To ask how much disposable income you need for a reasonably good lifestyle?

[surreygirl1987]

Apart from the essentials such as mortgage, council task, food, petrol etc, how much money do you have for 'fun' each year? I mean things like holidays, day trips, eating out, takeaways, theatre, cinema, kids' parties, and basically anything non-essential? Looking at my budget spreadsheet but have no idea what a realistic amount is. (I've counted all bills, gym and Netflix as essentials btw!). Thanks!

@Pringlesinthebath wow, thank you so much. Genuinely such a helpful response. I'm going to sit down with my husband and the spreadsheet in a bit and read through your post with him. Thank you for taking the time. It all adds up doesn't it!

It's each to their own.

We've about 2/3's your income. Spend around £2500 on a few UK holidays a year. Go to the theatre a few times a year. Pay for several kids clubs each, though clothes are second hand usually and we only each put on Clubcard points. And we give about £8000 a year to charities.

Make a budget of how you want to spend your money and stick to it.

Also, have a look at the secondary education around you. Our catchment school is in the top 5% of non selective state schools, we aren't really in the position to pay private anyway so haven't heavily considered (don't earn as much as you and don't have discounts lol) but it would take very, very big wages for me to opt for private education, so long as my kids are getting a good education, I'd rather ensure we had a good quality of life (which I'm quite fussy about!), I wouldn't make big sacrifices for private education, I know too many people who went and have perfectly acceptable jobs but easily obtainable from state education (military family so know lots of families that have been able to send kids privately).

@PinkiOcelot you some to have misunderstood my post....

Put aside three months of saving then start small. Book a nice holiday . Buy a new coat. Dont go crazy.. see how you go.
Kids expenses like classes and activities can soon add up. Special kit or shoes etc . Instruments. Bigger car to transport the cello.

And stop relating childcare to your own salary it s joint expense from both of you

we have no money left each month at the mo. I can't wait for the eldest to leave! I was paying more for childcare per day last year than I earned per day for working!

No. That’s how much we have after pensions, mortgage, tax, council tax. We save 1.5k. So spend roughly 4.5k on all the other stuff, cars, commute, food for 6, going out, holidays, uni support, phones. That’s a rough figure and what we budget to save. Sometimes it’s more. It’s a nice choice to have. There is no set amount. We don’t appear middle class and we aren’t. We come from very working class roots.

There are too many variables to be able to answer.

DH and I have about £1500 a month leftover between us, which I think is plenty, but we live in a very cheap area and don't have an extravagant lifestyle. We also don't have children which obviously helps a huge amount.

I spend about £175 per month on riding lessons.
We have three cats and a dog that probably cost around £200 a month for absolutely everything.
Some goes into savings, though that amount varies depending on the month.

We don't go out for lots of meals and haven't been to the cinema since before COVID, and we don't go abroad because we have the dog and would rather take him with us. We can both do our hobbies from various holiday locations in the UK anyway.

I'm sure many people would look at our life and think that we must be broke as we live in a cheap house in a run-down town, but that's exactly what allows us to work part-time hours and have a decent amount leftover for fun :)

Not read the full thread so apologies if it has already been mentioned but the BBC has a personal inflation calculator that shows by category like eating out and holidays the average spend for your wage bracket. Obviously there’ll be things you might choose not to spend a lot on that your contemporaries do but I found it vaguely interesting.

How much better off per month will you be from September?

obviously none of know where inflation and cost of living is going, but I’d be looking to save a proportion of that money to overpay mortgage or build up a savings account (say 50%)

The other half id use for improving mine and my kids lifestyle. Does depend on how much it is though!

The only advice you be getting is from an independent financial advisor. They can assess everything and help uou plan what you need for retirement etc.

I think you need to define "a good lifestyle".
This means different things to people, depending on where they are in their life.
Also just because you are mortgage- and child-free does not necessarily mean you are at party central every night with your disposable income. Some people might be sensible and put money aside for pension, house maintenance etc. etc.
To give you a concrete example:
I have a friend, who has been earning a decent 6 figure sum for at least the past 20 years. She has no children and is mortgage-free, but due to unfortunate circumstances, she has very little pension. She drives a 20 year old car, which is cheap to run, and does take quite exotic, but not particularly expensive holidays.
It is all relative.

We earn about £180k ish per year. Quite high outgoings and significantly overpay the mortgage. No private school as we have great state schools and private school isn't really my thing anyway. We spend £6k on a family holiday per year and £2-3k on weekends away, theatres, concerts etc.

@Blossomtoes but that link is for 17th July? It will be more expensive the week after. I have colleagues who just prioritise holidays over other things & will happy pay 5k for 2 weeks in the sun or skiing etc. I'm tight & find it a ridiculous amount.

@surreygirl1987 I would definitely work backwards from the things which are necessary so mortgage - childcare - a bit of a pot for emergencies - pensions if you like then look at what you can afford from there on in. DS went to a private school but I spent so much time on the internet looking for low cost holidays. No-one - well unless you are super rich - we we are not ( I think ) can afford everything. So don't worry about what others are doing - just prioritise for yourself .

