Gaging opinion £400 pw

[Toomuchtrouble4me]

Simply that. Family of 4. Is £400 a week reasonable to live in? This is without any bills so includes:
food for 4
household shopping (detergent etc)
clothing
treats (coffees etc)
household essentials (lightbulbs, batteries etc)
medicines and beauty products
Basically mortgage, bills, large expenses are separate, but thus includes all bits and bobs that are bought weekly plus funds for kids outings and buying gifts if they are going to a party etc.
Is it enough?
we’re trialing how much we need to spend on these things in a week and I don’t seem to be able to manage in £400.

This is a joke right?

The only way anyone can answer you @Toomuchtrouble4me is if you list your weekly expenditure.

Throwing a hand grenade like 'Cam I live on £400 pw for food etc' is meaningless as 99.9% people will say yes, of course you can, unless you are feeding your family on caviarre, champagne and truffles all week.

That's more than my current monthly income.

Who buys clothing and beauty products weekly- and light bulbs FGS? LEDS last forever.

This is wind up surely.

You're havin' a laugh.

It sounds like a lot but when you break down how much everything costs it's not. I know I'd struggle to stick to £400pw, especially after you factor in things that break, wear out, and need replacing.

Just querying this based on your other posts.

You say you are a SAHM and don't want to go back to teaching.

Are you saying now you can't manage without your income, or you need help with budgeting?

We're a family of 4 and have £1,200 a month for the things that you listed. We usually spend it all, and we don't live extravagantly, eat out all the time or anything like that. I don't know where it all goes!!

We have about £100/day to spend on anything that's not a house related bill for our family of 4+ dog. If we aren't particularly careful we bob along on that without much thought, with being a bit more careful (eg. Saving for something) we are happy enough on £60/day with relative ease/without feeling hard done by.

I hate stupid goady posts like this.
God forbid you every end up on benefits, OP.

Oh, and you can't spell "gauging".

£200 on food, cleaning stuff, few beers and wine - I get that.
£200 to cover beauty products, coffees, treats, clothes, household bits - more than enough BUT
Does the additional £200 include: subs for things like: tennis lessons, music teaching, cubs, rainbows, etc? What about petrol, mobile phone? Haircuts for you and the kids, optician, dentists, etc.

If just the former more than enough, if also the latter, not so sure.

I know we all have different lifestyles and earn different amounts, but honestly, I feel like I live in a different universe to people on here sometimes.

It’s a splurge for me if I spend a tenner on children’s clothes in charity shop one month, and there are people spending £50 a week on coffee and cake and buying beauty products, make up and clothes every month. I can’t remember a time I could spend on anything like that.

I’m not commenting on it negatively - it’s just when I see it written down I think how shit my situation is in comparison.

I really did make some poor life choices along the way!

🙄 does pointing that out make you feel better?

Yes for sure, this is around what we have each week but to also cover petrol and savings of at least £100 p/w. This is family of four with two teenagers (who eat me out of house and home and have hobbies) plus two dogs to feed.

nah she needs to cut back so the heating can be 25c or above otherwise shes cold poor lamb

🙄

TheShellBeach · Today 14:29
yes I agree Shell, god forbid. I find the whole post embarrassing to tell you the truth. Plenty folk on benefits have no choice to live of that amount a month.

I assume the OP isn't buying beauty products and clothes every week but trying to add an allowance for them in to a weekly budget.

Beauty and clothes wise the last month I have spent - £30 for some new trousers (on sale), £30 for a pair of work shoes (on sale), £60 on a hair cut and about £35 on things like shampoo, soap, deoderant etc... so £155 which is £38 pw. TBH that was a pretty expensive month for those things - I usally get my hair cut every three months and I bought more clothes than usual as I took advantage of the saels.

Are your takeaways from the Ritz?:-/

Seems massively enough. I think we budget around £500 a month for food+housekeeping (so lightbulbs/batteries/detergent etc). Clothes and social would be separate to that but a lot less - I think we budget £100pm for social/going out but its been like that since the kids were little so some months we use it (one takeaway can nearly hit that if everyone is at home) but others we roll it over.

Thats what, £600pm? So £150pw. Maybe £50 a week for clothes (probably generous) and you're at £200pw.

Seeing how it can get sucked up vs not seeing how you can possibly spend a lot less than that are two entirely different things.

£400 per week for four people (even if two were adults and not children) - excluding bills - is a huge amount of money.

Now, some people on this site are living hand to mouth and will find a tiny budget distasteful, let alone a big one like that. I'm a higher earner who doesn't have to make any hard financial choices and yet even I'm raising an eyebrow.

If you're burning through £400 per week every week (bearing in mind you won't be spending evenly every week - some expenses will all hit you in one month but not recur again until, say, next year) then you're frittering the cash away somehow.

My advice is to do your grocery shopping online. You'd be amazed how far £40 goes in an online shop with any supermarket versus £40 in an unplanned visit to M&S or Waitrose. Top-up shops should be small, planned, and for specific items that you can't buy in bulk or too far in advance like fresh fruit, salad and milk.

I'd also suggest writing down everything you're spending money on and doing a postmortem of an actual month's worth of spending. You'll find it insightful. Until you know what you're wasting cash on, you won't be able to stop doing it!

We have three kids, the cost of their activities does really add up. I get to £2671 a month easily, remember there's all the presents to but for parties, home maintenance costs, car running costs, savings etc.