How much do you spend each week?

[ramanw]

So after all bills, food, essentials are purchased, how much do you spend/allow yourself to spend each week?

I am terrible with money so have recently started giving my partner a chunk of money at the beginning of each month and then getting him to send me a certain amount each week.

I tried living off £40 a week but it turns out that I can spend that within a few days. I spend it on things like coffees, food with friends, snacks and I also might need to buy something for the children. I'm going to up my weekly amount to around £60 but wondering if even that is enough!

How much would you say you spend each week?

It depends what's in my social calendar for the month. But I take leftovers for lunch, don't buy coffees etc out and buy my clothes second hand so I can have a little bit more fun money.

I've always spent about £100 a month on "wellness" ie something just for me that boosts my well-being. At the moment this is being spent on two hours of counselling per month.

I also spend £60 a month on my hobbies.

Otherwise I mainly do free stuff. Eating out maybe £30 a month. So I guess I spend about £50 a week on myself.

Already have a lifetime supply of clothes and don't wear make up.

Maybe one coffee out , one breakfast out and one tea and cake per week say £20 a week

Haircut colour and blow dry every 6 weeks £10 a week

3 pedicures a year less than £5 week

Treat money £35 per week

And my guilty secret , show boot spends , probably a pair of boots or sandles in the summer months at £150-200 per month but I think this needs to stop.

New boots not show boots

I was just curious as to what others spend

Why?

Everyone has different budgets, priorities etc.

Once you've paid for all your essentials, including annual and irregular ones like car servicing, insurance etc, saved for a pension and things like car replacement, you end up with money that you're free to spend as you wish, but we all like different things and have different amounts of money spare.

But what doesn't vary is that you can only spend each pound once. If you buy lunch each day, and regular coffees, soft drinks etc, that could be £10 a day, £50 a week, over £2k pa. So that's a chunk out of your money that's no longer available for a holiday, clothes, accessories and grooming, gym membership, hobbies, books, etc etc.

So as that £200 a month is a big chunk of the £300 a month you have spare (how much I have spare and spend doesn't affect this) then you have to decide to spend less, either by looking for cheaper ways to buy food and drink out, or by doing it less often, so you have more money available to spend on other things.

Or not, according to your priorities. You might decide that you're not bothered about holidays, clothes, accessories and grooming, gym membership, hobbies, books, etc as much as you are about coffees, lunches etc. That's entirely your choice.

Probably less than 10/week, sometimes a month.

Some weeks nothing, other weeks £50 ish.

I really try to have as many no spend days per week as possible.

If you have £300 a month and you want to spend £260 of that on coffee and lunch, well, I think you're gonna struggle with saving and changing your spending habits.

Maybe try the no spend days instead. See how many you can do.

This is much more like what I and nearly everyone I know spends in a week. We’re in London so higher than average prices, but I am still quite surprised at the answers on this thread. £40 a week is my coffee and lunch in the office costs alone.

I think if you’re happy and can afford it, there’s nothing wrong with being a spender.

Kid's stuff isn't really spending money though is it? It's joint essentials.

What may help with awareness is:

Going through some previous months to find out what exactly was spent and where

Giving yourself a specific budget for specific things (like coffee and haircuts), then noticing when you want/need to spend outside those categories, or if you're regularly overspending on categories - you might be spending more than you think OR maybe you can cut down OR maybe you've just been unrealistic in your budget.

You also need to think about expenses that happen less often - so when the kids need a new coat, or new shoes, that is much more of a spend than when you see a t-shirt or pair of leggings or PJs for them that's cute and pick it up. Or if you buy their clothes in bulk seasonally rather than in bits and bobs when you see sales etc, then you might need to budget for this specifically. I tend to budget about €20 per month for the teenager, which gets saved up and spent in bulk usually, and €25 per month for the 2 under 5 who are the same sex so can pass down clothes, therefore need to buy much less for the youngest, and their clothes are cheaper. I tend to buy theirs in dribs and drabs a couple of sizes ahead in sales or on multibuys or second hand. However the older one is getting more fussy, so I am less able to do this as I am finding some stuff gets to the size he is currently and he just says nope, don't want to wear that. Then I have to decide whether to store it for the youngest or try to sell it and make a bit of money back.

And often you'll find that a whole load of money that you thought was just spare and can't understand where it is going, is actually going on unavoidable but infrequent, sometimes unplanned, expenses like the toaster dies and you need to replace it, or the car needs repairs, or the dog needs vet treatment, or you travel to a family party, or the amazon prime subscription came out and you forgot, or it was Christmas or a kid's birthday etc etc. I don't know about you but I used to have a really bad habit of thinking "Oh but that wasn't a normal month because we had that expense! Next month will be better" BUT I never actually compensated for it the next month, I just carried on spending to the plan I had set which assumed all that money WAS actually "just spare". AND I didn't recognise that basically every month, or something like 9-10/12 months HAVE some kind of "not normal so I'll just ignore it" expense, and I needed to be budgeting for them.

It can help to look at these expenses over a year, especially the ones which will definitely recur, and plan out an amount to keep aside for them, and the ones which are unexpected but necessary have a look how much they cost you over the last year, and keep a slush fund for those. This was the secret for me from going with being bad with money/not really understanding where money went to being much better at managing it to the point we can actually save and not constantly go into debt any more. NB, this can be a tough realisation if you always run out of money, because it may be that once you take these expenses into account, you realise that your income does not actually cover all of your expenses as you thought it did.

YNAB has helped me to all this and stick to it but you can do it yourself without paying for a program. I find the program is worth it because somehow it seems to help me stick to it better than not using it. There are some good free budgeting tools on MoneySavingExpert if you wanted to start there.

All our income goes into one account and we each take £150pcm out for our individual spending. This sum covers buying eachother presents, clothes, treats, going out, hair cuts and weekly exercise class. DH tends to spend all of his, but I've always got a balance leftover in my account. Things like fuel/bus fares for work, wine, takeaways are seen as a joint expense.