To ask a bunch of strangers about personnel financial details.

[NoseyBuggerMummy]

I only have a few friends who I could ask in real life and they all have bizarre financial lives (either super rich barristers or starving artists) and no kids so I'm asking mumsnet.

I'm about to move back to the UK and want to plan my budget etc. but I have no idea how expensive it is to live. I've only ever lived in the UK as a child (bank of mum and dad) or a student (when I was happy to live in a damp slug infested shit hole) and even then lived abroad for half of my PhD program. I pretty much finished my PhD, got pregnant and moved abroad simultaneously, now I'm moving back and want to attempt to live like a "proper grown-up" but we're finding hard to plan where to live and how much spare cash we'll need so I'm throwing it open to mumsnet:

How much money do you get into your bank account each month and what do you spend it on?

Also if you don't mind saying do you feel like money's tight? Or do you feel comfortably off?

It will completely depend on where people live. What people are comfortable on in the north could possibly not even cover rent in London. Our income is around £55,000. Rent is extortionate in the SW so we aren't particularly comfortable on that. We are about to move to the midlands and will have much more spare cash and will be able to save for a deposit. There is no 'one size fits all' answer.

The website Love Money has a great budgeting tool.

I think your question is really hard because its so context dependant.
Which part of the uk are you planning to move to? That will obviously effect your finance.
Will you be working?
How old are your children, will they need day care or go to school?
How big a house/flat will you need?
These questions obviously effect your utilities and food bills.

All depends on where you are and what you need to spend things on.

Look at the essentials
Rent
Gas
Electricity
Council tax
water
Insurances
Phone

Then food, car costs etc. Plus child costs.

What I earn goes fine up here but would be difficult down South.

The question is too big! Can you narrow down where you want to be / how much you expect to earn / do you new childcare / commuting costs etc?

I would say budget 15K plus housing. For housing, go on to rightmove and look at the cost of suitable rentals. The 15K would cover utilities, groceries, clothes etc. It might also cover a holiday. A car would be extra.

15K after tax.

Childcare also extra

You'll get a huge range of answers, depending on where in the country the poster lives.
In London, rent is going to be upwards of a grand a month, as is full-time child care but council tax will probably be lower than in other parts of the country. Supermarket bills are very dependent on what you eat and whether you are still using nappies etc.
Commuting costs vary hugely depending on whether you need to run a car, use public transport or can walk/cycle to work.

There was a story on the BBC website a few weeks ago (which I can't find, but will keep looking) that compared the average weekly spending of people from different regions, and they seemed to be in the range of £450-600 a week, from memory.

Yes, you need to narrow this down.

People on Mumsnet will be living on annual salaries of benefits only to £500,000 (or even more??) per year so that's not really going to help you.

Me and DH have a joint monthly bring home monthly pay of £3,100.

By the time we have paid all our bills (mortgage, utilities, council tax, TV licence and home insurance) and put money aside for childcare, food, petrol, mobile phones, car insurance, professional registration fees, pet insurance, work related costs, gym costs and other small direct debits, we have £1,650 left over.

We put £500 of that into an ISA, £200 into another savings account, £150 in to our son's bank account and then we split the remaining £800 between us (50/50) to have as personal spends.

We have child benefit each month (about £85) but we don't count it as part of our income as it goes straight into another account. I'm not too sure what we plan on using that money for but we prefer to put it aside and use it for something useful one day (something to benefit DS) rather than it be frittered away each month.

We are definitely comfortable but I don't class us as being well off. Life would be really lovely if we didn't put so much into savings but we think it's important we have them.

If you're doing something where salary scales are nationally fixed, like academia or teaching, you will be far better off moving to a cheaper area like Northern England. You will get people on MN who tell you you can live well on half a chicken and twelve pence a week and others who will tell you you need a six figure salary to breathe. You need to give more details to get better info.

London costs:-

Nursery in London £1200 a month for one child.
Renting a three bedroom flat £2500 a month.

Costs that are probably similar everywhere:-

£600 "Groceries" = routine expenditure including one child's clothes
£200 "Household" = lumpy expenditure, furniture, plumbers etc. Possibly not relevant if renting.
£200 personal spending (£100 per adult)
£200 saving towards a holiday
£120 Council Tax
£75 Electricity
£55 Gas
£40 Water
£20 landline
£12 Internet
£72 Sky subscription
£12 TV licence
£15 Contents and travel insurance

My "groceries" is for two adults and one child. (And used to be half that amount before child arrived, not sure how it can have gone up so much.)

Our costs

1800 a month income

650 rent (1 bed desp need to move to 2 bed as we have a DD and DSD)
115 council tax
60 electric
50 water
200 food/nappies
90 sky
100 for 3 mobiles
55 car insurance
120 petrol
16 car tax
52 gym
12 tv license
50 clothung (mainly kids)
100 other direct devits

Living in dorset

God knows what we are doing about me returning to work/nursery

Sorry too general question! Rent and childcare I can work out from right move and nursery websites but I have no idea how much people spend on food, bills, transport, entertainment etc.

Thanks for the website advice - so helpful!

Our outgoings are roughly 2k for the things we HAVE to buy and we are self employed but pay ourselves around £4k per month.
We are in Yorkshire and bought our house 13 years ago when they were relatively cheap so we have a large 4 bed detached in a nice area and not a huge mortgage. We have savings and will send the DC to private schools for Secondary all being well.
We also have a property abroad and go out for meals about once a month ( nowhere fancy most of the time) and have the odd weekend away.
I think where you live can have a huge impact on your finances - sorry if that's very obvious!!!

The cost of living in the UK has skyrocketed in the last 20 years.

Housing costs esp in the se are astronomical.

Utilities are high.

Food has gone up.

Clothes and consumer goods are quite cheap though.

If you need childcare that's another mortgage for 2 DCs!

ouch council tax is expensive!

OK, we run a system of 3 bank accounts, DH and I have one each for personal spending and then we have a joint account for bills. If you take out the mortgage payments, we spend around £1,200 a month on bills and food. We aim to spend around £120 a week on groceries, that's for a family of 4, one just a toddler, but in nappies still. We have a 3 bed 30s house.

I drive a fiesta, it costs £55-60 each time I fill it up, but don't drive that much so not needed to do often (probably less than once a month). If you drive a lot, that can get expensive.

We budget around £300 each for personal spending - that feels a bit tight sometimes. I dye my own hair and don't do a lot of personal maintenance.

Other expenses, to get my car MOTed and serviced last time cost £184. If yo'uve been out of the country, you probably won't have a 'no claims' built up so car insurance will be high. It's around £365 a month for a monthly rail card with tubes from our town to London.

Also worth noting, most councils do a very annoying thing of taking your council tax for the year and deviding it by 10 not 12, while that means you get 2 months with no bill to pay, it also means you have to find a bit more for each of the other 10 months.

re entertainment, what sort of things were you thinking about and we could cost them out for your lifestyle.

EG, DC1 has swimming lessons at the local council leisure centre, not a posh gym, but it's £94 for a 10 week block. DC2 does some other toddler groups, most charge around £6-7 a session, usually booked in blocks.

babysitters for a night out round here would charge you around £9-11 per hour.

Thanks so much! Wow Mary your bills are £1200 not including mortgage? Do you mind breaking down where that goes? Does sound expensive in the UK! Fortunately we're both pretty slobby low maintenance so can do without things like frequent haircuts/waxing, expensive clothes etc. but obviously heating and water are less negotiable and it's nice be able to go out to farms etc on the weekend as a family .