To think £100 a month should be enough for clothes?

[SabineUndine]

I don't have to wear formal suits for work, so I'm always in smart casual, with emphasis on the casual. But £100 doesn't seem to go that far. What do you spend (inc shoes)?

I've just totted it up and I've spent £580 ish this year. I had £350 of vouchers from work and changing my electricity supplier and the rest was cash.

I needed a whole new holiday wardrobe this year as I haven't been away since 2014 so I spent £96 on 3 bikinis (32F so not cheap) and then bought 5 dresses ranging from £7 to £16.

I need to be smart for work so usually wear a dress and suit jacket from M and S, H and M or Next.

The vouchers let me go to Oasis rather than my usual H and M and Primark and I tend to get bought underwear or given vouchers as gifts so that helps.

I could spend more on clothes as I'm single, no kids but also go out a lot and would rather do that than wear nice clothes sitting about my house. Nothing's a 'waste' though if you like it!

ohtheroses- do you never sleep in a hotel or lie in a hospital bed, wear a robe at a hairdressers, use a linen napkin in a restaurant use towels in a hotel?

The washing machine is a great invention.

Good points mind. I have asked in hospitals if gowns have been laundered sheets and towels can be washed at 60.

roses they must have thought that an odd question.

Clothes can be washed too. Even second hand ones.

Can't remember the last time I bought clothes for myself

It's not really fair to mock and make comparisons to a mythical chicken when £100 a month is a lot of money to many people.

I couldn't afford it. We don't have that kind of money available.

I don't dress well though. I'm not hugely interested in clothes and plus I just don't have the budget to do it. Today I have been wearing (and looked okay I thought - fairly typical clothing for me)

T-shirt bought in H&M part of two pack.... er... maybe £15 for the two.... 5-6 years ago? It's too small, shows off my belly, so I just use it as underwear but I like the colour.
Button up shirt. Bought second hand for €4. I don't know the brand. It's a bit too big but looks OK as an "oversized" kind of look.
Navy blue trousers, bought at H&M at the same time as the t-shirt. They are probably the smartest trousers I own. Beginning to fade a bit now. I don't remember the cost, would guess £20ish. I think they were in the sale.
Knit jumper, Petit Bateau. MIL gave it to me as a hand me down from older SIL. It's old but good quality and fairly timeless in style and I have been complimented on it. £0
Coat, scraggy scruffy, cheap but comfy from factory shop for about £20 IIRC about five years ago. Could do with a new one but for now, it works. I have a smarter, warmer wool one for when it gets really cold which was €60 from TK Maxx 3 years ago and looks as good as new, because it doesn't have a hood so I don't like it as much.
Shoes are (fake) fur lined, padded and made to look like hiking boots but they're not. They are four years old and not waterproof any more, support is gone in them but they are warm as long as I avoid puddles. TBH I hate shoe shopping because I'm fussy and shoes are crazily expensive. I had to talk myself into buying these because they were €50 and it seemed too much but they were actually reduced to €30 when I bought them.

I should dress a bit more professionally for my job, but I don't because I don't really know where to start. We came into some money a year or two ago and I was going to take a couple of hundred to get myself some better work clothes but actually it just wouldn't have gone very far at all, so I ended up dithering and then buying a load of €3 t-shirts from Primark and some pants because I was still wearing knickers I'd had as a teenager and the elastic had totally gone

I really desperately need to save up and get some boots or something but they're all about €60-70+ and it seems crazy to spend so much on a pair of shoes, not to mention being over the €50 monthly clothes budget. I think I just have to get into touch with how much things really cost though and stop expecting them to be ridiculously cheap.

It sounds really stupid but I have lost count of the number of winters I've gone through not having properly waterproof shoes. I know that realistically I should prioritise that but it just doesn't seem all that necessary when I have some shoes and shoes are so expensive, plus they seem to wear out so quickly.

OhTheRoses - my dads a dry cleaner, by the time he's fine with it somebody could have died in it and you wouldn't know

Right hang on, I didn't summarise very well I'll just round the euros.

Undershirt £7.50
Shirt €4 (£3.50)
Trousers £20
Jumper £0
Coat £20
Shoes €30 (£26)
Pants €4 (£3.50)
Socks €1 (£1)
Glasses £30 (after NHS voucher)
Rucksack €20 (£17)

Total £81.50. £130ish if you count the glasses and bag...

I cannot comprehend 10 year old knickers 😳
Even the DD's have new drawers every 12 months and nobody sees theirs ... Do you not have horrified husbands ?

I would probably spend that in a year (maybe a bit more) on myself. I have to buy clothes for my daughter but they are mostly bought with gift vouchers she gets for christmas and birthdays, apart from her school uniform which I buy from asda.
I don't have to buy clothes from work but if I had to buy biz-cas I'd be buying it from Sainsburys or Tesco. Just black office trousers and a few different tops.
All my clothes come from supermarkets anyway.
I did smile at the poster on the first page who suggested that British people could wear the same clothes all year round because it doesn't get hot enough in the summer to wear summer clothes. Temperatures do vary from below zero (in a cold winter) to around 30 degrees in a heatwave. I wouldn't wear the same clothes in such different temperatures.

DH's pants are (were) even worse than mine! MASSIVE holes exposing entire arse cheek, elastic nonexistant. Apparently they were "comfy" I finally persuaded him to part with them when I found a brand he liked.

I just never really paid that much attention to my pants. Plus, M&S stopped doing the elastic style that I liked, and then I moved country and didn't know where to buy them from any more.

Of course children need new ones every year, but adults don't grow (though my arse has definitely grown...)

