What's a reasonable amount to budget for eating out/take aways /coffees each month?

[Slothisavirtue]

If you are trying to get control of your finances? This is for someone with around £3000/month income (a mix of benefits and part time work). Their rent is only £750/month though and other fixed outgoings are fairly low (they rent from another family member which helps).

They've got teenage twins and two primary age children.

It's a family member and I am trying to get them to take control of their finances as they spend all their money every month and have nothing left for unexpected expenses). Am struggling to figure out what to suggest for eating out because at the moment they are sending nearly £400/month on it , whereas I probably don't spend a tenth of that. I want to be fair though as I am probably the opposite extreme, and I don't really eat out because I have allergies and it just never feels like the hassle

Any good websites /guides we could use ?

as well as mcdonalds, non-chain kebab shops, pizza and fried chicken places all have options under £10 a head, and if you use vouchers/deals you can get dominos for less than that. Sure, it won't get you indian or chinese, but there are lots of options if you're not fussy and just want food made for you.

For me, habits and behaviour help a lot.

If I go out to the shops after eating then I’m less likely to end up hungry and buy food. Same with hot drinks- if I have a coffee before I go out then I’m less likely to want one. Obviously I can take a travel cup out with me but a bit of planning so I’m not hungry or thirsty helps me.

If she’s “addicted” then limiting the meals out to say every other weekend rather than every week could help. If she’s goes to a chain then it’s worth looking at if they do a midweek discount. For example Dominoes used to do discounts on Tuesdays.

They can and do.

5 people? £20 each will get you a main course and a non alcoholic drink or two at many pubs or restaurants.

They are spending the money. But it's causing problems in other areas. Presumably if the washing, or whatever, broke tomorrow they'd have to get a loan for a new one. Far better to use the savings that OP is looking to help them build up.

Or coffees.

Just google Starling. It's just an extra current account.

I think the suggestion of one month with nothing at all makes sense.

For our lives we only do a takeaway on payday weekend. It is a real treat then. It's not if you have it all the time. My kids look forward to it a lot.

I do think it must be hard if you live near so many options though. Too easy when tired or running late to just grab takeway

I would advise saving pots e.g Christmas, birthdays, holidays and the money goes in as soon as it's received. Bills, groceries etc are accounted for and then see how much fun money is left over.
Sounds like the whole family needs to learn how to cook and get used to taking packed lunches and coffees etc.

Or to get full time jobs.

I'm astonished that you consider doing without takeaways and coffee out of the house to be extreme frugality. In my book that would be buying only the cheapest version of everything, buying only things you actually need, doing the rounds of all the shops to price everything before buying anything, and so on. All of which many of us have done when needs must.

If you present cutting back slightly as if it was extreme frugality then you're more likely not to get buy in. Your friend will think you're suggesting something dramatic and possibly unworkable instead of some modest changes.

I've said several times already that I rarely eat out as I have allergies, so I genuinely have little idea what the norm is or what is reasonable. I find eating out stressful rather than pleasurable.
What I was trying to convey is that I don't think it will work for her to go no-spend in one go, it has to be a gradual transition.

£3k a month with benefits is a large amount and this family clearly cannot budget or work out where they are spending their money!

The benefits system is broken and isnt going to be fixed anytime soon (the 2 child cap is about to be removed) making things worse.

£250. Get them to buy a thermal cup for coffees while out and about. Or take coffee bags or sachets to work, to avoid being tempted to join the coffee run.

Get them to look at the Indian and Chinese food deals in supermarkets. You can often get a big bag of starters or sides, mains and rice or noodles for about £12 for two people (and there's usually some left over.) Encourage them to add some ready meals to the weekly shop, to store in the freezer and then be heated on days they fancy take out. It takes no longer to heat up ready meals from frozen than to order takeaways and wait for them to arrive.

Suggest every time they buy one of these deals they put the money they saved from a take out or restaurant meal into a savings account for something they want or badly need but can;t afford.

Then go out to a restaurant once a month as a treat and lookout for special offers and fixed price menus.

DH and I eat out far more now than we used to, but we often just go for a bowl of noodles or bento box at a Japanese place for about £10-12 rather than a full dinner with wine. It's delicious and affordable.

At the moment, yes.

Top priority if I had any spare cash would be replacing my two remaining single glazed windows, so we are warm.

Coffees and a takeaway don't even come in to it. 😁

Surely it depends how much is left over after all bills including the allocated food shop & petrol/travelling budget?

We have approx £2000 left over that’s unallocated money. We both take £300 each “fun money” to do what we want (can be coffees when alone, eating out with friends, personal treats such as makeup, clothes etc) and £150 goes into the Revolut for couples fun such as date nights, coffees out, takeaways, cinema etc so if we wanted to grab a coffee whilst out when together it would come from this. If I was alone I would use my £300.

So between the two of us we have around £750 money we could spend on coffees, eating out but we would never spend that much as we use it for other thing. Between the two of us I would say we probably spend around £200/£300 max of that money on that.

When you're trying to take control of your finances you work out your essential expenditure, food, rent, utilities, clothes, insurances and travel; how much needs to be saved for short term stuff like birthdays and Christmas; how much you should save in case the washing machine breaks or the car fails its MOT; and ideally how much for the longer term future.
After all that's been put aside, what's left is what you have for coffees and eating out.

That's the thing. We've done this and on paper she has plenty of disposable income as quite a lot of her fixed costs (eg rent) are low, but in practice she never has any left at the end of the month.

Get her to keep a diary of every penny she spends for a week. She needs to understand where its going.

I'm confused about how they can get £3,000 per month when she only works part-time. Is some of that money for a child with disabilities? It seems an awful lot if not.

Shes possibly deliberately working under 16 hours so that she can keep benefits, then with 4 children and as a single parent probably adds up. A bit galling for those of us who work full time, bring up kids and don't have 'plenty of disposable income'!

Maybe make it a 'fun' challenge - no takeaway January. After that they can see what they really missed and what they can easily do without.

No disabilities, its just universal credit /child benefit

It's not surprising that the country is fed up with the benefits bill is it!

There is a great sense of entilement especially amongst benefit claimants that this is money for them to spend as they wish. Of course it is but £3k per month is huge (probably not for them)

They see others have takeways, Costa Coffee is rammed and they often dont see why they shouldnt get these things too.

I have to say you are probably on a hiding to nothing with trying to show where they are spending their money. They MUST know.. Yet they carry on with junk food take ways which can add up especially if you supersize things or over order (and then just scoff it).

I had a friend who struggled with budgeting mainly because she didnt want to stop the Costa on the way to work, the take aways that were often hitting nearly £100 because she said she was too tired to cook. And this was someone who was working full time but certainly wasnt taking home £3k.