Savings and spends

[Therealjudgejudy]

AIBU to be nosey and ask what you save each month and what you allow for personal spends...That's after all your bills are paid.

Trying to get my saving self into gear and love hearing what others do

Personal spends £200 pm each - this is for clothes, coffees, lunch out, meals out, cinema etc.

Save personally £100 and in to the joint £160. Dh saves the same in to the joint and more in to personal.

I put 300 per month away, no idea how much dp puts away, after bills I have 600 personal spends. No kids though

£150 free spending a week between all of us on stuff like days out etc. Save about £500-1000 a month.

I don’t keep a record but I never spend more than I earn . I have recently set up a direct debit for £250 every month into a savings account . I used to just save in my current account and then transfer in to an isa every year .
I have no idea how much I spend month to month on non necessities. As little as possible whilst still having a good quality of life ?

After all bills I save £200 a month in my personal savings, we save around 800 a month in a joint one and I have around £100 a week spare for treats and days out with kids etc

We don't have a set amount for personal spends. We just buy whatever we want.

I save 16% of my salary each month into a "pension" fund - it's not funds I dip into/spend. I don't actually save anything for the short term :/ that tends to be a credit card if needed.... I do have about £300 hidden at the moment, that came from little windfalls like HMRC, topcashback, but that's it.

Fixed bills/commitments account for 51% of my salary (mortgage, grocery money, phone bill, car payment)

I'm usually left with circa 700 for "spends", but I find myself struggling every month :/ this has to pay for petrol (200-250), holidays, car maintenance/insurance etc, birthday/Xmas presents. This month I'm expecting to have to use a credit card. I've turned down all but one social invites - World Cup BBQ :)

We put £1500 into savings each month and don't touch it, so as long as that money is saved, and all bills are paid, we spend whatever is left. There's no set amount - some months I might spend a small fortune on shoes, the next month I might only buy a £1 nail polish. Same with my husband (apart from the nail polish, I think )

how long is a piece of string?

People have different income and manage their finance differently. For some a holiday will be a "bill", for others a luxury.

We don't have a set amount that we save.
We just save whatever is left over at the end of the month.

Sorry I think YABU everyone has different priorities and situations save what you can afford......

It’s interesting to hear what others do. Our mortgage is about to go up 1200 a month and I’m trying to cut back so we can still save a bit.

At the moment I budget each of us (me, DH and DS who is 3) £150 each in frivoulous money. So that’s days out and luxuries and things. I also budget 150 a month clothes and 100 hair/ toiletries and things. Also 150 eating out. I think all that could be cut back really.

I pay us first (and by that I mean our family savings account) - DH and I are both paid into our joint account and I have sub-accounts for individual spending and long term savings.

So I pay all the bills first by online transfer, then I transfer a set amount into our savings account and then divide what remains between DH and my spending account.

I won't put amounts because they're large sums and I'm lucky we can afford to save as much as we do, but we also live in an eye wateringly expensive part of the world (so it's all relative) so I always want to build our savings cushion.

Spends depends on how much I decide to spend, but probably about £50 a month. DH is probably about £50 if that. If we decide to go out for an expensive dinner then we may go over that, but some months it is even less and that would cover all non-bills spending.

Everything else goes into savings - about £300 for annual spends (to cover car repairs, MOT, presents etc) and the rest into general savings.

I've found it really useful to select a default amount you want left in both accounts by the end of the month - for example ours is 500.

We then create a list of every spend with a running total. This helps that you can see where you are wasting money but also you can see how much you are due to have left.

DH and I each put £400 aside in savings and are left with £400 each for fun after mortgage / bills etc paid.