My outfit today
( feeling cold)

A long t shirt from primark £3
A long Norwegian style sweater dress Charity shop £1
A long woolly cardigan charity £1
Velvet leggings 50p
A long puffa style coat £2
A scarf £4 Primark
Cast off boots from DD as she has outgrown them.

Total cost was £11.50, and the scarf ( which was for decoration really ) was the most expensive item.

All in tones of neutrals/grey.

I get the thing about the chicken. What I don't get is the sanctimonious attitude that spending money on clothes is bad. If you have the money and it gives you pleasure what's the problem.

My SILS don't buy clothes and laugh at people who do in a not very nice way. I don't get how or why it's"superior" not to spend money on looking nice and not to be able to enjoy feeling really good in something.

roses perhaps because a lot of the fashion industry is so hollow, The pursuit of labels and names, the transient nature of style, the fact that some of us feel cynical about the whole industry and are being taken for a ride by marketing men who are laughing all the way to the bank. These big fashion companies are interested in only one thing- profit. I have no interest in being a puppet while being shagged for my cash so I can wear someone's logo on my wellies.
I understand that clothes can give pleasure, but it's when price is mistaken for quality and value that things go astray.

Like the emperor's new clothes,

roses- another point, many people do use clothes and labels and logos in order to feel superior.

No where even close to that.

I don't enjoy buying new clothes really. I wear a uniform for work, like to wear casual stuff when not working and even then I mostly live in pjs inside the house. I have a few nice items if I go out.

I need to buy some new jeans tomorrow and I have a couple of Xmas nights out coming up so I might buy a new sparkly top but that will be it for a long time.

Now makeup, beauty products, shoes and boots is a different story.

OhTheRoses Thu 10-Nov-16 21:29:49
For those who shop in charity shops, how do you get over the fact that someone else's sweat has seeped into the clothes you buy.

i put second hand clothes on a hot wash before use never buy second hand under pants/bras though thats just nasty .Buy mine and my daughters clothes second hand its a great way to save money even her school uniform

I don't think it's bad. Have people said that on this thread?
Obviously people have different reasons for spending the amounts they do.

Same with the heating threads. It becomes a hair shirt bragfest. (Obviously 10 year old hair shirt from a chazza shop)
I grew up in a house with no central heating and hand me down clothes. So now I can afford to, I have my heating on constant and buy clothes whenever I like, because I can.

The chicken comment wasn't, IMO, aimed at people who can't afford to spend more or who choose not to, but at the unrealistic nature of what some people claim. When you see people saying that a medium Aldi chicken feeds their family of 5 generously for 4 days then it's not really realistic or believable. Similarly for this thread - sure, I could buy no clothes for a year and then post about how I have spent naff all but the reality is that's not sustainable in the long term. Some people manage to shop in charity shops although our charity shops are pretty expensive so even shopping in them exclusively you would have to spend an awful lot more than the £100 a year some posters have quoted just to keep yourself going and it also requires both luck and time - charity shop shopping works when you can pop in regularly IME.

I also grew up in a house which was cold and where everything came from the really nasty thrift shop (I mean no offence to charity shops in general but this place was vile) and I don't want to live like that now that I don't have to.

I think buying mostly charity shop clothes is sustainable- I have been doing it for most of my adult life and have a great collection of clothes. Six or 7 really good winter coats, dresses, knits, jackets. 95% of my wardrobe is second hand stuff.
Many charity shops are expensive but every city has small independent shops that are cheap, and jumble sales still exits, many Scout jumble sales sell garments for 20-50p each,

I grew up in poverty too, but it hasn't left me with a need to buy stuff.

Probably about £100 a year, but half of that goes on shoes. 7 and a half, wider fit so tend to buy M and S.

There's a big difference between saying "Buy stuff when I like, because I can" and "a need to buy stuff. Your response is sneering and unpleasant.

There are very few small indie charity shops in my city, and jumble sales are also pretty rare. They happen, but not that often. Nearly new events are more of a thing, but they tend to be much more expensive - I was at one recently advertised as a flea market and people were selling stuff for really high prices. There's a couple of charity shops which I often wander in to near work, and they're generally £5-£15 for a day dress, £10-£40 for a coat. So no, around here you could not sustainably dress from charity shops for £100 a year. My mother still wears almost exclusively charity shop stuff, and lives in a cheaper area and she definitely spends much more.

Hard to say straight off as I don't set aside money specifically. I do spend a bit but am careful not to go too mad and usually stick to high street.

September - £99 on a pair of leather boots
October - £45 pair of wool trousers, £70 lambswool jumper, £40 soft blazer, £18 silk scarf, £8 silk top (ebay)Total £176
November - £ 18 thermal vest and socks £12 pair of jeggings £45 pair of shoes Total £75
That's £350 over 3 months. Looking back at the rest of the year I've bought 3 t shirts, 1 top, 1 cardigan, 2 pairs of jeans, a couple of pairs of socks and 2 multi packs of knickers, a pair of trainers and a pair of ballet flats coming to about £250 or so. Oh and a new bra at £60 (no choice, big boobs) and a jacket for £45 so that's £355. Add to that a dress to wear over the holiday period at approx £75 (not yet bought) and probably another top at about £30 I'd say my total for this year would be about £810 though probably add on another £100 for ebay and charity finds. So just under £100/ month for me. Last year I spent about half that though and next year will probably be double as we've had a good year 😊

When my weight was stable, and went for interviews/ did presentations, was no where near £100 a month. Had three main suits plus different top/ accessories. Suit about 80 quid a piece, but classic.