To wonder why it feels like we have no money?

[Wheredoesitgo]

DH and I earn well between us. We aren’t mega wealthy or even close but we should be very comfortable and I just feel like we aren’t.

I just feel like we have no money? DH is self employed and had a tough few months last year and the tax return coming up isn’t helping but even month to month my earnings just seem to disappear with not a lot to show for it…

Would love to go away (2 primary school aged DC) but a week in Spain in July (just before school holidays by a few days to try and reduce the pride a bit!) is coming in at around £1100 plus each for a week AI (we spend less this way with the kids than self catering usually as they are fussy). They need spring/summer wardrobes but feel like I can’t really buy new and can only afford bundles on Vinted which I never find exactly what I want.

I dread the food shop as there’s just no way to get it cheaper.

I’d love some new boots but can’t justify the cost.

As I said we earn quite well so it just seems crazy to me that things feel so tight - anyone else in the same boat?!

It feels like you have no money because your expectations are high, lifestyle creep and you're spending it on things like £400 a month for a car. On your income, you definitely have money.

I think you'd be better off buying your second car outright rather than PCP. About six or seven years old, and bog standard plain vanilla, but chose it for reliability, provable mileage and low service/parts costs.

You need to post your outgoings really.

At £130k your income is high, it's about top 5% and about 2.5 times average.

So either you have high unavoidable bills (can happen in areas with high housing costs) or you spend too much.

Inflation & wage stagnation

I feel exactly the same and have an income similar to your's (sits steadily in the middle of your income range).
I can't figure out where it is going but suspect food and teenagers.
We don't even have car leases to pay but do have high fuel costs. We should really be able to save about 3k a month on paper which is just ridiculous that it is disappearing!

our monthly mortgage went up around £700 per month when our fixed term ended!

this will make a dent

Your income is almost £10,000 a month

You're definitely spending on stuff you can cut down on unless your mortgage is £6000 a month and your nursery fees are £2000

We have disproportionately high mortgage compared to wages, it's almost two thirds of our entire income. Now THATS high

Theoretically I have about £1500 a month n
that could go into savings but it never happens because life happens. Christmas wiped me out and now the car needs four new tyres. Everything is expensive OP,, I sympathise, look at your food shop, that's the only thing I have been able to save on.

It isn't 10k a month, closer to 8k which is quite a difference

£400 a month for a car is a huge amount. That's a good first place to cut back.

I'm sure if you wrote a list of your income and outgoings, there would be other things on there that would surprise you.

OK. A small start which is what we did. Things like trampoline parks , farms and ' paid' days out we rarely do. When we do , take a drink, food to eat in the car after . We occasionally buy them a slush puppy or whatever is there.
Days out tend to be parks , forest, walks, bike rides and so forth.

Shopping. Meal plan-list-Stick to it

£130,000 is £10,800 per month.

Definitely not 10k!

Our mortgage is high but unavoidable. Car costs, phone bill (though I just cut mine down to sim only as contract expired woohoo)

Wraparound childcare, swimming, birthdays, occasional train commute.

DH has an older DC so pays maintenance.

Food bill I budgeted £500 but have gone slightly over (think would have been ok if January wasn’t a longer month).

£200 I set aside for family treats = days out, takeaways, meals out. This is gone.

I try and save a couple of hundred a month.

Council tax is high, utilities seem to have crept up.

I don’t know there doesn’t seem to be much more to cut back on.

£130,000 is £10,800 per month

Gross, do you think tax & NI is easy to avoid? 😆

@verycloakanddaggers pre tax. Tax, pension, student loan take a big chunk of that

I highly recommend Monzo. Every time you use your card it pings on your phone so you are more aware of spending. Also each purchase or DD can very quickly be put into different categories, groceries, entertainment, travel etc. You get a monthly and annual summary. It's very forensic and will show you exactly where each penny is going.

