so will have more again

At the moment we have also cut down to bare minimum spend on food per month - about £50 for two adults (doable but would like more to buy more luxuries). This was so we could get our debts sorted and start to get on track and hopefully build up some sort of savings!

Iwantapig - you shouldn't do a blushing face. It's great that you have that much left over and shouldn't feel bad for it!:)

After everything is paid I have nothing, but that is because I am paid in sterling so all the bills come out of my account. DH gives me £320 a month as his share of the childcare and general costs.

He is paid in dollars (civilian role on US military base) and he is the one who has most disposable income. So he pays for all the big stuff - holidays, replacing broken white goods, major repairs to the car and so on. On a month to month basis he has the opportunity to save, but his savings are our buffer against things that go wrong.

Between us we earn about £52K and we have no mortgage, so we are pretty damn well off and very very appreciative of that.

When the DDs were little it was very different - mortgage payments, nursery fees - we were living hand to mouth every month. We've been there, which is why credit cards get paid off every month, our car is 11 years old and our TV is an old-fashioned fat jobbie.

hmm after everything else is paid for (kids clubs, childcare, food, petrol, mortgage, £500 into savings, council tax, phones and Sky etc....) I would have a guess that i have 2k-ish disposable income a month

Lots and lots. More than you.

Having spent the last few years paying off our credit card(s), student loans etc we now have roughly £1400 left after the essentials (including food) are paid for. We try to save £800 (as we depleated our savings over the years!).

It's about -£1K per month, ie we are dipping into our savings every month. Why? Because DH is "practising" for being made redundant / taking early retirement by paying almost all of his salary into an AVC. This makes a big hole in our income, which no longer covers our current outgoings: 1 house, 1 flat (DD is a student and lives in it), DS's accommodation (DS is a student), 3 cars (all old - we only need 2; the 3rd is unsaleable but handy). We do have savings though so it's not all bad, and the offspring won't be students forever I'm looking forward to being better off when DH gets his pension!!

considerably richer than yow

After all bills are paid, we have around 4k left.

This does not include food/petrol etc.. just mortgage, utilities, CT etc.

Pre-DH going self-employed, it was probably about £1-1500 a month. Now my salary supports us while DH builds up his business.

I bring in about £2.5k and pay the rent, food, bills and also manage to save - but it means I literally have no money at all. DH pays out about £800 p/m on debts - and thank god they are ending in a year! It makes me ill to think about those debts.

When DH had a salaried job, we earned pretty much the same, and money just seemed to evaporate. Now I see how much we actually had and how much we frittered away on...what, I don't know! I am immensely impressed my salary pays the rent, council tax, food bill of £200-250, utilities and save £300-400 a month.

In a year or so, DH's debts are gone which means all that money back into the family pot, and in conjunction with that, his self-employed earnings will hopefully keep going up. I work in the city surrounded by people who earn £80+K in compliance and it used to make me feel so bad we still rent a grotty little flat...but now I just think, we're happy, we're doing OK, everything will be OK :)

I have no idea how much we have

We have enough that we can afford to do the things that we want to do, although they are never extravagant things, and if we want to save for something big we can. We go on one fairly expensive holiday a year (£4000 ish). But that's it. We can afford to buy new clothes etc when we need it, it just has to be thought about and sometimes that will mean waiting until next week if all the bills are coming out this week.

I would say that we are comfortable because we don't have to worry endlessly about money, but I think that others personal definition of comfortable is probably different.