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?!

Have you looked at salary sacrifice for your car (worth seeing if your company do it).
I do agree with leasing being simple etc but you don't need it to be £400. You can get a new car for £250 a month. It might not be as nice but reliable.

But why did you let the fixed term expire? Are you paying the higher rate now? We got a mortgage while both of us were self employed, you just need to shop around. Using a broker will get you a much better deal then going straight to a bank.

Get as long a mortgage term as you can to reduce costs. Then save save save save and then overpay the mortgage (standard is 10% per year make sure this is possible) once you have a limp saved.

Get rid of the expensive car on lease. Either get a cheaper lease car or buy something outright.

We recently did the painful sitting down, documenting everything we spent, creating a huge spreadsheet with multiple tabs to see where we had been spending.

Reviewed all bills and stopped or switched where we could. We have x4 bank accounts used for different expenditure and it's really, really helped. For the first time in ages I've been and today and actually had some money left!

I do small things too like take breakfast, lunch and snacks to work and always take out when going out with the children. We then gage enough for a lunch or meal out occasionally which we plan and is a real treat. Plus I've sold loads of stuff on Vinted and used this pot of money to buy me and the children new clothes- takes a bit of time but has worked really well!

Put the hours in to get on top of it - you can do it! I feel so much more in control as a result.

Good luck.

It won't be nearly this. DH is self employed so is presumably paying himself via dividends so closer to 10% plus corporation tax. Both of them have a nil rate so aren't paying tax on the first 20k of 130k anyway then only 20% on OPs (assuming salaried) job up to 40k.

OP you still haven't given us any detailed break down. The fact that you have been so vague makes be wonder if you are struggling with facing the reality of your spending.

Can you give us actual monthly numbers for...

Mortgage
Childcare
Insurance house/car/life
Gas/electric/water
TV subscriptions
Petrol
Food
Kids extra curriculars
Car lease.
Other monthly spends

Until you work out what these are you can't see where you need to focus your attention. Larger outgoings firsts are you will make the biggest difference there.

It sounds like your DH attitude is a problem. Does he realise your situation isn't great? Not having savings when your outgoings are so high is really risky and you should focus on this. Having 6 months income would be ideal but it sounds like you are both just massive spenders rather then savers which is a difficult habit to overcome.

You say that you can't see where you can cut back, but without the full picture, it's impossible to say, but I'd bet that you could make quite a lot of savings.

Eg, you mention food at attractions ('gosh don’t the kids add up. We went to a trampoline place the other weekend at it was £50 all in by the time you added drinks and sandwich') - this is an obvious place to start. It's almost always expensive for poor quality at the end of a long queue. Even if you can easily afford it, it's an unattractive choice if you think about it. Eat at home before or after, take a picnic/snacks, eat somewhere else on the way. Loads of ways to avoid paying a fortune for shit food.

For days out, look at discounts, almost always ways to get it cheaper. Look what memberships and annual passes are available and rotate round so you do different ones over time - National Trust one year, English Heritage the next for example. That gives you access to country parks with free entry where DC can run around. Or free parking at the beach - see what's available where you can easily travel to. Take a picnic of course.

Your DHs attitude to money sounds problematic. And without a review of your spending, it's likely you'll always feel like you're struggling, because you're always fire fighting, rather than planning and being mindful about your spending.

Can you move your money into different pots and accounts so essentials are covered, tax, large purchases, emergency fund and annual and irregular things like Christmas, holidays, insurance, car replacement etc is covered and then you have a pot of money remaining that can be divided for family days out plus some personal money for each of you? So you'd have money for new boots etc.

Have a look at Moneysaving Expert budgeting advice, but without getting your DH on board, he could be undoing any good work faster than anything constructive you're doing.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/

We're in same boat, and last year's holiday was a static caravan on the Welsh coast. My advice would be to lower your expectations with holidays and treats. Also one day the kids will hopefully be less dependent and earning their own money!

Write everything down or put into a spreadsheet. Include everything, the bar of chocolate you bought at the checkout, the coffee you got, the new pencil case for one of your DC.

You need to know what your DH's income is.

I would try to budget all the essentials from your salary and put your husband's into a savings account.

The savings account pays the tax bill first, then it can pay for treats (including a holiday). If he has a bad month or two then you don't have as many treats. Don't allow this account to go below a certain limit.

I do a 'council tax saving', when I get my bill in April I pay it in as short a time as I can so I might pay it over 3-6 months, once it is paid off I put the same amount in a savings account.

You can get some higher interest accounts although you are limited in how much you can save a month, I have one that pays 6% and another that pays 6.5% (I know if I don't actually get that because the money can only be put in over the year not a lump sum).

If you are going out for a trip take a packed lunch and a flask. Trips put do not need to be expensive, you don't need to go to a trampoline plce you can go to a park or a playground.

@Cerialkiller he is a sole trader not limited company.

outgoings:
mortgage 2400
child maintenance 750
council tax 300
utilities 300
childcare 300
swimming lessons 80
insurances/car tax etc 225
food £500 (although I went over on this last month)
train for twice a month commute 180
school dinners for older child £50
fuel approx 140
sky/broadband/netflix/mobiles 250 ish (includes DHs business phone etc so a portion of this is tax deductible but the outgoings are the same)
savings £200
Extra curricular for eldest - £50
Emergency fund 300 (we had to delete this recently for our boiler so this is non negotiable)
£200 put away for treats and weekend activities

this leaves us with around £300 per month left. Which is not close to enough to go abroad at the moment.

I think the cost of living is just rising and not helped by our high outgoings.

@Bjorkdidit yes I think a big problem is lack of ‘working together’ financially with DH which has always been an issue

For many this is true, but it's not the case for OP, and for many other high earners who chose houses larger than then need, with the according very high mortgage. I'd be interested to know what sort of house OP has.

