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.

Who earns what?
We don’t have entirely joint finances in my marriage (nor did we in my first, which didn’t fail due financial reasons!) and hell would freeze over before I let my husband tell me what my savings / spendings budget was!

That said, both times I married someone that I was financially compatible with.

I think £400 between you fun money is absolutely fine. Thats £100 per week and a decent meal out.

The quicker you get your deposit saved the sooner you'll be paying your mortgage instead of throwing money at someone else's.

How much would you spend?

I do agree you need to be on the same page regarding money or you'll end up really passing him of if he's saved a fortune and you've quandered money on Costa Coffee with nothing to show for it.

Thanks for all the replies. I'll try and answer a few questions.
@anotherpotoftea I want to fritter because otherwise life is a bit dull. The odd nice meal out, a trip to the cinema or a gallery makes life far more interesting than hitting a savings goal 6 months or a year early. Though, you'd clearly get on with my dh.

@Testina he earns about 60% of our total take home. I earn the other 40% obviously. We share everything as one income regardless of who earned it. We used to have your method but, this works better for us because he also managed all the money. I am rubbish at it.

@Dinoteeth I would spend maybe £1000 between us a month and save like a £1,000.

Overall though I think there are 3 views on this thread:

1. Saving is just objectively better. You should follow his good example.
2. Find a compromise where you don't hate each other.
3. Have separate finances and (in my case), learn the hard way why saving is a good idea.

I'm actually going to take option 1. He is just better with money. I'll just let him decide.

Good thread tho.

Our take home in total is about £6,600 per month. Let the judgment commence.

“I'm actually going to take option 1. He is just better with money. I'll just let him decide.”

Are you not embarrassed to type that? Learn from him. You’re not a child.

We have £3700 left after bills and split it the following each month -

£500 each - pocket money
£1000 - solid savings
£600 - kids premium bonds (£200 each)
£500 - holiday savings
£600 - kids savings (held in our name)

I'd definitely not save £1600 on the amounts you have left

If your take home is £6,600 pcm, and you have £2,000 disposable, what are your bills given you’re not paying a mortgage or house-related costs? Is it high rent? Nursery bills?

£1600 is what u should be saving I don't think that's an unreasonable amount. £200 each still for spending I assume U have included everything else in what u call bills like petrol and food shopping etc.

You can still go to the cinema or out for meals when u have £400 a month between you for it. It would be an absolute priority for me to buy a house. If you did £1600 and you have £10k already will only take just over a year to get to the £30K. For every month you don't buy a house the prices increase. Obviously that could change in the future but I'd rather be in a positions to buy asap.

How could most adults cope on less than £200 pocket money?

I don't know anyone who would be good with that

Most teenagers get more than that ffs

Really??! I have less than £100 a month to spend purely on myself. I don’t feel the need to buy stuff every month and as a family we save a decent amount despite not saving for anything specific. Some months eg. Christmas might need more to buy presents for others but normally is plenty

@NoSquirrels if I tell you, you have to promise not to judge us. Big expense are:
Doggy daycare plus expensive dog food £400 per month
Therapy £225 per month
Physio £200 per month
Rent £1300

Those are the big ones.

That's less than I got as pocket money as a teenager

How can adults survive on so little

I'd struggle on less than the £500 I current have for personal spends

No judgement, I don’t care at all! It’s just that if you have a joint income of £6,600, spend £4,600, and have £2K left to save or spend on ‘fun stuff’, then what does the approx £2K you’ve not accounted for in your major outgoings get spent on, if not pretty discretionary fun stuff?

The bills above come to £2,125.
Let’s say you generously spend another £475 on combined other bills (council tax, gas & electric, water, insurance, internet, phones, streaming TV & music).
That’s £2,600.
There’s £2,000 being spent on something before you even get to the £2,000 to save… I know you’ve got to eat but there’s already a big hole there, surely?

Presumably this is a wind up ?

No-one can be that naïve.

It really isn't in very good taste.

Well you're rich and always have been. It's always good to try and understand how most people live though. Think about what you'd do without if you had to. Then notice that most people do. This will help you be a better person

@NoSquirrels thanks I'll think about it. We do track all our expenses in a big excel but I do often think wtf do we actually do with the money. I grew up really poor so I just don't have money management skills.