But what kind of holiday is this?

OP, I take my 2 DC camping in Europe for around £1,500 for two weeks for the three of us. That's travel through the tunnel, 13 nights on a campsite(s), and activities. I don't include food because we'd buy that anyway, but do budget for a couple of meals out. And I don't include petrol because it's broadly offset by not paying for my commute and after-school childcare.

Mine is a very budget type of foreign holiday, but it wouldn't be impossible to get a week abroad for much less than £5k. Flights, airbnb, spending money. I think you could have a pretty decent holiday for two weeks on £5k in Europe.

It might be more useful for you to do some research on the kind of holiday your family would enjoy, see what it would cost, and budget accordingly. If your ideal holiday is ten days in the Bahamas then that's obviously going to cost more than a holiday home on the Spanish coast near an airport well served by lower cost airlines.

Of course you can find s reasonable price holiday in mid July, but that's not when state school holidays are ( unless Scotland). So vast majority of people can't go on holiday with children in mid July

When my husband was alive we’d go on a couple of long haul holidays a year, and a long weekend most months. We’d go out for dinner once or twice a week. The long haul trips would cost between £10k and £15k, depending on location, and the long weekends between £1k and £2k. Dinner out would be between £100 and £200. So using that as a benchmark that’s £55k a year, net. Roughly £5k month. But we had no children, were mortgage free and earned a reasonable amount more than your household income. Now he’s dead I spend less, but I think the £3k a month mentioned higher up is about right. But I’d look at it in terms of % income if you’re working. When we had a mortgage we worked on no more than 30% of net income on housing, 20% into investments and 50% on living. As we earned more less of the 50% was spent on bills/food/clothes/cars and more on travel and entertaining. When the mortgage was cleared half of the amount saved went into investments, and the balance on better holidays. And I’m pleased we did - those weekends and holidays have left me with a lifetime of memories, well 20odd years, to look back on. And the rest has given me the freedom to what I like.

We are a similar income to you with children in private school. We do get some help from grandparents for this so paying the equivalent of one child's fees. We have a relatively large mortgage.
We dont have loads of money left over. We knew that we would have to make some sacrifices sending ours private, however, I think we still have a lovely life.
We put aside roughly 1.2k a month for fun. This is all holidays, Christmas, birthdays, eating out and activities. We probably spend half of that budget on holidays and we usually go away for a week skiing (cheap apartment rather than swish chalet) and then two weeks in Europe (euro camp or an apartment rather than villa) in the summer and then a weekend city break in Europe. We probably eat out once a month and do a fun family outting once a month's such as a theme park, theatre trip etc. Most weekends we do free or cheap activities. We have membership to a few places and my kids are pretty happy with an afternoon spent walking the dog.

After bills we have about £2.1k left. £1k approx is saved and we budget for between £250-300 per week but this includes food shopping.
this gives us a relatively nice lifestyle (family of 3 - our son is 4 for context)

We put approx 450 per month in an account called 'fripperies'. That covers things like Xmas, kids treats and birthdays, family days out, and goes towards our family holiday. Works well so we don't need to panic when events come up. We are of course v lucky to be able to afford. When you come out of the childcare cost nightmare put at least 60% of it in savings while you work out what you want to spend. If it goes back into your disposable income you'll fritter it on stuff and it'll be harder to start saving it. If I were you I'd put some in pension, some in savings, a small amount for you and DH each in disposable income and some in regular savings for kids. We put away £10 per month per child plus a bit more at birthday/Christmas and it's amazing how.quickly it builds up.

Leaving on 7 August. Obviously some people choose to spend more than there but it’s obviously untrue to say a holiday in Europe costs £5k, it really doesn’t have to.

www.jet2holidays.com/search/results?airport=99&date=07-08-2023&duration=7&occupancy=r2c3_5&destination=26&sortorder=5&page=1

The holiday below it is £4100 so with some spending money for a couple of day trips and airport parking etc the 5K estimate sky way off.

The top result is self catering, so probably £3k with food thrown in. Yes you will be able to do it for less than £5k but as a budgeted amount to give a bit of flexibility I think £4-5k is safer - if you spend less then great!

Surely it depends on your expenses, what you want to spend and what you want to do for fun. It’ll be different for everyone. We try to eat out once or twice a month, have 2 takeaways, at least one holiday abroad and one in Ireland yearly, and 1-2 city breaks. Days out are random but we tend to spend more during the summer holidays and in November/December during the run up to Christmas. There’s no point me saying how much I spend on each of those things because everyone spends differently. Some people would spend a lot more than I do on a summer holiday and some a lot less.

What are your savings? We prefer saving for our DC's future rather than expensive holidays or experiences.. not to say we never had holidays but we kept them fairly modest. We put money into a pension fund (for ourselves and DC), ISA Help to Buy and don't forget uni expenses will be high ....
Still somewhat baffled that two teachers can't work all this out ...