Would you be comfortable with this monthly expenditure

[Gardener85]

Take home after deductions - £2900
Bills (house related and Mortgage) - £1200
Bills (personal-petrol, phone, hair etc) - £200
Food (budget £15 a day so based on 30 day month) - £450
-Social (weekends, new clothes etc) - £250
-Savings/investments - £800

Any critiques welcome - Mortgage is to rise by £200 in August so savings pot will be £600. I feel like I may be being stingy on the social pot…

It's more than that for us-2 adults. Ours is about £75+ pw for 36 meals including some lunches.

That is absolutely ridiculous. I’m in Ireland where Food is actually a bit more expensive. I just went down to ChatGPT and asked her to do me a shop based on what you just said in Tesco here and I asked to keep it under €200. It gave me ample food and a meal plan that suited your ideas for around 180ish and even with extra meat, it would’ve been €200. Adding €50 worth of treats and you’re still spending less.

Well yes unfortunately. Not really their fault.

Strange take. I worked in food production (processed stuff like cakes) part-time when I was studying. Believe me, the Mr. Kipling, the Waitrose and the Lidl all come off the same line and go into a different box.

All the meat comes from an animal and all the fruit and vegetables come from a farm regardless of which shop you buy it in and how much they charge you.

Unless you're buying everything from your organic butcher and your local bakery, you're just paying different prices from different shops for the same food.

It’s mad! I’ve just checked what we spent for May, so that’s 5 big shops. The total of the main shopping bills comes to just over £1k so £200 per week which is acceptable.
then we have about 30 little top ups during the month which come to £660!!!!! Those would be for running out of cleaning products, running out of fruit (very often), running out of nuts (we love them), yogurt. Who know what else!!

I am honestly shocked and will have to start monitoring what on earth is costing so much!!

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

Stop the top up shops. It’s too easy to ho in for a half dozen apples and come out with £20 worth of things you didn’t need. Stick to a routine and if you run out, do without.

Many are struggling to pay their bills. Unfortunately pension can't be their priority understandably.

It might be worth bulk buying nuts from somewhere possibly online…

@Katie717 what do you think is a suitable amount to put in to a pension if £1000 is insufficient?

I just don’t do top ups. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. I make sure I meal plan so the perishables are eaten earlier in the week, and don’t see anything wrong with waiting if the strawberries have run out. The only thing I do top up on is milk. But even that only happens once in a blue moon.

Food cost have gone insane. I pop to little Tesco to pick up maybe some veg and a couple of bits. I don’t even need a bag it’s that little an amount (think 3/4 items) yet I rarely pay less than £15. I used to get the same for around £7-8.

As for running out of cleaning products…I think I by cleaning products
every 2-3 months and we have a very clean house with 4 toilets to clean. I use floor wipes a lot though I do admit and I find them amazing! (Bought in Lidl at 79c a pack!) so they are in every second shop. They smell fab and clean sinks etc so so well. I use a kitchen spray on the island and counter every evening at least and that never seems to run out, I use a basic think bleach in the toilets a few times a week.

Only you know what you are spending and therefore if what's left over is genuinely left over.

Personally I would do the Money Saving Expert budget tool, as that encourages you to look at absolutely everything over a full year.

I'm not sure whether you're wanting your savings to be actually long term savings or dipping into them throughout the year. What stands out to me (although you may have just not specified) is that there is nothing allocated for the non-regular items such as car MOT and wear and tear, dentist, extra christmas spending, birthday presents etc etc. so I'm assuming that comes out of your current savings pot and you may find there's not much left.

I think you could spend less on food but it depends if you want to.

Children only become cheaper with time if you have high childcare costs that they grow out of. Otherwise they get more expensive (clothes, clubs, trips, pocket money etc).

Social is difficult because of course some people have literally nothing left as a social budget so if you had no money left you'd literally just have to spend nothing. I would agree that if you're not scrimping every penny, yours is quite low. £250 for clothes and spending for 3 people doesn't go very far.

Personally I put lunch and coffees in my social budget. I really enjoy treating myself on my office days (and regular coffee and a nice sandwich would be my preference over an annual holiday!) But effectively you are choosing to spend this and so having this in your social pot will help you think about whether that is more important to you than an extra day out or a nice winter coat (or whatever floats your boat).

Meanwhile, back on planet earth...

£40/week for 2 weeks, £60/week for 2 weeks. Can scan you my receipts if you like lol. Deodorant is 60p every 2m, moisturiser £3 every 2m (I stockpile on offer), toothpaste £1 every 6weeks maybe. They do cleaning spray tablets that are 3 tablets for £1.10 that you dilute with water. I batch cook everything so I can eat healthily as I'm a Dr and work crazy hours

I also only include toothpaste and basic shampoo in the shopping toiletry wise. Shampoo for me and dd, moisturiser and deodorant etc is separate

Now I have just read the outcome of a study - the end result is they want to force supermarkets to support healthy living because the risk to the future NHS is too great

theu point out that 1000 healthy calories costs 8.80 compared to 4.40 for 1000 unhealthy ones and that needs to change

( these will be generic averages and it will be possible to beat them - because they are averages. And it will include meat most days because most families want to eat meat )

so 8.80 for 1000 calories

per day
child 1 - 1000 calories
child 2 - 1500
mum - 1500
dad - 2500
thats 6500 calories needed per day

£57 pounds a day or £400 a week for a family of 4 eating healthy

so anyone doing way less than that is
probably eating little meat , possibly supplementing with home grown , having the ability to shop around and go to cheap stores and almost certainly not having a particular healthy diet

I think she is being sarcastic

We eat healthy for way less than that in Ireland.
I have had a think about the meals we’ve had this week,
We had

Chicken stir-fry with brown rice + mixed veg
Bolognese with wholewheat pasta & side salad (only 2 of us had side salad though)
Salmon fillets with baby potatoes & greens
Butternut squash and lentil curry with rice & naan
Homemade fish fingers & oven chips with peas
Sausage & vegetable traybake
Roast chicken with carrots, broccoli and potatoes

breakfast are a mix of cereal, granola, fruit, eggs etc

Lunches we had
Leftover chicken stirfry made into wraps
Leftover curry
Tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches with salad
Ham and cheese toasties

We went out for lunch one day (separate budget) and visited a friend another day so had lunch at theirs (we are on school holidays)…

Today is Sunday and we’re having the roast chicken dinner. We have had breakfast so far as we had a lie in. I’ll make dinner soon. And the kids will probably have a snack later this evening.

Family of two eating fairly healthily here. I listed what we eat previously in the thread. ~£60 per week.