Is this enough after bills?

[Birobob]

Thinking of offering on a house but scared to overstretch ourselves. I have calculated all bills and other usual monthly outgoings including groceries and petrol and have calculated it at around £2840. Our current outgoings are £1340 but we live in a 1 bed flat with a tiny mortgage. In addition we save £400 per month. We have a baby on the way and have bought most things for the baby.

With our outgoings being £2840 this will leave us around £1600 leftover monthly. We will keep around £15k in savings for emergencies, car repairs etc. We are also fortunate that we will not need to pay for childcare.

Do you think £1600 leftover a month is enough to live comfortably enough?

£1600 left after all bills including food shops etc?! Of course that’s enough. You need to come into the real world.

What is the 1,600 for, if all other outgoings, inc petrol and groceries, are already covered?
I would be feeling loaded if I had that much left after all expenses!

Stealth brag 🥱

If that’s after food, insurance, petrol/car costs etc, yes it’s enough

How much would you have left if you had to pay for childcare. My mum had a stroke and then I had to quickly reevaluate my finances for x2 under 2 years old

Definitely not a ‘stealth brag’. We are fortunate enough after savings etc to currently have quite a bit more left over but some months seem to be left with nothing at the end and having to dip in to savings. So the thought of being left with much less every month is a bit daunting. Sorry if this has offended anyone

Good point re considering childcare costs if our current plan falls through.

I live on less then 1600 a month BEFORE expenses 😑

I'm sure you'll survive somehow.

Of course it’s plenty you will just have to cut your cloth to suit. It’s £57 a day between you, so no if you are used to having lunch and coffee every day and spending £15/20 each then it’s not going leave you much. Add a meal or two out at weekend then it will all go.

People are just horrible! Ignore the cranks.

Are you still wanting to save £400 a month? So then £1200 spare? So then from the £1200...food, petrol, days out, clothes, holidays etc etc?

With £1200 it wouldn't leave us a lot at the end as we would spend £600 shopping, £300 petrol, so suddenly I'd be down to £300 a month for other things. But then I'd have £400 a month going in savings and £15k emergency. I wouldn't be happy doing it if my money wasn't growing or if it was reducing each month, but this doesn't seem like yours would be.

You need an excel spreadsheet with every expenditure you have monthly and yearly and divide the yearly costs by 12 (such as Xmas presents / food, car MOT/ Service etc) and multiply each monthly cost by 12 so you have 2 columns and a grand total of how much you approximate you will spend per year, and month, on average.

You then write down how much you have coming in monthly /yearly and take one number away from the other and see what’s left which is what you will save, and if you can then adjust your budget (eg guess you’ll spend £50/ month on clothes, £500 on food etc). If you don’t do this, and include ALL costs (incl dentist, hair cuts, memberships, gifts, baby clothes etc) you won’t know how much you will need. Then use a app like YNAB or Snoop to track spending going forward and monitor it against you approximate budget

Thanks @Akire breaking it down to a daily amount helps. We can be guilty of overspending on Starbucks and takeaways!

thanks @MarIeyG, I think we will still save as much as we can while we can. The £1600 includes groceries and petrol but doesn’t include takeaways, holidays, clothes, days out.

Just reading your update, so takeaways, clothes, holidays, days out....that comes from another pot?

That is s great amount to have left. You are lucky.

@MarIeyG the £1600 leftover per month would need to cover clothes, takeaways, holidays, days out. We will need to cut back on the takeaways and holidays as we spend quite a bit on them at the minute

Oh so groceries and petrol come from elsewhere. Yeah you've got a lot of money left you definitely don't need to be overthinking this.

Yes, the £2840 includes £400 for groceries (including cleaning supplies etc) and £200 for petrol between us

I would hazard a guess that £1600 'free money' a month puts you above the vast majority of the UK population and it is a bit surprising that you don't realise that.

1600 is more than enough to live off for 3 of you. We don't have anywhere near that and live OK. I think you need a long hard look where you are wasting a load of money as 1600 to a lot of people is probably there monthly take home pay!

Yes, if you do the exercise I mentioned above including approximating all your extra treat spends and holidays too you will be able to see how much would be left which is probably quite a lot

I agree @OhhhhhhhhBiscuits I do need to have a long hard look at where we are wasting money as like I said in my OP, despite having lower bills at the minute there are some months we are left with nothing and dip in to savings. I also need to be aware that we will have additional costs soon such as nappies and formula etc.

Again I don’t intend on my post coming across as offensive or insensitive

So after paying bills food petrol mortgage etx you have £1600 left

£400 into savings plus the £15k

So £1200 left knee for treats

Yes you will survive

I would be okay with this but:
I'm good at budgeting.
I value space / home environment
Our incomes had somewhere to go (up) when we were in this position so i was fairly comfortable taking the risk.

You need a proper budget.
Not "we have £1.6k left over... but it's not really left over as some has to be used to cover other expenses just not sure how much"

You also need to find out realistic childcare costs for your area in case it's needed (based on random articles I assumed £800-1.5k... in my part of town a FT place is £1.5k min - £2.5k pm)

Decide priority areas for discretionary spends (we decided to give up holidays for a couple of years... The cost benefits just don't stack up for us) so we won't go on one probably until 2026/7 now

What happens to your surplus each month now?

your outgoings are much less yet you only save £400 a month

It doesn’t stack up

So you currently spend over 2.5k a month on takeaways and holidays? But not food and petrol? Are you sure you've not missed some bills there as I don't see how that's possible if you both work as well.

Do you genuinely have £1600 left over or could you be falling into the trap of thinking 'well, this month was an exception because we had to service the car/replace the fridge/pay for Christmas'?

Somehow we find there's always a 'yes, but' every month.