AIBU to worry that £1000 a month after bills is not enough?

[OhFuckety]

We have had a sudden drop in income. We didn't have loads to begin with but now we have even less and I'm panicking a bit.

After all bills but without food, we will have very slightly £1000 left. There's just me and DH. Is this doable? I've budgeted to within an inch of my life and cut ALL necessary crap but I'm thinking food/toiletries/household stuff is going to eat away about £150 a week of that at least.

We have no way of earning more for the time being but DH hopes to change jobs in the new year which will hopefully bump up our income by about £150pm.

Tell me I'm being a twat and this is completely possible and we'll still have enough for the occasional nice thing!

Take a look online for your glasses, you will be amazed at the difference in cost compared to the high st. I have used Specs by Post. Excellent quality and service.

Also, don't waste your money on cleaning products. Look up Nancy Birtwistle. Or any alt cleaning info online. Save you a lot of money.

This looks doable. Crikey seeing it all written out like that is so reassuring. Thank you.

I think I could do £500 for food/all groceries (toiletries, cleaning products etc) then just reduce other bits down a little bit to accommodate that.

Thank you 💐

Hang on, what?

You said AFTER bills.
So all the bills are paid..does that include food/fuel/necessary commute costs etc.

And the £1k is fun money???

Because if so...WOW.

What's your overall income and what's the cause of the drop in income? You mention health issues so I wondered if one or both of you has had to reduce your hours.(Not judging just trying to consider if you might be able to access additional income from benefits?). Your baseline expenses of HA rent, no car, and wfh must be v low so £1000pm disposable income leftover seems low?

No worries! And if you get an account like Monzo or Chase you can create separate savings accounts/buckets to build up those Christmas/emergency/rainy day pots so you keep to budget.

You realise some of us are not able to pay some of the bills and feeding families of 4 or more on a lot less. You learn what is an absolute necessity and what is a luxury and if you can’t afford luxuries you don’t have them.

To be absolutely fair, we weren't living beyond our means because we could afford it. And we were saving £200pm at least too. We were never overdrawn and in no debt whatsoever so were actually living well within our means.

Yes we were buying a couple of bottles of wine a week and bits of fancy cheese/treats or whatever when we went shopping without worrying, but we could definitely afford it.

Our rent is pretty much market rent but we live in a very cheap area thankfully (it's £620pm).

Sounds fine to me with minimal transport costs. Why not have a tight year with a quiet Christmas and no holidays to build up some savings? Do you have savings? Not having an emergency fund is how people get in trouble. I’d start budgeting tightly until there was at least £5k in reserve.
Treats are so much more enjoyable when you’ve been discerning about what you most want and still have security with savings.

My top tip would be to announce NOW to friends and family you’ll be having a no gifts year. It’s often such a waste of money people swapping gifts.

You should still be able to save a bit, maybe not £200 if you want to do some stuff out of the house every now and then, but surely you can still save a bit.
Say £500 for food/toiletries/cleaning (that should be plenty unless you want to buy fancy creams out of this budget)
£200 for socialising (going for a pint, cinema, a coffee, a lunch out)
£150 unexpected expenses/buffer
£150 save
I don't see the problem, you've got enough and you can save...maybe not as much as before, but you should have some spare and be able to do something and not being in the house all the time.

I don’t think you’re fucked at all, who needs to buy clothes each month? If you have the budget to allow it then of course buy what you like but if you don’t then just cut back. Toiletries aren’t that expensive (depending what you buy). I think it’s more than doable £1000 a month.

Already shop at Lidl and Aldi which is why we've been able to be a bit freer with buying treats and things - even the treats are quite affordable there! But yes, the days of trolley chucking are well and truly over.

Will definitely look at online opticians, thank you.

No, not including food/dentist/opticians etc.

If I had £1k a month fun money I'd be absolutely delighted!

I know you welcome tough truth but I just wanted to offer some kindness because you will have plenty of people jumping on you. I know how you feel. Although I've never slept rough but I had my time sofa surfing and grew up in absolute poverty with my mum frequently going hungry to afford to buy me some bread. So I absolutely get the paralysing fear when your income drops and you can't top up your savings account all of a sudden.
But I think you are catastrophisisng. I posted my previous comment before reading that you don't have a car and WFH. So that's a very big chunk of expenses you don't need to worry about.
My best advice is to put agreed amount into savings every month the day after your pay check arrives. This is something I've been doing for years both when I worked minimum wage job and now when I am earning relatively well. It's the best habit you can develop. Then, you do the best you can with the money you have left. It's absolutely possible.

Go on Denplan, small monthly DD, covers check-ups, cleans etc… Not sure if there’s an equivalent for the Opticians.

