Is our monthly budget unrealistic?

[Ginghamricecakes]

Bit of a boring post, sorry!

About to buy our first home, two adults, we live in the north, combined income of 3k per month.
We have budgeted:

£700 mortgage
£600 bills (council tax, house insurance, gas, elec, internet)
£300 direct debits (gym, pet insurance, phones, Netflix...)
£400 travel (petrol, car insurance, tax)
£250 food

Left over cash to spend/save: £750 p/m

Is this reasonable? Are we over/under estimating or forgetting anything?

Just to explain why “available” is 0 for most. This is an app called YNAB so when something is paid it’s deducted and comes out of the category. As we are near the end of the month categories are very low. Holidays and trips are low as we’ve just come back from our recent one last week and have prepaid accommodation for Eurocamp in France next year, so we will continue saving for the ferry, food and activities!

Retirement and investments is important to us as we’d like to retire early. That’s fairly high but not as high as I’d like as we are trying to bolster our emergency fund to get to 6 months bare bones expenses. Can you tell I’m a budget nerd!?

Home and contents is £12 a month but I start saving every time I switch/renew so I can buy the year in advance which often gets a discount. Also we save £50 per month for Xmas plus any Quidco income. I’ve cut the bottom few categories out as they have my DDs name in :)

That looks like a very generous budget and plenty of leeway.

£250 per month on food for two adults seems fine. Your estimated bills seem high.

@Ginghamricecakes we actually use our original joint bank account and then we opened another one with Starling, which allows you to set up 'spaces' (virtual envelopes) to allocate money to. My income is more varied than my OH's so while we both get paid into account 1, mine gets transferred to account 2, amounts allocated to various spaces, then what's left is for spending. It works really well and we've actually saved more money this way than we used to when we had much lower outgoings. I think it's the visibility over the money perhaps?

£400 for cars is £5k per annum. A smaller car would reduce that.

Would you need to have a budget for things needing repairs and maintenance in the house?

Sounds fine and you can always spend less on food. Question is if you have any plans to have kids and if this will stretch to cover childcare?

Your bills are really high! We probably pay only just over £300 pm on council tax, gas/electric, water and life/home insurance, Internet and Sky. We have a two bed in the south but I imagine if the other bedrooms aren’t being used it wouldn’t be hugely different? Adding on gym memberships and phones it’s another £120 so I’d say £900 for all that lot is sky high.

We manage £250 a month on food though OP - easily! Sometimes our shop is only about £30 a week but we don’t eat very much meat.

Oh i see you’re pregnant

if pregnant the biggest bill will be loss of a full time salary or each of you having to pay 50% of childcare costs. In the first year with baby no.1 we spent 50% of each of our full time salaries on childcare alone.

As for how do people manage with 2 in nursery it is just very expensive but worth it to preserve 2 full time careers particularly for people in jobs that are above minimum wage even if you just tred water financially until they go to full time school the career is preserved which is a massive investment for the future for some.

If you have 3 in 4 years as we did then paying one person to look after all 3 worked out cheaper than nurseries and means when the oldest starts school and in school holidays the person looking after the baby can also do the older children too.

For us the constant costs which were largest were always mortgage and childcare for decades - as we had 5 children and both worked full time - oldest and youngest 13 years apart. howeve rit changes over the years - currently I fund two at university which I do not have to do but after 30 years have no mortgage so I might as well ensure they have no student debt plus save the state the cost of 2 student loans they may not pay back. Next year I may well be funding their post grad 2 years too.

Ok, so not up North but these are ours, these are what we will be spending in a month or so once we move to our new house (large 3 bed cottage).
£638 Mortgage
£165 Council tax (over 10 months so the other 2 months, that £165 gets transferred to savings)
£110 Insurances - House, Life & Pet insurances
£154 Electricity, Water & Oil (no gas supply)
£65 Covers car insurances, road tax and MOT for 2 cars
£210 Savings
£90 Pet food
£68 Landline/Broadband, Amazon Prime, Netflix & Audibly
£47 Mobile contracts - Mine, DH's and DD1's
£200-£250 Diesel

That leaves about £700 for food, school trips, treats etc. I put a little extra in savings most months too.
We probably spend a good £400 on food - (2 adults and 3 kids).
I spend a fair amount on DIY stuff too.
We're real homebodies so don't really spend on going out, not big on buying clothes, shoes, holidays etc.

