1,5k disposable income a month is enough

[Myglorioushairdo]

AIBU to think that a disposable income of £1,500 a month is enough for a family of four? That is after all living costs, fixed monthly bills and food/household essentials.
DH and I were a bit unfortunate and made a major life change just before the pandemic, and this is what our household income has now been boiled down to.

DH is majorly stressed out and says its not enough, I say it's OK for now. We are able control all the other costs with careful planning and even save a bit! We don't live in a big city and our kids are still primary school age. What do you think?

Single parent here.
I don't even make that in a month, never mind after bills!
Your DH IBU.

@stripesgalore the OP has clearly stated their income reduced. I was meaning more that if you already had a mortgage then it would be impossible if your income reduced, sorry if I wasn't clear. I was also just commenting in response to the poster who said most households earn less than £1500. That simply isn't true.

MN is seriously getting nastier and nastier.

£2.5k joint per month is only just over average wage for one person, this is for 2 people.

There is competitive everything on MN, it's becoming tedious. Such a shame as it has been such a useful site over the years.

@WitchesNStuff

MN is seriously getting nastier and nastier.

£2.5k joint per month is only just over average wage for one person, this is for 2 people.

There is competitive everything on MN, it's becoming tedious. Such a shame as it has been such a useful site over the years.

That's AIBU, though, I reckon.

Other boards are extremely helpful.

That is true perhaps. Maybe the WWYD topic would be better for people genuinely wanting help to dilemmas etc. There have been some really spiteful posters on a few threads lately towards OPs, really unnecessarily, but I think they are all AIBU.

No the average income per person in the UK is around £29K

That is the median household income after tax, but before housing costs. (or at least it was for 2019).

It’s enough to do what you want with definitely

Are you saying that £1500 is what you have left after rent/mortgage, council tax, insurance, fuel bills and food?

I would work out a weekly budget to cover other bills like mobile phones, sky / Netflix , car tax/insurance / petrol. Maybe a clothing allowance and allowance for eating out / takeaway or maybe a cheap day out somewhere.

If you can cover this within £200-£250 per week (or £1,000 per month if you prefer monthly budget ) this gives you £500 each month to put away so you have money for holidays , Christmas or for replacing household items . Split it if you like £250 per month to save for nice things £250 for rainy day fund

I'll swap for my 67.25 per week income if he would like.

@Myglorioushairdo

@ BarbaraofSeville Yes, you get my point obviously. It's not that much when you take out all the 'non-essential' things that you can live without, but most people have (Birthday presents, bikes, toys, clothes etc..) I am pretty savvy though with buying all these things though and always buy clothes in the sales for the next season. Plus we don't care for expensive tech etc.. and usually get everything expensive second hand.

But ok..I've offended many people and apologize once more. It was not my intention. Wanted to show this to DH actually to calm his nerves about the situation. And to clarify, we have very very low expenses at the moment. Not huge salaries..

Not that much? It's an entire month's wages with zero bills to come out of it.

Eighteen grand a year to piss up the wall on whatever you feel like is tons. Your husband is being ridiculous.

right, he is having a panic and needs to put on his big boy pants and come up with a budget. I can understand he is having a panic but he really doesn't need to.

look at all the stuff you normally buy that are really not necessary and add those up and cut back on many of those. You will then have enough to build up more savings.

I think he has had a scare about not getting any income and is not thinking clearly. It will be ok. People have already posted that they live on that much.

FFS every body

Why does it always have to be a race to the bottom ?

£2500 per month take home between two people means they have very average earnings . They are not millionaires . Previously they earned more but has higher outgoings . They are not yet used to their new life and wanted some advice in budgeting what is a new income for them .

@Myglorioushairdo if you go on to the Money Matters board there is a sub section called credit crunch . A lot of advice on there about how to put together a budget and to reduce spending if you need to . The Martin Lewis Money Savings Expert website is also often recommended on there for advice.

@shinynewapple2020

FFS every body

Why does it always have to be a race to the bottom ?

