Where do you spend your money?

[Margyseries]

I always wonder what people spend their money on especially in relation to your salary.

I never buy clothes unless necessary in which case I spend only at ASOS sales or Primark. I am very tight. I try to always take in a packed lunch (I work in London so this is hard!), try not to eat out at restaurants unless it's a birthday, I don't have children just one dog so spend on insurance. Every other penny I try to put towards travelling as this is my favourite thing. I don't have a car but I am about to change this as it's getting a bit annoying.

So where do you spend yours and what would you not go without spending on?

Clothes and shoes for DD4 although will cut this right down once she starts school in September
Pocket money DD14
Fuel for car (use loads)
Days out and holidays
I buy a nice candle once a month to burn as I find it so relaxing in the evenings

We are fortunate enough to collectively have enough income that we can spend and save. So we spend on meals out, experiences - football season tickets, gig tickets, car races. We also have a horse and a dog plus DS4. And holidays, the majority in our motorhome. We save for big things but also reason that you could die tomorrow (we’ve both lost parents way before their time) so we’re determined to live our life to the full now

Botox, luxury makeup and clothes

The house and social life.

We bought an old listed building five years back and have been doing it up. There is always another job needing doing. We love it though. But we spend a lot of time and money on it.

We have an active social life, friends over, gigs, weekends abroad, going for dinner, that kind of thing, we do it properly and again we spend a lot of time and money on our social lives.

Beauty treatments such as eyebrows, lashes, Botox once every 6 months.

Gym membership.
Tesco
My 2 kids but they are young so don’t ask for much except sweets yet.
Meals out.
Clothes

We save a lot where possible (over pay mortgage etc). Childcare is a nasty chunk. But I am bad for:
Buying lunches when not wfh
Spending too much on DS (New clothes, more toys than necessary really, stuff for the garden, billions of books).
Buying naice clothes (i like mint velvet ) altho I don't buy often
Before kids we were terrible for spending on posh meals out, practically any sport requiring expensive kit (skiing, diving, golf etc) & drinking too much including quite nice wine etc

Kids
Holidays
Upkeep of cars
Days out
Beauty treatments for me
Food shopping
Some meals out
Costa

Never totally thought about it

£75k a year is £9250 x 2 student fees, about £7000 x 2 rent for university children and £150 a week x 2 student children.
That's the biggest one now after 30 years the mortgage is repaid (at one point hte interest only mortgage was £90k a year and school fees for 5 were pretty steep as was full time childcare with 3 children under 5).

Holidays for the family are a fair bit - I am taking 9 of us away in the summer at my expensive and some of us may go skiing this next winter. I just paid for the twins to go on a university ski trip last week.

I pay a huge amount of income tax/NI - about half of everything I earn i.e. I work half the year as do many other of course for the state as it were. In fact of my gross income nothing is as high a cost as tax and then I have to recover and then pay to the state loads of VAT too.

I have 2 cars. I bought one out right last year (no lease or loan).
I just spent £2k on a central heating repair.

I know exactly what I spend and even when I was 17 kept records of it.

Personal training, gym membership, gym clothes/trainers
Eating out and/or good quality food from my local independents
Jewellery, preferably handmade by niche designer-makers
Coats...I am addicted to coats for some reason
Petrol for my car (mainly because my voluntary work is a 100 mile round trip from where I live)
Travel meaning either flights and/or AirBNB (holidays/visiting friends)....I try to get away once a month for a long weekend or I start going stir-crazy.

What I will never spend on:
I HATE packed lunches. Haven't had one for well over a decade (and that's only because I was on a course in the middle of nowhere so had to take packed lunches). I would rather not eat than have a packed lunch. Bleurgh.

Independent school for ds, saving for University, and yarn (wool). I buy lots and lots of yarn!

I'm going to pretend to be remotely like xenia - I also have kept a detailed spreadsheet of spending, since I was about 22 & started earning full time. I've never spent £90k on a mortgage in a year tho lol.... one day eh.

Mortgage
Bills
Food
Travel expenses
Clothing
Entertainment
Holidays
Savings
House stuff - something always seems to need fixing or replacing

Holidays and fancy food

IVF 😢

Horses. They pretty much it eat it straight out of my bank account...

Going out and having fun, alcohol, food, days out.

I'm a single parent, but lucky to have an ok (ish) income. I have no money left over each month, but live a relatively comfortable lifestyle. Outgoings in order of highest to lowest are:

Mortgage
Childcare
Credit card (for holidays)
Personal loan (for car)
Council tax
Gas/electric
Food
Phone/tv/broadband/mobile phone
Hairdressers/beauty treatments
Insurance (life, car, house)
Clothes (alternate months between me & DD)
Days out/activities
My social life when child free
Fuel
Water rates
Ad-hoc purchases such as flowers for the garden or birthday presents for DDs Friends parties.

@twinkledag

I hope your extortionate outgoings now will be priceless in future

I spend it on my hair at salons, make up that I fancy trying out NYX, Collection 2000 and the odd splurge of Dior, Charlotte Tilbury, Lancome - i like to try out new products, perfume, the odd coffee/cake out with friends. Fritter away about 150 - 200 a month. I work FT with no family within a 200 mile radius or other support apart from school wrap around care.

I am a huge spender but thinking of curtailing this to start horse riding lessons.

I think its a combination of enjoying what I buy and also boredom.

teenagers
Sainsburys(comes under the teenage banner really)
horse
garden stuff

Food shopping
Mortgages x 2
Utilities (live in a stupidly expensive EU country)

Thank you @namechangeduser 😊

On a brighter note our money is spent on -

• Four year old DS's clothes - I've swapped buying my clothes for his 😂

• Eating out once a month - usually Nando's or somewhere local, around £40

• Cinema once a month

• Coffee from a coffee shop once a week

• Food shopping

• Takeaway about once every couple of weeks when it's been on of those weeks!!

• Days out with DS

Just life really!

I'm so intrigued as to why it's hard to take a packed lunch into London - genuinely curious as to that statement!

In order of value

Mortgage (but I choose to massively overpay)
Food & all other bills
Car repayments/fuel
Clubs/wrap around care/piano for DD
Holidays/days out/entertainment
Hair & clothes

Teen boys
Lovely new car
Clothes and shoes
Food
Holidays
Nails (new thing, lovely treat but not cheap)

I can't stand making packed lunches, I know it's money down the drain but buying a sandwich is so much nicer.

I have a secret PayPal account just for me to buy things off eBay. I fucking love eBay.