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?

1600pcm after all fixed and variable costs and savings is insane

You could literally book an abroad holiday for the 2 of you every month and still have £ left over.

If your mortgage is currently on a good % rate its worth massively overpaying now (there'll be a limit) to give you a better level of equity when you do sell.

The £1600 leftover doesn’t include savings but we will definitely save as much as we can afford to. Although we won’t have childcare costs it would be sensible as other posters have pointed out to save some money for this in case our childcare plans fall through

We are left with just over 2k a month after all bills, dogs , food , fuel , cars, childcare, gym, debt etc. Outgoings are quite high over 4k a month . My DP gets 3 bonuses a year which we tend to use for holidays , Christmas etc in theory. I know 2k is a lot of money , but I can absolutely burn through it easily each month , and we are not extravagant. Obviously it is plenty, but just saying it's easy to get through especially with a toddler, unexpected bills etc.

I have to ask. What do you buy @spiralshape for £2k a month as easy to burn money

Maybe write everything down for feb

@Blondeshavemorefun I have no idea, I do take my DS out a lot , we have Thursday and Fridays plus weekends together so are always out doing things . But I've recently bought Merlin passes and a zoo membership to try and curve that a bit.

When I sit down and look I think the majority of useless spending comes from nipping the shops for something and spending 50/60 or more but having nothing to really show for it . I was actually sat down with an Excel spreadsheet this morning as we are in the middle of remortgaging which is when I found this thread. We hardly ever eat out, I maybe see a friend once month for dinner but no alcohol. But we do get a lot of takeouts , which if I added up the amount I'm sure would make me a little sick.

Do write it down for a month. Sure you will be astonished /shocked what you spend it on 🙂

People piling onto you for being sensible and asking before taking the leap. FFS.

We have 1600 a month (after saving 1400 towards a house) which must include food and petrol) and I can tell you how easy it is to burn through like bloody water.

We currently spend quite a lot on food for health reasons. Just thinking about the costs that pop up that I don't put in any sort of budget.

450 car insurance
6k in vet bills which we paid 20 percent of last year
Double pet insurance because they put it up 97% after our claims to 22 a month, then she died (dogs are horrifically expensive to both insure and treat)
70 for two years virus protection
8 monthly cloud backups
95 pa for Amazon prime, no we cannot do without, we live in arse end of nowhere
30 a month more than most for BB because of his job
630 new oven, 60 fitting
220 unexpected new secondhand sofa purchase cos I cannot cope with the pain of ours, we need one more for the other half
720 buying oil that will last 3-4 months
Electric went up from 95 to 120 once I properly started cooking again
Some local councils are literally going bust and may be given permission to put c tax up by ten percent
Three cat litter enclosures including an outdoor one circa 300, sold them for 25 percent of what we paid six months later
40 a year for garden bin waste
10.99 a month for a playstation subscription because we live somewhere terrible and it keeps the other half sane
The water in our area is so bad that it has wrecked all our clothes, bedding, towels, socks. Should really replace the entire lot including machine but as it is a rental, we conceded by buying about five hundred quids worth of supermarket clothes between us.
Chip in lease car windowscreen, 120
Replacement of two smashed mobiles 200 times two
Blackout curtain linings for half the house, 300 (crappy Amazon ones but huge windows)
1100 for the OH to drive to Scotland and spend six nights in crappy hotels, most of the cost was petrol. We have been together 24/7 for three years and desperately needed time apart.

I could keep going but I have to go cook. Don't let anyone tell you 1600 is easy to live off when the incidentals in life add up so much and you are taking a financial risk from a pretty comfortable position.

Go through your statements for two years and add up all the incidentals then add twenty percent to them and see what you are then left with and how comfortable you are with that number.

What an utterly ghastly post

This is indeed a stealth brag

I'm not sure how a list of unnecessary wastes of money masquerading as essentials helps the OP.

Nice that you can burn through money like the famously flammable water.

Because elderly cats should be left to slowly die without medical treatment, people should be able to hack your computer and it's really easy living with a half working oven?

Yeah, if you say so.

I feel like everyone is missing a really key issue here unless I have mis read..
You say about having a a baby on the way.. have you factored in your loss of earnings whilst being on maternity leave. Even a job with a great maternity pay policy will see a significant drop in earnings on the horizon.
We have great help with childcare but have opted to put our child into nursery 2 mornings a week to help with socialisation. This wasn't in my financial plan.
Even when you've bought the big things you will have a lot more time on your hands that can lead to increased spending. During the night feeds I would order and wake up to parcels I didn't even remember buying.
You sound pretty savvy with your finances in terms of emergency funds etc.
If you take the plunge just be aware you've inflated your figures for mortgage/ utilities but these can increase at the drop of a hat and leave you up shit creek!

I love your username! 😀

Most people would certainly have more than enough money, especially as subscriptions, a hobby and work lotto are optional (considered as entertainment/treats in our household) are coming out of your pot for monthly outgoings. If you really don't think you can manage on this, put everything down on paper you've bought for the last month - did you really need it, was there an alternative or could you have easily gone without? You're easily spending double what we do on takeaways, eating out, holidays, clothes and we're really happy.