To ask what peoples income and outgoings are and amount left over each month?

[Datingdilemashmm]

Ok so I'm a single parent and my total income each month is £2300 with my biggest outgoings at £500 mortgage and £300 a month on petrol and parking for work. I pay £100 off credit cards (interest free). I also treat myself to gym membership of 60 a month. I have the other usual outgoings of £60 gas and electric, council tax £110 and £60 a month breakfast club for my son. £40 mobile. No car loans. £80 on my sons activities and clubs! How much do you budget for food?

Each month Im in the minus and I need to cut my outgoings (im terrible with amazon I admit).. I cant see anywhere online which gives examples of "good practice" monthly amounts.. i know it varies!

What do you have left over each month aftwr all necissities including food, petrol, kids clubs and phone etc paid?

[Boobiewoobie]

Total Income approx £1200 per month
Family of 4, kids not in school. Two cars. Renting. No debt. Both working but not both full time due to no childcare. We have passes to local places, national trust etc. My phone is £12 pm, DH's is about £22 (used for work). We pay for Netflix, dog insurance, regular charity donation, the odd bottle of wine as well as the usually bills.
Amount left over each month - nothing
Living hand to mouth? Yep
Happy? Mostly
Weekly food shop? Under £50
Holidays this year? 4 nights camping in the uk
Things will improve with recent business start up but not for a few years as have to pay back family for start up costs.
Lazy? No
Receive benefits? Tax credits and child benefit. Totally entitled to them and would be in the food bank without them. I paid tax for years before having the kids and my husband pays now, no guilt.

Everyone's situation is different

[Nightwatch999]

Wow OP are you for real? You are earning a considerable amount and basically sounds like you are gloating.

How do you think low earners and those on benefits manage compared to you?

[PurpleRobe]

Oh and to answer the question... I don't actually know my incoming and outgoings

but I do have money left over every month. after 500pm savings and 250 on over-paying the mortgage

[PurpleRobe]

Depends where you live but 60 is a lot for gym. Quite a few near me are 14pm (the premium ones are 80)

Phone bill could be lower too. I pay 22.

You could switch both of those when your cotract is up

Do you have home broadband as I guess that's expensive or are you already saving money by not having home bb?

[Firstbornunicorn]

This is what I keep saying when I watch rich house/poor house!!! I think we need to protest that show tbh.

[ionising]

Agree with bridge. You you have more disposable income than most.

Read some of the debt free diaries on MSE for ideas about food budgets. Keep a spending diary yourself for a few months.

As seen on this thread some people are anal about not discussing their income and the pearl clutchers find it distasteful.

[bridgetreilly]

If you take away the outgoings you listed from your income, you still have nearly £1000 disposable income. Say £100 week on food/household etc. That leaves PLENTY. You don't need to cancel the gym, you need to get control of your other spending.

[missymayhemsmum]

It's not just the monthly bills plus food, though is it. It's the car service and mot, birthdays, christmas, clothes shop, house project, and replacing things when they break. Every month there's something that isn't in the 'monthly budget'

[Imustbemad00]

Oh yeah £100 pm to a loan too.

[Imustbemad00]

I really struggle. I own one pair of shoes. 2 pairs of jeans and a few tops. I generally don’t replace those items unless they rip or break. Kids have more clothes obviously but not as much as they used to have and that bothers me.
I have £1700pm

£620 rent
70 council tax
75 car insurance
15 car tax
35 Sky
10 phone
12 tv license
45 electric
40+ gas
36 breakfast club
60 after school activities
0 to Debts that I don’t pay 😩
35 petrol sometimes more
20 parking

Probably forgotten some. Food obviously. Paying off a holiday for next year. I seem to have nothing left each month. No money for myself ever. It’s depressing.

[MicroManaged]

I really find these threads so distasteful. So yes, I think YABU op.

[Sidalee7]

800 for the month I mean!

[Sidalee7]

Also a single parent.
income is around 3.3k.
Mortagage, bills, travel, come to around 2k.
I save at least 500, and I budget weekly spending (eating out/groceries/coffees) at around 800.

[Dungeondragon15]

Our council tax is £190 and we don't live in a big house either. Surprised how little some people pay on this thread.

[SleepyMcEdie]

@Satsumaeater

My council tax is £232 a month and I don’t live in a huge house!

[Satsumaeater]

Our council tax is just over £200 a month, we live in a band E house. Seems like I am paying more than anyone else on this thread.

