Cannot agree on ‘fun money’ amount

[Captainobvious35]

Hello,

Me and my OH are both bad spenders and have decided to allocate a monthly budget for fun money. I am wondering what other people’s budgets are for this. We have a disposable income of about £1,350 between us once all bills, food, mortgage etc is paid. This is without moving any money into savings. I think we should put about 600 into savings per month and the rest can be fun money. He thinks that this doesn’t leave us with enough fun money (£375 each per month.) I think he’s out of touch!

AIBU?!

Please any guidance will be so helpful, we’ve never budgeted before and always end up wasting our money.

Thank you.

A meal out for me and OH would be £80 max. Cinema £30, theatre £50 (sometimes more sometimes less), weekday coffees maybe one a fortnight so per month £12 between us. Way less than you're spending. I mean spend away, its your cash but you certainly don't need to spend that much to do nice things.

I get that. We aren’t particularly high earners but that is how we chose to spend our money.

I would never criticise someone else for how they choose to spend spend theirs or call them frivolous or fritterers.

I think you are much higher earners than you think if you have 2.5k let after housing transport, basic bills, groceries (even if that's a small bill because you never cook), health spending. Have you actually looked at how your income compares? I wonder whether you'd be surprised.

We don't have any. We have around £2,500 pcm once everything is paid for except food and petrol. We use what we need but rarely buy nonsense ie hair, nails, PT etc.

Anything leftover is carried over to the next month

I quite like having a decent balance at the end of the month tbh

It’s not about me. I was simply pointing out that calling someone else’s spending rediculous and telling them they fritter money away isn’t really anyone else place.

We all have different priorities and you can make a point without being rude.

I think this is pretty high end pricing tbh
two visits to the cinema = £10 here (£5 per ticket), not £100!
coffee = approx £3 so £100 worth is thirty coffees, i.e. more than 1 per workday not 'a few' a month. A 'few' a month (4-8) would work out as between £14-25 per coffee!
£150 per meal out is pretty expensive for most people, etc.

Well I didn't say that so perhaps you're talking to another poster here? The point I was making is that you are a high earner and whilst that may work for you - and no judgement here if it does - it doesn't really set out helpful advice for people in more modest situations. The OP has very little savings and I agree with her that spending more freely when you have little buffer may not be the best plan. Your situation is not particularly relevant to hers.

We have £300 each a month as personal fun money which works out at roughly 15% of our income. However we have no debt or mortgage and are early retired. We save double our fun money.

In your circumstances I would save about half your spare income so I think you have the fun money right or maybe even lower. It sounds like your DP is not a saver though and ideally you both need to be on board. Would he accept saving more and having say £300 a month if he could see the savings were for particular things?

I do think it is quite ridiculous tbh to spend at least £2.5k a month on socialising and other fun when you're "not particularly high earners". To me that implies a net household income of maybe 5-6k a month or lower - so you are literally spending one person's entire income on this and after all bills you can't have much wriggle room in your budget. I'd be worried about something big cropping up (car needing expensive work done, boiler going etc) and not having the money to sort it because I'd spent it all living it up. But maybe your idea of "not particularly high earners" is very different than mine - it often is on Mumsnet - or maybe you already have plenty saved! Fair play to you if you have enough money to sensibly prioritise those things!

Our household income is around 4k per month and we take £80 each. I guess it could be more but we would rather put spare money towards things that benefit the whole family.

(4k after tax)

Mine and DH’s joint monthly bring home pay is just under £4k (into joint account) and we each take out £400 for our personal accounts.

So 20% of our income is ‘fun money’ and the remaining 80% is for everything else.

We get £150 a month each into our own spends account for fun stuff then everything else is saved. Or not - as we pretty much spend on the renovation project we bought but you know what I mean!!