I'm really surprised at the number of people saying £250 a month is not a lot for 2 adults. We spend £100 a week - a little over £400 a month for the 4 of us and my kids eat as much as adults (they are 10 and 12 and tall for their age). This covers all food (we rarely get take aways and the kids only have school dinners once a week as they're expensive), toiletries and household cleaning products. I think those who think £250 is not enough for just 2 adults must be pretty wealthy. I'd expect you to be able to manage on £200 but the extra £50 will mean you have more choice and can get more treat food which is always nice.

Agree your bills are too high. We spend around £425 a month and our council tax is £220.

Blimey - if you're pregnant, you'll need a WHOLE NEW budget going forward..............

Sorry I think I’ve derailed with my budget! I am pregnant, not OP, and we can live quite easily on DH’s salary.

I am definitely not pregnant!! It was a PP who mentioned they were pregnant .

£400 is a lot on running the cars, but my partner commutes 50miles a day, so it's fuel costs mainly, and being young drivers in a city our insurance premiums are shocking. We drive cars in low insurance groups though, which helps.

We are up North too. Our gas/elec/water/council tax comes to around £450 pcm. Two cars + fuel is £520 (but i commute a long way for work). Various insurances (life, house, pet etc) another £120. TV/broadband/phones are £225.

So that’s £1315 Before food, mortgage, fun extras.

Our council tax is £360 pcm!!!

@73Sunglasslover

I think it depends where you live re. food cost (I'm based in London).

I don't think supermarkets vary that much across the country. Plus London has lots of super cheap independent greengrocers.

It's probably easier to shop cheaply in London than rural areas where the only choice is a Co-op and Tesco.

@posterSotiredbutcannotsleep

Is food really more expensive in London? I thought supermarket prices were pretty much the same everywhere? I will stand corrected if not though. I've never done a shop any further in than Purley (not really London!)

(Extended) semi in NW

Council tax £192
Water £49
Gas & Electricity £100
House insurance £22
Internet £27
TV licence @£15

Thats the basics - about £450 but OP a big one you've not accounted for is life insurance (which you should have to protect yourself / your parter in the event one of you dies). We have life insurance and critical illness which for various reasons is expensive.

On top of this we have car insurance, car expenses (tax / servicing etc which save monthly), Netflix, Amazon Prime, a few appliance warranties, packaged bank account (get mobile + travel insurance + breakdown cover) etc so our bills are about £800 (on top of mortgage + food + petrol + car loan payments)

My council tax is £300 a month.

We live in a three bed semi commuter area, our mortgage is £860 a month on its own. Our bills, including food, utilities, gym, Netflix, Virgin, Spotify, mobiles, pets, pensions, insurances, day to day travel etc plus running two cars (owned no finance) are around £2400-£2500 and we shop in Tesco, M&S and Waitrose and that includes nappies and general bits for DS (but not nursery fees that's extra, although it does include swimming lessons and music group). We could trim that fairly easily but save well each month so don't have to at the moment. Your budget sounds really doable. I would save a set amount each month for contingencies/repairs etc

@Xenia thats not for a 3 bed semi though I'm guessing?

Our bills are probably close to £500 because we have v expensive house insurance, so I don't think £600 seems TOO crazy.

We have £600 left after household bills and main food shop, but our direct debits come out of that (about £50 a month for phones and Netflix), and it's plenty for us. We do live a fairly low key lifestyle though.

I would save £200 a month. Make it another direct debit. Otherwise you'll maybe just spend it. You can always save more if you have money left over.