It should be possible Or at least £150 to save Can't imagine what you are spending so much on after bills with no car, commuting costs kids etc

Depends how much the dentist is around you. My private dentist also actually quite competitive and it works out better value to jsut set aside £20 a month as that covers check ups, X-rays, 2 x hygienist and leaves some left over if I did need something more doing. Whereas the Bupa by me wanted £24 a month and that would only cover check ups and hygienist. Worth doing a price comparison.

Also look for ways to make extra bits of money or to get things at a discount, the weekly Moneysaving Expert newsletter has lots of ideas.

Recently I've switched my bank account a few times and made about £700.

Always use quidco for cashback. Take the vouchers as cashback for M&S for the 5% boost.

If you live in the area covered by Northern Rail, there's currently a promotion running where you can buy a day ticket for £12 pp (you do have to buy a couple of newspapers too) that allows you to go anywhere on it's network. Last week I travelled to Chester and Manchester for the day and I'm going on the Settle to Carlisle railway at the weekend.

Look at annual passes if there's places you go often - National Trust, Art Pass etc. Take a packed lunch and flask to avoid queuing for ages to spend a lot of money on shit food in the cafe. Or buy a supermarket meal deal or share a portion of fish and chips (because it's almost always enough for two) away from the main attraction.

Put all your spending on a cashback credit card that's paid off in full every month

Never buy or do anything without searching for a voucher code. Eat out at lunchtime or other off peak times as often cheaper.

Compared with just paying the headline price, it's quite easy to save quite a bit and after a while it becomes second nature.

Between us we have about £4k saved which is our rainy day/essentials fund (we draw on it to pay dentist/optician bills for example, and used to use about £500 a year of it for a couple of weekends away/Christmas etc but we would put that back in so it was stable at about £4k). So that is there for now but will diminish quite quickly and we can't replenish it as things stand.

We don't have any friends or family but we do treat each other at Christmas and have nice food. We've already said that for this year we will spend £50 on each other (usually it's closer to £200 but again, it was saved for and we could afford it). Hopefully next year things will be a bit better.

No it includes food

Your food shopping can absolutely be less than £150 a week. I don’t spend that much, shopping at Tesco, for a family of 4, including a teen and a late primary age child, both of whom are sporty and eat a lot. Dh and I wfh so that also includes all our lunches too, plus cleaning products and toiletries.

You need to buy more basic ingredients and cook from scratch. Cut out any alcohol. I don’t drink and if Dh does want any alcohol, he buys it himself separate from household spending. Cook meals for two nights and have leftovers the next night and for your lunches. There’s absolutely no way 2 adults need to spend that much on food shopping.

Good God! Our family of 5 live on less than that. I would imagine a huge amount of people (not the typical mums net demographic) do!
we still manage things like days out, Christmas etc.
honestly Op i dont mean to be harsh but I really would give your head a wobble. On mumsnet of course you will get tons of people shocked on how anyone could live on ‘so little’ because they’re loaded, but in the real world most people don’t have more than £1000 after bills per month, I would wager a lot have a lot less.

I understand that you have less coming in than before and you are used to not having to worry about money. but after essentials £1000/mo is enough for decent food, rainiday savings (for dentist), small luxuries and an annual holiday abroad. It should not be miserable at all.

I found that paying 3.99 pm for free Tesco deliveries has saved a lot. When doing the shopping online i have got it down to 50 for everything I need for me and 1 cat. Makes it easier to plan ahead and not grab random items in the supermarket and i check cupboards before each shop. Then if i have too much left from previous week i push the shop back by relevant number of days. E.g. currently i am averaging a £50 shop every 13 days. So there is no waste. 50 is minimum for the free delivery. Other supermarkets are available.

I have £1K a month FOR bills and food OP, it is certainly doable.

You keep asking about cleaning products but what do you actually need? Bleach at 89p, wash up liquid at 62p (use this and hot water to clean), cif bathroom for the limescale at £2.75, so just the washing powder to buy on top. That's a tenner a month max.

Toiletries are? Deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, toothpaste - £20 a month maximum, just use the proper amounts eg pea sized blob for toothpaste.

Clothes - what do you actually need? I'm still wearing ten year old clothes, I only replace underwear and buy the odd top so probably £100 each PER YEAR.

Glasses - get the prescription from your optician then go to Asda online or other online glasses providers. Get the cheaper frames. Specsavers do frames starting from £15!

Look at your actual spending in each department and see if you can change to non branded, eg bleach.

Overall income is £2100pm take-home (DH salary). Reason for drop in income is I can no longer work, I was very part time as it was all I could manage - I have a chronic illness which has made it impossible to continue. I will look at pip but I have applied in the past and didn't get it. Even if I did it's not much and will not cover what I was earning.