To ask if you are a family of 4 and income is 2.5k or less??

[Goodbanana1]

How do you budget?
do you find it’s enough?
what do you feel you go without?

Housing costs will be the big one. £500 mortgage would be fine. £1000 not so much.

Not quite, but we are a family of 3 (1 adult, 2 kids) and income is about 2.4k pcm

It is enough to live on and have a couple of treats but it’s not the quality of life I wanted.

This. Our mortgage is £1003 a month. I'm on mat leave (unpaid) so our income is less than 2.5k atm. It's very tight.

Do you get to save anything at all? What do you do in emergencies (car issues etc?)

Yes that's us, family of 4, £2.5k per month after deductions.

£500 mortgage
Average energy costs (we are very frugal but live in an area with high prices so they cancel each other out)
£450 food, inc toiletries
£250 charitable giving
We run two cars, both old and owned outright.

That's the main expenses I think. We don't do expensive holidays, we go and stay with family or camp instead. We cut each other's hair etc. This is fine for us as we don't put any stock in being glamourous! Hobbies are free/cheap.

We save about £800 per month so we could theoretically afford a much bigger mortgage. But no thanks!

Family of 4 (me, late teens) plus several animals. Income just over 2k a month.

It's not so much the number of people in the household imo but the outgoings. I'm v lucky to have paid off the mortage so my biggest single outgoing is council tax, £340 pm. We don't have expensive commutes or child care to pay for.
We manage pretty well, we don't have/do some things that others take for granted - no Netflix, take aways etc and i rarely drink - but we have a car and i can generally provide everything we need inc things for dcs hobbies/interests. I'm a big reader/walker and neither of those things are expensive to do.

We've been on that income (after tax) at certain points (when the kids were little) , we chose this low income but no childcare costs, and organise our shifts so always one of us was with the kids, as in the past they didn't get free hours until the term after they turned 3 and it was only 15 hours. For a while when the eldest started primary, I got a full time job so we had to pay nursery 2 days a week for the little one, so my husband could retrain. Once the 30 hours free nursery for 3 year olds came in place we only paid after school care for 2 days, husband was doing most work at weekends, and during school hours. Housing is what normally breaks people in the UK, so our focus was to always have a small mortgage, but what we did to improve our quality of life and get a bigger house was buying a small home, that needed everything done, did it up on our days off (nightmare when you have little kids) my husband is great at DIY, what he doesn't know, he looks up and finds a way. We sold up moved to a bigger house with the same small mortgage (never had more than 110k mortgage, so never been more than £450/month) ,we have repeated this process 3 times. It's been very intense, and feel like we haven't had many days off in the last 12 years but we are in a very good position, now being mortgage free at 42. We did have a couple of years of higher income (the last 4 years), and now we are at £3.6k after tax but we have a big home, land etc. We don't do takeaways and I only eat out about 4-5 times a year for special occasions, we cook from scratch but eat very well, and we are big eaters- lots of protein, and fresh veg...try to keep the shopping for for under £130 including cleaning and hygiene products. In the last 12 years, only 4 abroad holidays (managed to get AI for a week for under £2k) and 1 UK mini break a year for the last 6 years (at no more than £500). Phone contract only data £5 each- we have 3 phones. No expensive clothes, buy a lot on vinted, and I am frankly a bargain hunter. I have to say: no benefits, no help from parents. It can be done, but it's not easy.

£250 charitable giving?!

Wow that's impressive. Fair play to you. And here's me pressing "No" when it asks if I want to round up my bill by 50p to donate to the British Red Cross😐

🤣 I click no to those too! We choose our charities carefully. I never ever give when pressured. I can't stand people arriving at your front door or assailing you on the street!
It's because we are Christians that we give around 10%. I appreciate it seems unusual!

Surely with teens you'd spend more in food a month than council tax? If you don't please share your secret! 🙏🙏

You’re left with £2.5k after deductions, which I believe is different to the question OP is asking (the same sum covering all deductions).

Oh that's a good point actually 😂 I was thinking about fixed/must pay bills and forgot about feeding the offspring. That can vary but we spend around £400/450 a month. Animal food is around £40 on top of that. We don't eat meat, which helps keep it down, rarely buy alcohol and never buy fizzy drinks as none of us particularly like them. We do have some sweet treats/crisps etc

I think by deductions the PP means tax, NI, pensions, student loan repayments etc so take home of £2,500 and I suspect that is what OP means too by referring to "income".

@SmaugTheMagnificentwhar about bills?

That is impressive. The only people I know who also give similar amounts are my muslim friends.

Family of 6 and I am the higher earner. My income is 2k a month
We survive simply because we dont have a choice

Edit to add - meant to quote @oustedbymymate post.

Well that's the rest! I did say I only specified the big expenditures.
£500 mortgage
£250 giving
£450 food
£800 savings
£500 remaining covers house maintenance, energy, broadband, council tax and car running costs. We don't have any subscriptions. Phone bills are minimal.

This is not true. In this case the company is acting as an “agent” for the charity, collecting money on the charity’s behalf. It is not a tax deductible donation for the company. By all means don’t round your bill up, but this isn’t a justification!

This is us. Family of four, earn £2600 between us. The mortgage is just over £1000 but we manage. Two cars, plenty of after school clubs, a few UK holidays a year. We have to be careful about big expenses but day to day stuff is fine. We don't have takeaways or eat out, except for special occasions, and have basic phones.

That's still amazing. We are around £520 a month I think, not including pet food or alcohol and same than you not a lot of snacks and not fizzy juice, unless we are hosting.

Sorry for the derail, OP

@LalalaLava the quote is correct if it's the company's own money, but where they are offering you the chance to round up, they are collecting as agent for the charity so it is not theirs, as PP said.

Edited to add - I don't know the exact prompt you used, but it is a good example of AI possibly missing the nuance of a question in its rush to give you the most likely answer if you didn't specify where they ask customers to donate to a named charity.