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.

OP so much of your outgoings are what I would classify as luxuries (nails, takeaways, meals out, etc). Not a stealth boast but my takeaway pay is more than your joint amount and I would really hesitate to splash out on these items on such a regular basis. Especially takeaways, which I find particularly for the money spent.I can’t remember when I last had my nails done - it’s definitely years rather than months ago. (Although to be fair one of the blockers is also time).
My question/recommendation for you - especially given your age - is to maximise your pension contributions now. You get the tax benefit on paying in and you luckily have decades to achieve growth on the contributions and hopefully enjoy a retirement that does allow you at least some of these luxuries.

Meanwhile on a thread in style the OP is getting suggestions for shoes at £800 a
pop that will probably only get worn once or twice

Yeah I don't understand the people who think £450 is a lot in these circumstances. Especially as it probably includes nappies and wipes for the youngest- don't see them accounted for anywhere else. That's about £110 a week for four and they appear to be eating the large majority of meals at home. Could be done more cheaply of course, but equally that amount doesn't necessarily include anything very lavish. Particularly if their local supermarket happens to be Tesco or Sainsbos rather than Lidl.

If anything I think OP might consider upping the supermarket spend a bit to include some easy and/or treat alternatives to the takeaway. I do find that when you have enough disposable income to unthinkingly go for a takeaway if particularly tired/hangry/bored, it helps to have tempting alternatives available at home instead. A couple of the more upmarket pizzas or whatever might add a tenner to the weekly shop, but save them £30 when they come in knackered one evening and would normally be ordering something.

Sorry I’m never usually a negative poster but actually think this post is a bit insensitive of the current situation lots of people are in. You have an awful lot of luxuries that I or others don’t have and you still have £300 left a month… most people, myself included, would be very grateful for that.

You aren't especially high earners yet are spending 400+ a month on car loans, buying a takeaway every month, getting nails done, paying a window cleaner... etc. £35 a month is a phone contract not just for the SIM but for a recent handset too.

Dh and I earn multiples of this and spend on none of these things. We drive bangers for starters.

I don’t think you’ve included food apart from the take away. You have to buy the food shop. That’s could almost wipe about £500 a month.

£450 for food is in the breakdown.

I find it bizarre that people think £450 a month is a huge amount on food? I live somewhere where there is only one supermarket and no option to go elsewhere and as a family of 5 we spend around £800 on food and that doesn't involve any alcohol or the weekly top ups we do. it is unfortunately one of the most expensive supermarkets in the Uk and it isn't Waitrose :(

you spend £630 a month on two cars and just about the same on a house to live in, thats before tax, insurance and MOT

Its approximately fifth of your income, tbh thats a very large amount of money on cars that sit on your drive for 90% of the time

I am surprised posters think £35/month is high for a phone contract. When my contract expired in 2020 I was struggling to find plans under £40/month,

When my contract expired, the phone was paid for and I went SIM only for £10 a month. When that expired, I found a SIM only contract for £8 a month.

I didn't realise that you could get to the end of the contract and still not own the phone.

I don't think your car loans are particularly high. You can't really cut out this. You need reliable cars to get to work and drive your children around.

How much food do you throw away each month?

I think you're doing ok - perhaps try to cut back on the £500 disposable income and a few other things like takeaways etc if you want to save more. Also how are you only spending £100 in each car on fuel per month? Presumably you don't use them much or for long journeys so could you possibly cut down to one car (which would help massively as you don't own them outright). I choose to drive an older car and just buy them second hand when I need a new one (not often as I am not car-proud). My husband has a newer one because it's more economic as he has to go into the office a few times a month which is a longish journey, whereas I work from home). We live in the middle of nowhere with no public transport so we need two cars, but I think if you live in a town or could cycle to work / school run then you could always look at that as a way to save money.

I am very jealous of your low mortgage - ours is double that, but then we are older than you :-)

Our household income is about three times the OP's and our outgoings considerably less.

