To wonder what's going wrong with our finances!?

[pondering12345]

In the process of moving to a joint account with DH, so using this opportunity to review our monthly finances:

Income
DH take home pay £2600
My take home pay (part time) £1075
Child benefit £145
Total income £3820

Expenses
DH car loan £270
My car loan £160
Mortgage £645
Water £60
Gas and electric £250
Home insurance £15
Broadband £25
Council tax £190
DH credit card £110 (we each use our own credit card for any purchases for ourselves and pay off the following month)
My credit card £100
My phone £35
DH phone £35
DH car tax £20
TV license £15
Zoo membership £20
Apple Music subscription £15
DH contact lenses £40
DH haircut £15
My haircut £20 (£60 every 3 months)
My nails £30
Window cleaner £15
DH petrol £100
My petrol £100
Food £450
Takeaways (one per week) £150
Kids hobbies & swimming £100
Date night £50
Disposable income £500
Total expenses £3535

This leaves less than £300 per month to put towards tonnes of other expenses - annual car insurance, gifts, Christmas, holidays, kids clothes, home and car maintenance etc.

Where are we going wrong here!? I don't feel like we live a particularly lavish lifestyle.

Agreed
but 4 years ago, child free the poster is saying that no savings and despite good salaries spend everything they earn

you don’t think a teeny bit relevant to current situation ?

Inspector Clouseau on the case

You do realise there are high earners that live in mansions, second homes, own several cars and think nothing of designer clothes? Plenty of threads with high earners go and tell them off for not being poor 🙄

Mumsnet covers a wide range of people. This thread is about the op whose income is hardly huge! FFS what is wrong with people on here . People ask for advice and get shot down for boasting when really it’s not at all like that.

I don't see a reason to suspect that it is the same poster based on a very generic set of circumstances and a partial match of a very generic username.

The username is "pondering12345" probably because "pondering1", "pondering12"... were already taken by previous name changers.

No need for a witch hunt.

Disposable income here is £20 a week each, if that helps. Covers lunch, coffee out, clothes, incidentals. Just for context. We also have kids activities as Xmas presents from family.

Totally honestly, we have a take home income over 4x yours and would never consider having two cars, zoo membership, one takeaway per week, contact lenses, nails, window cleaner, and I cut my own hair so no hairdresser.

There’s stuff you can cut back there, I think you are living quite a lavish lifestyle personally.

You cut your own hair on £15K net income?

I never normally ask questions like this, but if that seems "lavish" to you on a household income of over £15k a month... what do you spend YOUR money on?

OP I think you've had quite a hard time on here when you are trying to do a pretty sensible thing by checking why your savings aren't stacking up the way you thought they would. I'm also a little wary of PP telling you what to do when they don't know your circumstances - for example you might live very rurally and two cars are a necessity...

I'd start from the premise that you want to consider saving £800 pcm as before you combined your accounts. Then look at how you achieve that. You've had a lot of good advice here if you want more then look at some of the shopping threads etc although £450 is not excessive if you are also buying nappies/most toiletries etc in your food shop. As well as following PP advice on looking at your bills you might want to make sure your credit cards give you cash back (eg I have a platinum amex which is about the most generous for cash back).

One trick I had at your age when in a not dissimilar position financially was to play cheap/better/best with non essentials. So eg the nails - the cheap option is to combine them with a girls night and stay in and do them with a friend and a bottle of wine, better would be to try and stretch them to having them done every couple of months in a way you could maintain in between and best would be to continue as you are. You and DH each get one best, and two betters on your "luxuries" and then go for the cheap options on the rest - so perhaps forgoing the takeaway and having a supermarket ready meal (better) or even a family pizza making session (cheap). If you can use the cheaps to combine two expenses (eg grooming and girls night or takeaway and family activity) even better.

But whatever else you do get decent life insurance for both of you - and when you do bear in mind its not just a loss of DH's salary that could knock the family for 6 but also all the domestic help he'd need to buy in to keep working i something happened to you.

Goodness @Kfjsjdbd! That does sound a bit tight but do you instead spend it on opera, art, holidays, etc?

Contact lenses are not a luxury and neither is having a hair cut every 3 months.

Bin

Zoo membership £20
Apple Music subscription £15
My nails £30
Takeaways (one per week) £150
Date night £50

Gives you £500 + £265 = £765 a month.

Sorted.

@RosesAndHellebores yes, of course, opera is an essential that I could never give up.

I get your post, but my husband was brought up in poverty so is a ruthless saver. We would just consider some of the OPs expenses to be lavish, when she considers them to be normal expenses.

Can you switch out the takeaways for say a “takeaway box” from a supermarket? M&S in particular do nice ones for about a tenner.

we used to get quite a few takeaways but recently the prices have increased massively and the quality has dropped - so we started doing an M&S box or a Charlie Brighams curry (the butter chicken one is lovely) and adding naans etc - so it’s around £10-12 on a Friday night instead of an expensive takeaway and it’s much nicer anyway

So what do you do with your money? Nobody with over £15k coming in every month makes no effort at all to enjoy it.

Some thoughts and views

I have been trying to cut my own hair, not to save money but because I often dont have time or dont want to make the time to go to the hairdressers. My usual stylist, the one I trust at the salon charges £80. I would love to know where I could get my hair cut for 15 quid as quoted by some posters here!!

Takeaway is pricey, ours often costs about £30 for the two of us,, we try to limit this to weekly but find that the weeks we dont order something, we'll go out for a pub lunch/dinner the same week so never turns out to save any money

Contact lenses are not a luxury and dependent if he is tied into a contract which covers his glasses and lenses perhaps or if he needs particular ones. I order mine online but have to pick particular ones which are not cheap

I have only ever had second hand cars bought outright, but OH was looking at what it might cost to pay monthly and when you took into account tax, MOT, insurance was included, servicing included etc etc. I personally wouldnt do it but it was interesting to see

People who are saying that they would have a supermarket curry or piece of salmon instead of takeaway or date nights, this is what we would have anyway in the mix of all sorts of things we get in the shopping, this would be a bit mundane, a date night or a takeaway is something different, thats the point of it

Im surprised people keep going on about pensions, most peoples pension is paid for within their wages, so its already accounted for (although OP has now confirmed that)

I’m betting school fees, holidays and ISAs

It may be a coincidence but I didn't even use Mumsnet until this year and I'm only 27/DH 28 now!

£15K income a month and standing in front of the bathroom mirror hacking away at your own hair.

Lordy.

Brilliant advice thank you

Great username for the comment!

Home hair cutting can be fine, lots of people prefer it, especially since lockdown. But it seems odd for someone on £15k a month to consider professional haircuts to be "lavish".

Maybe people earn 4 x that kind of monthly salary could help society a bit more by supporting small business to keep functioning like hairdressers, window cleaners, local take aways. it isn’t a bad thing to do when you have such a high income, you know to help keep people in jobs, the economy running.

😂😂 I was just thinking that.

and contact lenses!! How can someone with over £10k a month income not afford contact lenses????

life must be pretty miserable!

Maybe the £15 haircuts aren't very recent, about 5 years ago I paid about £13 for a dry trim, just before covid about £16, I now pay £25 which I don't mind but it has gone up a lot in the last 2 years.