I'd love to answer your question with a full breakdown but I don't want to give more figures because whenever people start sharing finances on mumsnet the thread turns terrible. Rich or poor, the moment you start putting £ signs in the conversation the trolls and trolls-lite come out.

All I can add is that you talk of being bored with less 'fun money' but maybe learn to delay your gratification for a bit, see the money accumulating in savings and get to your goal.
I would not be happy paying rent for one more month than necessary if getting a the property is what you really want.

No need for the full breakdown, not publicly! Just trying to get you to think about whether you’re not seeing some of the already ‘fun’ things your cash does for you - maybe you guys already eat out a bit more than average or have a high groceries bill because that’s important to you, or gym membership or … well, anything that could be cut easily in an emergency. And so perhaps if it seems to you like your DP is being overly tight, it might well be because in his mind there’s already a very healthy spend on discretionary?

It’s actually not surprising if you grew up poor to have a very different attitude to money - live for now, spend it while you’ve got it. Unfortunately to accumulate wealth (and thus security) you need to save! One of the biggest factors in who ends up better off is avoiding ‘lifestyle creep’ where you spend to your income every time it increases.

Money management can actually be quite a fun subject (I know! I can imagine you rolling your eyes). You might check out YNAB with your partner - it’s not just an app for budgeting/tracking spend, it really gets to the heart of what our priorities in life are so how should we spend our money to support those.
www.youneedabudget.com/tell-me-what-you-want-what-you-really-really-want/

Good luck! It’s all definitely worth thinking about.

I grew up really poor so I just don't have money management skills

See, I don't see how the two parts of that sentence fit together.

If you're poor, you have to be really careful with your money, to make sure as many essentials as possible are paid, making sure you get the best price for everything you buy, so you might actually be able to cover everything and possibly even have some money left for something non essential. That takes work and good money management skills.

Whereas when you have plenty of money, as you do now (you're both reasonably high earners) then you are able to spend without thinking about it, and can often do this without running out of money. But the problem lies when you aren't achieving your life goals, like buying a house, so you can stop spending £1300 on rent every month. That's over £15k pa that could be used towards paying for your own asset, instead of someone else's (obviously a bit less due to the cost of mortgage interest, but even so).

With £2k pm spare, you could save your £30k in a little over a year, or two while allowing some spending money each month. If you saved £1500 pm for 2 years, that's £36k and would still allow you £250 pm spending money each. That's hardly 'living like a church mouse'. Plus in 2 years time, it might be a good time to be a FTB, if there's a recession, as it might lead to more properties being available, at lower prices.

I'd suggest that you review your budget, and be honest about essentials and luxuries. You might even be able to cut the cost of some regular bills like mobile costs etc, to free up more money to spend and save. You also need to get out of and stop using your overdraft, because the interest charged is very high, so that's even more money thrown away on nothing and is detrimental to your credit history.

Have a look at:

www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/

But then again, you might want to have a think about whether you're compatible if you have very different attitudes to money, as it's likely to always be a bone of contention between you.

Everything @BarbaraofSeville said.

This does not make sense. I grew up really poor so I just don't have money management skills.

It is through not having 2 pennies to rub together I learned how important it is to get the best deal on everything and to budget carefully. For me, that means I struggle to spend frivolously on things even though we are a LOT more comfortable now that we were 30 years ago.

but the examples you've given sound much closer to £400 worth of fun (actually quite a lot less than that) than £1000, so I don't really get why you feel hard done by by his suggestion?

If you were saying 'I work hard and I like treating myself to spa weekends several times a year, getting my hair done every 6 weeks, and like buying nice clothes,' or 'my absolute passion is travelling and I try and go away at least 4-5 times a year' then even if I wouldn't personally spend money that way then I could see your point, and neither of you would be wrong, just have different opinions. But you're acting as though he's suggesting an absolute miniscule amount which isn't even enough to go to the cinema on, whereas for most people £200 completely fun money is quite a lot.

Save as much as you can and buy a house. Don’t fritter money on crap just because you can.