Aibu to ask how much you need to live on a month?

[Firsttimer16]

Moving house, trying to do budgets with mortgages and work out how high we can go. We have 2 kids (3 and 1) in nursery 4 days a week. After bills and supermarket shop - what would you count as a comfortable amount per month to live on?
Taking into account any social outing, clothes, presents, savings for holiday, extra curricular activities for kids, gyms etc?

While we are not frivolous with money at all, I don’t want to feel we can never have lunch out and have to be Saying no to extra things for kids. We’re in the Surrey if that makes a difference - so not a super cheap area (hence having to increase our mortgage quite a lot to get more space)

I'm in Surrey and I think YABU.

"Bills" - what does this constitute? You might be at a stage in your life where you've got a low mortgage, fantastic if so. Or you might have stretched yourself to buy a family home, and thereby are looking at four figures a month.

From your post it looks like the latter, in which case you're going to need to accept you're not going to have much disposable at all.

I just think YABU because threads like these always descend into wallet waving nonsense.

I think you need to sit down and figure out how much money each month will be required for your family to have the lifestyle you'd like to have.
Some people will give up a lot in order to have a nicer house in a nicer area while others prefer the lifestyle. There's nothing wrong with either you just need to figure what's right for you.

You need to do a proper breakdown of what you spend now and work out how much you have spare and what you can cut back on.

I have all our exact figures because we use a budgeting programme called You Need a Budget, but I suggest they will be useless to you as everyone has different priorities. We don’t eat out very often but like to go away a few times a year, for instance.

Suggest as above you start tracking and planning! For reference we spend about 30% of our pay on necessities (mortgage, car, council tax, elec, food etc), save 42% of our pay (we want to retire early) and spend the rest on fun stuff like hols and spending money. We live in an expensive area but in a tiny house and only run one family car.

We're in Surrey and live on about £1500 a month between us after bills, savings etc.

After mortgage, utilities, work travel, food, phone, insurances and a couple of other things it’s a how long is a piece of string question. Everyone has an idea of how they would like to live and we all have different priorities.

Got to money saving expert and look at the budgeting section. Then see what you have left.

The best thing to do is to track every single penny you spend for a couple of months to see what you’re currently spending on these things. Then you can look to see what you can reasonably cut back on.
No point plucking an arbitrary budget from the air! Some people will spend £1000’s on these things, some barely anything.

What do you spend on:
mortgage
council tax
home insurance
gas
electricity
water
tv license
tv/broadband/phone subscriptions
mobile phone contracts
car insurance
car tax
petrol
any other necessary transport costs (season tickers for work, bus tickets for school, etc)
servicing debt
food
cleaning products/ toiletries/ other non food groceries
clothing (prioritising school uniforms and clothing needed for work)
prescriptions/ health aids
car running costs such as MOT/ repairs?

Approx £1000 a month.

I have £750 available as discretionary money each month - for me and the children (just makes sense for me to have the kid's budget as I buy most stuff for them) and dh has £500 available. We rarely use it all though, and do allocate money to savings as a necessity above this as well.

Thanks everyone. @PooWillyBumBum 42% is amazing saving.

I know it’s a bit of a pointless question! We’re moving from SW London in a town area our to somewhere more rural so tbh I have no real idea about the costs of life out there (obviously we’ve estimated bills etc) but for things like social things, I don’t know what we will end up doing! We go out a fair amount here with the kids as we have a tiny flat with no garden. So in a house with garden I’m assuming we’ll stay in a lot more as there’s space to play and have friends over. It’s looking like we’ll have about £1000 between the 4 of us but that doesn’t really allow for savings which may have to take a hit the next few years. Which seems like a lot but if I’ve underestimated bills at all or any unforeseen expenses then it goes quickly! And certainly doesn’t leave much room for holidays, which we will also have to suck up for a few years I think.

After all mortgage and utilities and phone bills we have £1200 a month to cover food, petrol and anything else - trips, clothes, birthday presents etc. 2 adults, 4 and 6 year old.

With £1000 a month left after bills, you can save and put away for a holiday.

I don't get your dilemma as if you budget well, it sounds like you can still do alot. Put £100 to savings and holiday fund each. Then £800 disposable is more than doable.

Make sure you budget every thing so yearly bills are all accounted for. Plus bits into pots for repairs, appliances, emergencies, etc.

All these pots should be accruing so that totally unexpected costs are kept to a minimum.

Not many extra costs are totally unexpected.

If you are moving to a rural area is the new house on mains gas? If not, you need to budget a lot more for fuel as buying in oil or gas to fill a tank is much more expensive!
Also owning a house compared to a flat is more expensive because you are responsible for all the repairs. You ideally need to save money every month for repairs as something always comes up!

I've just had to do this as in the process of splitting up with my husband. I have literally accounted for everything and broken it down into monthly chunks. For example I have to pay a maintenance fee on the house twice a year, it totals £334.62, so I've broken that down into 12 months at £27.88 - this way I won't get any nasty surprises and the months where the bills are higher the money is already there.

After paying for everything including food I should be left with around £600 - this will need to pay for holidays and all day trips, lunches out, socialising etc and savings will need to come out of this pot. These will fluctuate each month depending on what's on. I have budgeted for Birthdays and Christmas and even hair cuts and window cleaning!