We have no mortgage but train fares are around £700 a month for the two of us to get to work. Now I've written that down I am really shocked!

£40 for a mobile seems like a lot. Maybe look at Giffgaff. I am on 02 and pay £13 but for the same sort of level of texts/data etc I pay £7.50 a month for my son's phone. I would move my own but am too lazy to fiddle about transferring my number.

[AlphaBravo]

@Roomba I just sat on the kitchen floor and cried for 5 minutes before pulling myself together, because our toddler had got in the fridge and emptied the last of his milk all over the floor, and the food I'd saved for tomorrow's tea from cooking a bigger dinner.

Makes you realise why some women go on the game tbh 😕 I'm just so 'done' with being skint and terrified of getting the 6 month water bill or that my card will get declined for milk because the bank have taken charges for something. Urgh.

[SleepyMcEdie]

Income £4500 after tax
£1000 mortgage
£250 council tax
£100 on water & Electric
£400 on car finance (2 cars)

Can’t be bothered to list all the others but we don’t have Sky or gym memberships. We put £500 in our savings account and then pretty much break even after that.

[GreenMeerkat]

Income is £2600.

Bills (including mortgage and childcare) = £1400

Food and petrol = (approx.) £500

Savings = £400

Disposable = £300

[Sithis]

Heres what I do. (To begin with, £60 a month for gym is a ridiculous amount. Find a cheaper gym)
Add all your Direct debits up. Set up all your Direct Debits to go out the day after pay day.
Work out how much you have left. Divide by four. That is what you have left.
Do not pay for anything using a debit card. A bit here and a bit there doesnt seem like much, but I totalled up all my debit card transactions a while back and it was £206 in a month. On shit I couldnt even remember.
Withdraw a set monthly personal spend amount and divide by 4. (Save the rest) Put that cash somewhere safe and take out your weekly amount every sunday. Nows the hard part. Limit yourself to that per week. No card.
You will soon begin to value your money when you are handing over notes. You will realise that stuff is more expensive than you realised when you are not just using a piece of plastic to pay.
I am on 1300 a month with out goings similar to yours (minus gym) and I can still save £150-200 per month, by limiting myself to a £40 per week personal spend.

[UmmMeToo]

Income is £3800 we are left with about £800 after all bills, food and petrol. Our most expensive outgoings are £1000 mortgage, £750 nursery bill, £175 council tax, £140 gas, elec, water, £150 car payment and food is about £ 350-£400 for family of 4. Lots of other bills, but those are the main ones. The only saving we could make is £55, that's if I gave up my gym membership and now tv subscription. Everything else is considered a necessity. It's expensive living here in South East, petrol and food especially has gone up a lot in last 6 months.

[Dungeondragon15]

This thread is interesting and has made me realise we have to pay a lot more council tax than many (nearly £190) but I suppose that there isn't much I can do apart from move house. We also spend a lot more on gas/electricity (£110 per month). How does everyone else keep it so low?

OP, I think you could spend less on a mobile. £40 seems like a huge amount to me. Is that because you are paying the cost of the phone off. We have cheap phones and then only spend £7.50 per month on calls etc. I can see why you like the gym but could you get a cheaper membership at a leisure centre.

[Alarae]

Between us we take home 3.6k a month.

2.2k goes to our joint account to cover all bills, mortgage, utilities etc. This also includes £500 pm to FIL as he lent us a house deposit.

Leftover is used to pay for food, clothing, fuel, cars, misc etc.

On a normal month I can theoretically save around £750pm. DH doesn't tend to save as he buys things for the house, such as grass seed, lights etc.

It's only us at the moment so we are okay for now. Not looking forward to the 1k childcare bill though... It's going to near cripple us and we are not on bad incomes at all.

[CookieDoughKid]

Not putting exact income in but it's six figures including rental and investment income. After essential outgoings we have several thousand a month left over which we reinvest as cash savings rates are not great. We do pay more tax than some people earn in a year and also charity donations monthly. Life is comfortable but we worked hard from nothing. No inheritance as both parents have no assets.

[Lyricallie]

Just me and FH. Income about £4K between the 2 of us.

Rent, car, petrol, house bills and food we put £800 each into our joint account - £1600
Each pay about £10 for Spotify each and 7.99 for Netflix
19.99 for contact lenses
£21 for my phone and £25 for FH phone
We’re also saving for our wedding. We’re trying to save 1k a month between us and seem to be.

We also live in the middle of nowhere so there’s not lots of restaurants or activities we can do.