@ScattyOnlySomeOfTheTime yes cant wait for slightly better weather to have more free day out options!

Tax, national insurance...

Put away the tax for the business monthly into a high interest savings account

Pay your savings first before anything else

You need an App like Scoop or YNAB to track all your spending and categorise it so you can see how much you are spending on what. I would also fill in the Money Saving expert budget spreadsheet so you have a full grasp of ALL costs across a year, no matter how big or small, including one-off costs like garden waste subscription, or dentist,’accountant, National trust, Mother’s Day gifts, school photos, nights out etc etc. will give you a full and realistic picture of how much you are currently spending and how much technically you should have left over each month / year

I always find these posts interesting, because DH & I have always been the exact opposite. We always feel like we have surplus cash, and we never budget. Over the years we've earned between 50-90K between, so comfortable, but not loaded. We can never seem to spend the money we have, there's nothing I can think of that I particularly want to spend it on.

So what have we done differently to you?

1. Bought a house way cheaper than we could afford, in case one of us got made redundant or wanted time out to look after children.
2. Live in a relatively cheap part of the midlands.
3. All cars bought cash, with whatever savings we had. Current cars are 14 and 19 years old, still doing fine, had them both for years, no plans to upgrade.
4. Buy the cheapest brands of foods, unless they taste minging - always worth trying though, and the vast majority taste exactly the same..
5. Cheap UK holidays when kids were young, went to France, Eurocamp, when they got a bit older (we've been on more expensive long haul holidays since the pandemic, but only because we have so much surplus income).
6. Rarely bought new clothes for the kids, got tons of hand me downs from nephews and nieces.
7. Rarely spend money on clothes for ourselves either, if we do, also usually 2nd hand, loads of charity shops here, with racks of jeans etc.
8. None of us overeat, rarely waste food.
9. I much prefer a lovely walk in the peak district to an amusement park. If we do go, we always take sandwiches, I always take a flask of tea. I don't care how much money I've got, I'm not paying £4 for a cup of tea - which is generally my mentality about most spending TBH, everything is just a rip off and I refuse to pay it. With the trampoline park, I'd just take bottles of water (filled up from the tap at home), no way on this planet would I spend anything there apart from the fee to get in. You're only there for like 2 hours or something anyway?
10. DH is a very good cook and loves it, it is honestly better than most restaurants, so we rarely eat out. The occasional takeaway and that's it.
11. Never had gym memberships, completely don't get them, just go outside.

£4.4k for one week holiday in Spain? No way is that cheaper than self catering.

You either don’t earn well or you’re not good with money if you dread a food shop or don’t have money for a pair of boots

My DH earns £135k (and I earn £12k as a TA and I can assure you we don’t take home £10k a month. By the time you pay 45% tax, it’s about £6.5k. Not the point of the thread but by time we pay our mortgage (which isn’t massive), bills, petrol and DH’s £1k a month train fare to actually get him to the job where he earns the money, we also aren’t left with a massive amount. Not pleading poverty at all, we are very lucky. But people’s perceptions of a £135+ salary and the lifestyle that it entails is very different to reality. Yes we can go on holiday but last year it was a week in Italy and travelling on trains rather than a 5* hotel in the Maldives. We have 2 teenage boys, one of which is at Uni. It’s costing us £8.5k a year for his accomodation as the maintenance loan doesn’t cover it. The other one is 14 and growing faster than a weed so costing a fortune in food, shoes and clothes. The cost of everything has gone up.

Yes, similar to us. We have 3 young children and household income is about £50k-ish. We live a pretty frugal lifestyle in some ways but we definitely don't feel hard done by or that we can't have treats or that the kids are missing out. I think the only thing I miss is holidays abroad but even then for logistical reasons it's probably more enjoyable/peaceful to stay in the UK whilst the kids are all so young anyway. As I suppose we could do say one hol abroad every 3 years or a UK hol every year and I'd rather have every year so even that's a choice like.