Your house is costing about 3k a month, I know it was touched on earlier but I would at downsizing. Assume you are band G , there must be something smaller in your area you can move to. Appreciate it's not easy to do and not something done overnight like cancelling Netflix.

Why isn't he limited? It costs a few pounds and you get all kinds of benefits?

Depending how old your cat is you'd have been better cancelling the pet insurance and carrying on with the swimming lessons. Pet insurance companies are notorious for not paying out when they get to a certain age/health level. I'm assuming in this case your cat is relatively young or has a pre existing condition that is covered, but it may help other posters save costs 🙂

OP I empathise, getting to a 6 figure household felt like a huge achievement but the lifestyle definitely didn't meet my expectations after these few years in particular. We have a similar income and our mortgage is about to increase, I still have to watch our money very carefully. The £750 child maintenance likely isn't something many are doing (not saying to stop that!) and wraparound childcare isn't forever.

Your mortgage payment will reduce relatively speaking to your wages as wages increase. How much longer for student loans? (I only ask as I'm nearly done with my plan 1 loans, despite spending much of my 20s part time/mat leave etc).

Ok. From your budget it is obvious where the issues are.

The CM bill is big but nothing you can do about that, but it is £750 a month many others will not be spending.

Your communications bill is enormous! We have two mobiles, Netflix and 150Mbit/s FTTP broadband and the total monthly bill is around £60.

Your mortgage is also huge. I assume you got hit by the interest rates going up recently.

@denhaag we don’t have an extravagant house. It’s a 4 bed newish build on an estate. We need a 4 bed due to 2DC and 1 SDC.

Downstairs is a kitchen diner and a lounge. Hardly crazy.

Everything has just gone up OP.
We are in a similar situation- earn slightly less than you, in the SE.
DH had a 16% pay rise on a very good salary 3 years ago (and subsequent smaller pay rises since) and we are worse off now than we were. We’ve not made any big changes- same cars, same kids, same house, 1 uk holiday per year but we are now finding there is no money left and we are in our over drafts and putting things like kids xmas gifts or school trips on credit cards.
Its totally crazy because we had the same lifestyle for 10+ years but the last 2 have been the worst.
I mainly blame the mortgage rise. All the spare money we had is now just sucked into the mortgage repayments. We also had a huge increase when out deal ended.
Just have to do less things OP, be really careful with spending, look for deals on everything all the time including bills like insurance and phones / energy

@Ginmonkeyagain yes our mortgage went up from 1500 to 2400

sky/broadband/netflix/mobiles 250 ish (includes DHs business phone etc so a portion of this is tax deductible but the outgoings are the same)

You can get this down a lot.

Broadband should be around £30 for fast full fibre. Always be on a deal - either change providers at the end of each contract or call your existing provider and ask for a discount to stay. Moneysavingexpert lists the deals etc.

Sim only phone for around £10 per person per month max - this generally gives unlimited calls and texts and more Gb of data than anyone needs. Replace phones every few years but always look for a deal - I generally pay around £200 max every 3 years and sell my old phone on eBay for around £50 so averages out at under a fiver a month for the phone.

Pay for one or two streaming services each month and change every few months when you get bored/something you want to watch appears on one of the other services.

All the above should cost less than half what you're paying now.

Make a difference to what? She's wondering where all her money is going and subscriptions are something people often overlook with budgets, and some couples have a lot of seperate subscriptions, I wasn't telling her to cancel them.

I need to sit down with DH. He’s always been weird with money (separate accounts etc) and so I don’t know exactly what he spends and where, whereas mine is budgeted to the penny

i have a feeling nipping to the shop to get an oven pizza/beers/crisps will account for lots of DHs wasted money tbh.

A lot of the comms bill is sky - will talk to DH about cancelling it but it’s another one he’s sure we need 😑I think most of our overspending is him to be honest

You are saving £800 per month if you include the emergency fund, holiday and savings? That’s a huge amount!

@WhiteLily1 we don’t save for holidays.

we save £500 - £200 into an ISA and £300 emergency (which is to refill it as we had to fix a few household things recently, plus a car tyre and service)

Until you sort this, you're always going to struggle. He could be spending hundreds of pounds a month on money you're not seeing and if he cut down a bit, there's your holiday money right there.

You also need to save money each month for things like car servicing - this is an essential cost that should be accounted for before he gets to 'nip to the shop for pizza, beer and crisps'. If he does that once a week and spends £20, that's over £1k per year.

His selfishness/apathy/whatever is denying you and his DC a holiday.

I do agree with this and I also hear what you're saying OP. DH and I earn similarly (£125k combined income) and things have gone up a lot in the last few years where wages haven't, so suddenly where we previously felt very comfortable we now feel like we have to be watching our spending.

We looked closely at our budget a couple of years ago to see where money was going apart from mortgage (which is high because we're South East England) and childcare fees (also high!) Honestly......most of it was just being frittered. We completely stopped the random meals out so if we do have a day trip somewhere we take a packed lunch. That was after we went to the café at a zoo and paid about £50 for some really crap sandwiches and cold chips for four people. I said "no more" and now we take our own lunch and it's not only way cheaper but also usually nicer.

We also stopped the gym memberships and bought an exercise bike instead. I go on that at home or will go out for a walk, DH goes for a run. Saves us £100 a month.

Holidays we go abroad every other year and isn't always a very expensive abroad holiday e.g. this year we're driving to France and self catering for 4 nights and that will be our foreign holiday for the next couple of years.

£400 a month on a car is expensive. We tend to save up, buy a car outright and drive it until it becomes too expensive to fix. I've had my car 10 years and it's going strong. I would like a fancy car but it's just not worth the money to me.