Thanks all this is super helpful. Neither of us are good savers but we’re going to try £375 each fun money pm and see how we go, can always be adjusted. Also going to set up a separate pot for x-mas/birthdays as we hadn’t thought of that, so maybe 100 into that per month and 500 into main savings. I think that covers all of our bases. We have a fixed mortgage so no concerns there for a few years.

I always see comments from people saying they get £50/£100 fun money and its loads! Personally I couldn't live like that.
We do about £400 each but mobile phones come from that as its up to the person how flashy they do or don't want to be rather than a regular household "bill".

Do the people that have £50 a month just not do anything or do they just not count meals out/clothes/haircuts as fun money?

Good question…

Me and my friends like to go out at
least once a month and that’s a good £50 gone easily. Then I buy the odd Costa here and there, a new nail varnish if I walk past one and like it, I get my eye lashes and eye brows waxed and tinted once a month, and then some new clothes if I see anything I like, books for my Kindle etc,

Out of my £400 a month I probably spend about £300 and the rest I put into a separate account so I can treat myself to something really nice one day!!

I agree with this. Some couples count their gym memberships as a bill rather than fun money, clothes are bought from the joint money etc. In our house we have £300 fun money each, whatever isn't spent by the end of the month gets moved into the savings account. Out of that fun money we pay for gym memberships, days out, all our clothes, haircuts, nails, meals out, birthday presents and so forth. We don't typically spend the full £300 but it's there if we needed to. If someone's fun money is literally coffees and dinners out I can see why they'd have it a lot lower.

I buy my phones second hand outright then have a cheap £5/month contract which I pay or of my fun money.
Spotify I pay for myself but Netflix, TV licence etc we pay for as a household bill.
Neither of us go to the gym, we walk the dog for exercise.
We have a child with ASD who doesn't go out much, so nor do we. Neither of us are very sociable. If we do see friends well go for a walk with them, have them over for coffee/lunch, maybe meet at a cafe. We don't really do expensive meals out. Neither of us have ever been invited on a hen or stag and we didn't have ones ourselves.
If we do eat out or go on holidayas a family we'll pay for it from the joint account.
We buy gifts for family from the joint account but for friends from our own money.
I don't really spend money on grooming stuff besides soap and moisturiser which comes out of the household budget. I cut my own hair.

I can see it's not enough if you're sociable or well groomed, though 😁

@Peacoffee. Gosh I must be really boring. Or maybe we just like a simple life. We are in our early 50s and don't spend that much on those kinds of things. Meeting friends we generally go for a nice walk in the countryside or go to each other's houses or occasionally for coffee and cake. At weekends we like to tend to our vegetable garden, play board games, watch Netflix, go for

We don't have a mortgage but put £1800 a month into a joint account for all food and bills and other essential costs such as vehicle/house maintenance/service/repairs/insurance/holiday savings etc. Those are essential outgoings.

Then there are costs for stuff for teens and dog and anything DH and I want or need personally and things like presents, new glasses etc. That might be about £800 a month for everything between us, although DH and I have separate accounts for this as the teens are mine and he is responsible for the dog.

Total income is about £4000, so that leaves about £1400 which usually goes into savings, but if there is an unexpected expense or something needed for the house, less is saved that month. We are hoping to retire before we are 60, so are trying to live frugally and save as much as possible.

@summerfireplace, glad to hear there are other people like us around!

First paragraph of last post should end in 'go for walks'.

We’ve never even discussed having a budget for “fun” money.

After bills are paid, we both are in agreement to try to save the rest.

Some months I won’t spend anything, and then sometimes I’ll buy clothes, concert tickets and get my hair done in the same month.

We both live well within our means.

🙄

Do people really think frittering £750 a month on eating out and other "fun" is normal?!

It’s normal for some people. Just as not having any specific sum allocated for “fun” money is normal for others.

The concept of “fun money” to spend at the dentist has me cackling 😂

It's only on this thread it's called "fun money" I suppose, at home it's just our "monthly spends" and it definitely has to include our dentist fees.