£2500 per month take home between two people means they have very average earnings . They are not millionaires . Previously they earned more but has higher outgoings . They are not yet used to their new life and wanted some advice in budgeting what is a new income for them .

@Myglorioushairdo if you go on to the Money Matters board there is a sub section called credit crunch . A lot of advice on there about how to put together a budget and to reduce spending if you need to . The Martin Lewis Money Savings Expert website is also often recommended on there for advice.

What extra help do they need?

Pay your bills (£1000, apparently) and then do what you want with the leftovers (£1500).

Most people should be able to grasp 'if you've got £1500 to spend, don't spend £1550', without any handholding. Even the OP gets that, it's just her husband who is fussing - and if he doesn't like it, he'll have to get himself a second part time job - or a full time one on the sort of money that a load of people who live in London actually get paid.

@shinynewapple2020
They are mortgage free, pay bills and have £1500 left, more than ok I’d say 🙄

Well that seems absolutely huge to me. It's more than my total income monthly. I mean, ok, there's only one of me, but still. I manage on £200 ish disposable income once my bills are paid and I feel comfortable.

@Myglorioushairdo Okay so you are young enough to have kids at primary school AND you have no mortgage. So you are incredibly lucky and must either live somewhere cheap, or have had large incomes before.

We paid off a mortgage at 60. I have never owned a new car.

I appreciate housing costs vary hugely in the UK but most people I know in this area have to find at least £400K for a small 3 bed house in the worst end of town, and a 1 bed flats start at £200K.

So, either you both had big incomes or housing is cheap where you are, or you had a leg up from family.

Given you have no mortgage or rent, you are not poor at all.

OP, you don't need to apologise! Really! I do get your concerns, it's though when you have less money than you used to.

Petrol and clothes are essentials, especially children clothes.

If you do a proper spreadsheet for a few months you can see EXACTLY where your money goes and you can reduce accordingly if there are useless outgoings.

It was also scary to see our savings go down so quickly when left without income and seriously having to consider taking out a loan to live on before we landed these part-time jobs we now have.

On the one hand it's good to be mortgage free, but on the other it's not good to have no savings.

Maybe with hindsight you could have saved more and paid less off the mortgage, especially if interest rates were low. We have always saved (and done without all kinds ) in order to always have a nest egg that would cover 6 months of no work, at least.

If you moved out of London somewhere cheaper, I guess you made a bob or two on your London home as prices shot up there, and had a lot of equity to buy your new home?

This post (or something like it) comes up with fair regularity it seems...

Anyway "disposable" means you have all the essentials covered so of course it's "enough" if you have hobbies or habits that exceed £1500 a month well that should be easy enough to cut back on? Not like it's food or electricity you need to go without is it?

I think that is the thing that stresses DH the most, that we earn less than before, but we also have much much lower costs now.

So everything is in proportion and much the same as before?

Does your DH often worry about non-issues?

I think DH struggles with seeing the much smaller numbers coming in every month, when in reality we are absolutely fine as you all point out..

Good heavens!

I don't consider numbers my forte but even I could work this one out!

I don't think us telling you what we think is going to reassure your DH if simple facts and figures won't do it?

That's about our income, not what's left.
But as similar to you we have very low outgoings so it doesn't make any difference.
We don't have holidays or eat out/ takeaways are rare, but that's because they aren't our type of things.
So what you have in luxury, nothing wrong with that, but you need to be able to see it.

It was also scary to see our savings go down so quickly when left without income and seriously having to consider taking out a loan to live on before we landed these part-time jobs we now have.

I would build your savings up again while you have this disposable income. None of us knows what the future holds, unfortunately.

I don't think its offensive op! I have a lot more disposable income than that and always looking at improving my income as kids become more expensive and i like to save money. So i understand your dh wanting to improve your situation. However, i dont think you are in dire straits and can manage perfectly fine.

MN is confusing. On one side it's constantly accused of being middle class, on the other there are threads (not just this one) with hundreds of people claiming that 1500 quid is a fortune to them.

Next time post about kicking kittens. You will get less outrage than when you post and it indicates you have more money than others.