How much spending money should we have?

[Giraffapuses]

I'm a spender, he's a saver. He'd live like a church mouse I'd be forever in my overdraft.

How do we decide what a fair amount is to save and spend? All our bills are covered and we don't have any urgent financial problems. We are saving for a deposit for a mortgage. However it will take a while so we have to live too.

Why don't you let him do the saving then, you fritter it away like a water fountain, in a hundred years we'll all be dead anyway

Agree to save a % of earnings each
friends how much you want to buy a propert I guess

Totally depends on your income, outgoing and goals.
Pulling a number from the sky is pointless.
When we were saving for a deposit we did something like 40% bills and outgoings 40% saving and 20% spending.

Bit impossible to say without knowing incomes and expenditure. How about adding up all essential expenditure (rent, bills, modest food shop etc.) and then seeing how much is left. Then base a decision on that. You do need to live so if you can, perhaps 200 each a month for fun/ clothes and save the rest? That said, if your income is 100k, you might want to increase the amount for fun/ clothes.

Divide whatever is left equally between you. That’s what we do. Then he can save it and you can spend it. I currently have £10 left of my overdraft and dh has £2500 in his account 😆 we just laugh at each other. (These are our own spending accounts. We have joint household accounts and savings etc).

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee I was trying to avoid figures because I didn't want it to become a thread about whether we earn too little or too much. But, after bills we have about £2,000 left over. He would save like £1,600. But isn't that a Bit boring.

@Afterfire because we have joint finances. We need to work out how to compromise because of our different preferences.

We have joint finances too, that’s why I’m saying you need to work out what you have left over after all bills etc are paid (we transfer a set amount into the house account to cover all bills) and then whatever is left is split equally between us and transferred to our own spending accounts to do with as we wish. We don’t touch the household account. It’s literally just an in and out bills / direct debits account.

@Afterfire so you just don't have shared aaving goals?

We have a set amount we transfer to our savings account. We use our savings for household stuff and holidays. If either of us wanted to - for example- get our teeth done or something personal then we would use our own spending money to save for it.

Do a budget. Income - expenditure = surplus. Your surplus should be split proportionally, so if for example you earn 60k and he earns 40k, you'd be allocated 60% of both your expenditure and your surplus, 40% for him.

Work out what it is you actually want to spend - say £200 a month on entertainment/hobbies, £50 on clothes and footwear, £100 on dining out - whatever works for you. You can also work backwards from annual figures to arrive at a monthly one. Make sure all transport costs, groceries, toiletries, insurances, debt repayments etc. are already in your expenditure. Then at least you have an idea of the numbers and you can work out what you're happy to save.

Alternatively, as a rule of thumb, 10-20% of net earnings might work for savings.

Why not spend money only if you need to? If you're given a set amount you'll feel compelled to spend your whole allowance. Just resolve not to waste it on shite. Some months i spend virtually nothing, others a lot. It depends what I have on.

How much do you need to save for a deposit & fees? How long will that take you?

@NoSquirrels . We need probably 30k. We have 10. I guess it would take 2 years roughly.

I'd work it backwards, based on your target amount of savings in order to buy a property.

So if you can save £1600 a month it will take you x number of months to reach your target .... if you save £800 it will take twice as long and at £400, 4 times as long.

Then it's a question of how long you want to/can live without attaining your target, eg if you are living with family and have little autonomy or privacy, you might feel it's worth going without in order to get to the target quickly. If there is no discomfort or disadvantage in where you are currently living, you might be ok with getting there slowly

But keep talking, it rare to have completely aligned attitudes to money but getting to a place you are both comfortable with is key to a successful long term relationship

Agree with @Defiantlynot41 , but I think back to when I was saving for the deposit for my first home, I'd have been putting away a lot more than the £1600 if I had £2K available each month.
When you have a real goal to aim for like that, and, in most cases it means your monthly outgoings will come down when paying your mortgage rather than someone else's rent, on couldn't be frittering away £400per month of things I didn't really need, I'd want that property asap.

I don't think 20 fun money each can be described as boring!

Here are strategies I’ve seen work.

You both agree on individual personal spending money that you each can do whatever you want with, no discussion or questions. In other words, you can spend and can save if he wants.

You also agree to a limit for needed items per mo for household things that don’t come up often but are daily things… a new set of sheets, a replacement frying pan, whatever. Again no questions asked or discussion on the spend. (Any regular household expenses should already be part of your budget)

Anything after that you have a discussion and worked into your spending plan. some months your spend may be a bit higher other months you can save more. But set a goal for saving each month to make sure you are still getting ahead in that area.

I mean 200

We do pots ( accounts) per the bare foot investor book.
60% into general everyday living pot, rent, bills, food etc., 20% savings (house deposit, holidays, new furniture and the like), and 20% splurge ( take away, nights out, hair and nail, things that are nice but not essential).
We have an agreement that we need to consult each other if we spend over a certain amount, in our case $200.
We also have 3 months of wages in a contingency account in case of unexpected expenses like new water heater.
There was a time, when we had young children and a new mortgage, that we had $20 each spending money a week. That was tough.

Honestly if I were you I'd have my eyes on the prize and spend as little as possible to get to your deposit. I think his savings goals sound reasonable.
It's not just the deposit though is it? It's solicitor fees, stamp duty, new stuff for house etc
Depends what is important for you

£20,000/24 months = £833 pcm

£20,000/£1,000pcm = 20 months

£20,000/£1,250pcm = 16 months

£20,000/£1,666pcm = 12 months

I’d be aiming for a short sharp bout of saving to reduce the time you need to do it for.

It’s a bit of a worry that you think saving is “boring” and that you haven’t done the sums to see that actually you won’t need to save for as long as you think.

With £2K available, I’d certainly expect you to save the vast majority. I’d probably settle on something like £1,250 and have a solid plan between you of what that £750 (£375 each per month) was to cover - clothes, entertainment, what? If you want to spend all that and he wants to save extra into his own account then that’s your compromise.

So is that £2k after everything "standard" and a chunk of "fun" is paid for - i.e. clothes, petrol, food, haircuts, presents, holidays, gym, annual bills, enough for car repairs? Or is it before some/all of those? For me that changes the answer.

£200 each is plenty if it's for food out, holidays with friends, non-essential clothing, days out, presents for friends.

It's not plenty if it needs to pay for petrol, Christmas including children, children's birthday presents and car repairs.

The plus side is that if you saved £1600 a month you would have your house deposit in 13 months. That's not a long time to have a tight belt for - when I was saving for a house (admittedly 7 years ago now), my total expenditure on top of food, petrol and bills was £100 per month and I was saving approximately 50% of my salary. I went on two extremely cheap holidays (total cost approx £300 for both), bought no new clothes and didn't get my hair cut. I remember the day my mortgage was finally approved and I could stop tightening my belt and I went out and spent £80 on clothes. Obviously that was my choice but I don't regret it particularly - my friends at the time didn't have loads of money and I used to have people over for dinner instead of going out for dinner as it was much cheaper.

This. Why do you want to fritter away money that could get you there sooner?

I don't think it's frittering - it's about sustainability. If someone feels hard done by, earning plenty but seeing very little in practice, they're unlikely to stick to it. So I think a fun budget is a good way of ensuring that this is less likely to happen and that resentments don't build up. Even if it's £200 a month, that still leaves £1800 for savings, and that's a healthy amount in most anyone's book.