Could you survive on 1k?

[coffeeanteac]

If you had £1000 left after the main bills.

Could you survive on £1000 for food amd petrol and everything else takeaways, gifts, fun.

DH thinks most families couldn't. I think it should be ok. There are only 3 of us and we all live about three miles away from work and school.

Survive, of course. Live the life I want to live, no. It's not what I would choose to settle for.

Want to swap? I live off £800 a month BEFORE bills and outgoings!

Your husband doesn't appear to understand how fortunate your family is if that's your situation.

A lot of people don't have that choice.

I disagree. Meals out, day trips, takeaways don't have to be weekly things. There is no need to spend £150 a week just because it's there. Save it for emergencies and treat yourself occasionally. Foreign holidays every year and a new bathroom every 5 years is not realistic for most families. It is absolutely possible to have a good life on £600 (leftover!) a month.

Depends on what you include in the bills.

£350 food
£550 car payment and petrol
Only leaves £100 for everything else. So we'd struggle and have to get a cheaper car. Unless car payment counts as a bill in which case yes we could manage fairly comfortably.

After all the bills are paid that we have now give or take, so yes.

We 'could' but would have to cut back a lot, and there wouldn't be any 'fun' money spare.
Family of 5
DHs commute is £400 a month, food £450, plus a tank of petrol and that's it all gone.
Nothing left for kids activities (they do a lot), no holidays, no car servicing/MOT, no boiler breaking, no house maintenance, no cleaner, no school trips, no spontaneous visits anywhere, no birthday/Christmas gifts, no new clothes, no school uniforms, no school chrome books (which are not optional).

Looking at that list, some of those I do consider essential so I guess the real answer is no, we couldn't.

I’ve just looked through my statement for last month. There are so many small amounts for essential but boring things that all add up. Childrens haircuts, school shoes, pet vaccinations, new tyre for the car, several childrens party presents etc. £1000 for food, travel etc just for me would be easy and fabulous. But add in family life and it’s really not.

Early last year I would have said yes easily but now the answer would be no.

Survive yes but not live for what you mention ie takeouts and fun. My food shop alone is between 160-200 a week with another 100 pounds a week on travel costs so with £1000, there would be no takeouts or anything else. Inflation has been a real kicker, our favourite takeout used to cost us £50 (4 of us) and that same meal is now £80.

No - fuel is about £500 and food is pricier as we are a large family.

Only two of us. We have £125pm for our own personal spends, clothes, treats, going out, buying eachother presents. Food is about £200pm, can do for less. Petrol is currently around £140pm, mainly used for work (I do food shopping on foot and we go on long local walks (sometimes with a sandwich) to try and save - we'd sometimes walk if work was about three miles).

So that's around £270 each a month. If the balance of £400+ is for takeaways, gifts, fun we'd easily manage. On that basis of our spends for a family of four or more, you'd start to struggle (but could manage). Any family larger even that's not going to be easy. If the money is for more than takeaways, gifts, fun and would include house and car maintenance (even if only essential) then, yes it'd be a struggle.

Long yes, snipey and patronising, really? It's OP husband who doesn't get it. It's so obvious I wondered why they asked. I figured OP might well share responses with their husband so ive included a few examples. I've also said he's naive. I hope he reads the replies.

I wish! It's the 6th and I have -£25.51 until pay day on 25th! Luckily, I have a few savings but need to do a diary to see where it's all going 🙄 It never used to be like this 🙁

Well yes, if people can’t afford them of course they don’t have to be weekly things. It’s nice to not have to live frugally if you can afford not to.
If people have to save for emergencies and holidays out of the £600 a month then they absolutely shouldn’t be spending it on extras.

Where?

@PuzzledObserver indeed. That is why i tend to have two different budget lines for food and travel.

1. Weekly supermaket shop for food cooked at home and packed lunches - essential
2. Eating out, grabbed luxtry items (eg bottle of wine and nibbles for a Friday night in) - discretionary

simiarly for travel

1. travel in to work - essential
2. trips for days out or taxi home from a night out - discretionary

Our travel is a lot lower than most though as we live in London and do not own a car, so I can do pretty much all of my travel - work and leisure on less than £100 a month.

Easily. £1k is a huge amount of money "after bills"!

We spend probably a quarter of that on food, takeaways, fuel, gifts, clothes etc., and could probably cut down even more.

@Okisenough

My food shop alone is between 160-200 a week

Good grief, how many people is that for? Presumably you've a big family?

Yes.
We've managed on that including bills (house is owned outright).
It is possible, but it doesn't leave much wiggle room unless you have some savings to fall back on if anything "big" goes wrong (new boiler, big car repairs etc) and you won't be having a holiday either.

Does your DH not listen to the news or have any awareness of the world around him?
What does he mean by survive? Does he actually mean to lead a comfortable life?
Of course a family can survive on £1000 a month for food, petrol and fun.

A huge amount of people have about £200 or less OP. What a totally delusional way of thinking.

Also, Mumsnet seems to have a lot of people here who lie about their wage to make themselves feel better and others feel bad. Take the replies with a pinch of salt.

I think we could but we'd struggle. Family of 5. Eldest DD needs bus money and our food bill has shot up. Petrol is about £50.a fortnight. Kid's activities aren't too expensive but don't think we'd be celebrating Christmas or birthdays much.

Mumsnet is a very odd place wrt money. You are either poor if you have a household income lower than 200k a year each or you are rich if you have a reasonable standard of living and security.

You could survive for sure, but do anything fun once you’d shelled out for car services, house maintenance etc no. You aren’t going to starve but you’d be scraping by worrying about things going wrong and not being able to pay for them. You aren’t going to have spare money for holidays and days out. It will be very difficult to save as every time you do something will come up and wipe it out.

If it’s a choice re you dropping hours or something I’m totally with your DH. If not then you’ll have to get on with it.

@Kazzyhoward
“We spend probably a quarter of that on food, takeaways, fuel, gifts, clothes etc., and could probably cut down even more.”
You “probably” spend £250 a month only on all of that? For how many people? That’s £62.50 per week. Really? I think you “probably” don’t know exactly how much you spend! I would struggle to spend £62.50 or less on food and travel per week just for one person unless I ate beans on toast and WFH.

I would find it really difficult, almost half of it would go on groceries and fuel. That would leave 500 for the month, theres no way we would save any money or go on any holidays with that.

When you say main bills are you including annual expenses like car insurance, boiler service etc? Is it after pension contributions?