I'm particularly interested in why you both have what are presumably relatively new / high-value cars, given the payments - I have a 10-year-old car which I bought 2nd-hand and own outright, so, bar the usual tax / MOT / insurance and regular servicing / MOTs and some ad hoc repairs (which are minimal), it's a reasonable cost.

That would be a good place to start, I think.

How many meals with friends plus takeaways are there per month?

What are you buying with the £450 on food on top of all that?

I think you could easily cut back on window cleaning and nails and whatever it is that you charge to your card.

You could get a family phone plan or other money saving plans, cheaper phones too. Apple music is a complete waste of money. Your H could do a haircut every six weeks or two months too, and there are definitely cheaper contacts, or just buy glasses. You can buy them online cheaply.

Go back through your last two or three monthly statements and identify where you're spending so much of your discretionary income.

Get a handle on clothes, coffee on the go, snacks when out for the day with the kids. A little here and a little there adds up to a lot.

How often do you go to the zoo?

I think the money spent on kids' hobbies is possibly money well spent but look at that all the same.

Older cars might not be a savings if they need frequent work, but your car loans are eating up a chunk of income and maybe you could do better there.

You should have a pension plan, a rainy day fund, and savings for your kids' university expenses, as well as a holiday fund.

I would think about cutting your takeaways down to once a month, get some Pizzas from the supermarket and have a pizza night or something instead.

A small thing I do is surveys for an hour a night while watching TV. I make about 3 pounds a day and you can convert the money into vouchers such as uber Eats, you could then keep that 60 a month for a takeaway from there and take it out of your normal budget completely? If you want to have a try you can use this link which gives you 40p to get started with.

I'm inviting you to join AttaPoll. Get paid to take surveys. Download the app here: attapoll.app/join/skawm

Something I did when sorting my financials out that really helped was to work out my income for the year and each category for the year, for example I can easily afford £10 a week on lunch for work but do I really want to spend £520 a year on bits and bobs to munch on in the office ... I can afford a Costa coffee easily 3 times a week £12 £624 a year the big numbers scared me into stopping the habbits

Try and cut your gas and electric bill. That’s insanely high! Ours is £90 a month for a three bed terrace.

Stop getting your nails done every month, stop having the windows cleaned so often and cut down on takeaways.

Wow...to me, this a really lavish lifestyle. Are you saving anything? Pension contributions? Your nails, hair, takeaways and date night money would make a huge difference in your retirement.

We have a similar-ish income to you although our mortgage is higher..
this is where maybe you could cut (or basically the costs we don’t have)

1. car loan - we don’t have one we just bought a cheaper car
2. credit cards - don’t have that or at least try to cut spend on it to minimum
3. £150 on takeaways - we probably spend more like £40 a month on 1 or 2 takeaways
4. nails - I don’t have them done - I bought a gel machine and do them at home
5. window cleaner - I hardly ever get ours done but I clean the downstairs myself
6. disposable income - £500 I wish! I allow myself £150

I don’t think it’s particularly lavish to be honest. Life is for living after all. OP if you want to save more money, perhaps cut back on the takeaways and ‘frittering’ - you could keep a diary of everything you spend in a month out of your disposable income and see if there is anything you can drop.

But IMO it has to be a balance of enjoying the money you earn and being sensible about the future. I have lost my DF and SIL unexpectedly in the last few years. Both were relatively young; 68 and 48 and both were stingy with money to plough everything into a retirement that they sadly never saw.

I’ve only read your posts OP, not the whole thread, so apologies if this has already been suggested, but the thing that has revolutionised my finances is using ‘pots’ of money in Monzo (I think other companies call them different things. Starling calls them ‘spaces’ for example)

So as soon as I get paid, money for school uniform, gifts, haircuts, holidays, house repairs, etc, etc goes off into different accounts. That means that what is left in my account is what I really have left to spend and when a big expenditure comes in, I don’t get stressed as the money is already there to pay for it.

For school uniform, for example, only £20 a month goes out, but then come July/august, I don’t suddenly get a £200 dent in my finances. It just comes out of the uniform pot.

Is it a daft question to ask why your child benef it is so high?

But how will people know my true social status in the world if I'm not driving a '21 plate Audi?