Is £1800 enough to live on?

[AlpacaMyHandbag]

I've recently been offered a new job and I'm deliberating whether to take it or not. It's part time and the take home salary will be just shy of £1,800 a month.

My bills total £1,300 or so which includes mortgage, utilities and all food. So with the remainder I'd have to buy petrol and any other bits and pieces as needed. One child left at home.

Does it sound doable?

Are you really naive or just trying to annoy people with this post?

How can you have such a well paid part time job and not enough common sense to work out your finances?

Of course £500 a month is plenty for petrol and 'bits and bobs' seeing as everything else anyone mentioned is coming out of some other pot. Unless you need to commute from Scotland to Wales or something.

@MoiraNotRuby so sorry - didn't realise you had to be totally skint to post? Are you that naive that you can't comprehend someone having a different set up to yourself?

No-one can say whether or not its enough for you to live on as you've only given limited information, but unless it's significantly less than your freelance work and you're used to spending more than that it sounds like you'll benefit from the certainty of a guaranteed income every month, which can make it worth it.

£1800 for part time work sounds like it's a very decent salary on a FTE basis, plus there will be some pension contributions from the employer that you're not currently getting.

ALso it sounds like you'll still be able to do bits of freelance work to top up your income if something you want to do becomes available.

Actually I would find that only just doable given I live in an expensive part of the country, my house and car need repairs, my petrol costs, and one of my kids has special needs which I get no financial help for so I have to pay for some increased costs myself. So it depends on circumstances. Does the 15 year old have any expensive school trips, extracurricular activities? Do you have a Christmas fund?

I'd say no. I'm not in a hugely expensive area but that won't leave you any safety net or future planning for finances. It'll be fine in the short term.

The fact that you have everything covers and have savings totally makes it work.
It sounds like you’ve planned well and also have the opportunity to earn more if needed.

If it helps that’s around what my take home is every month then CBen on top. I’m a single income household with one primary age DC. Some months are tight, others aren’t. I still manage to pay all my bills and put money aside for car taxes, Christmas, birthdays and what not. I’m not frivolous when it comes to clothes etc but then the last two years I haven’t had to be with just being at home. Big expenses I pop on a credit card and pay it up, and if I need to I move it when the 0% runs out. If you’re sensible it can be done. The next few years are going to be hard though, no doubt about it. So I’d say if you can earn extra on top then definitely use those opportunities before you touch your savings.

So £125 a week roughly. If it includes petrol too then I think that is pretty tight. It's doable definitely but you will have to be pretty careful. Teens are expensive! My ds always seems to need new football boots or loses his pe kit or something like that! If I were you I'd try to underspend each week as much as you can to give yourself bit of a buffer for the next week's if you see what I mean.

I don't know... As others have said, depends on your personal circumstances. It isn't an high monthly wage imo, but fairly decent for part-time. Although what do you mean by part-time? If that's a wage for, say, 4 days work per week I'd say it's fairly low, if it's for 2 or 3 days then it's not bad at all.

I’d suggest the same answer as @MoiraNotRuby ! What she said seems about right. You didn’t need to bite the face off her!

Unless your petrol is over £50 a week I’d suggest £500 disposable income is fine to live on for a modest standard of life.

It just depends on your standard of life and what you are used to/how you want to live in the future.

If you expect to eat out at £50 a go twice a month, drinks with the girls twice a month at £50 and go to the theatre or ballet or whatever once a month and the cinema one, buy clothing at £100 a month and expect to buy a new car next year on APR etc then you may struggle.

Look back over what you spent money on say last month and see what you could do without buying in future and work out if a reduced salary would still provide enough disposable income for the things which are important to you.

It's very well paid for p/t, and should be doable, given what you've said about having money elsewhere.

Plus it sounds like you can top it up with S/E work from time to time.

Why do people keep going on about depends where the OP lives- the bills are paid for, housing and travel and council tax is the biggest difference in outgoings dependent on area. Living: uniforms, cinema trips, birthdays and pretty much the same up and down the country no?

Sounds OK to me, if not, could you go full time or at least extra hours?

yes doable

Is 1800 still doable? What do you think?
I get 2300 but would pay around 500 in CM for DC X2.
So I'd be living alone. My rent would be around 550-600, I'm in the north

Agreed. It was a rather disingenuous question

You'd probably be better off starting a new thread, this one is nearly 2 years old.

I sip, or I end up burping everywhere

Yes. If your mortgage is about 600 and bills around the same. With a child that's do-able.