Spending £40k a year on basic COL

[Hedgingmybetching]

£1500 mortgage
£200 gas lec
£330 council tax
£36 broadband
£65 water
£16 mobile phone
£37 pet ins
£ 200 transport (petrol/trains)
£50 car insurance
£50 house insurance
£17 road tax
£17 tv license
£80 after school
£600 food/household
£50 car maintenance (at least)

Family of 3 and a cat, did stretch to get a bigger house but will never need to move again. However it needs 10s of thousands in renovations which we are slowly chipping away at ourselves (hoping the roof gives us another couple of years as not a DIY job)

I need to sort life insurance, anything left is presents, bit of holiday fund, savings, home improvements, clothes, make up.... haven't had a haircut in months, never get nails done.

Take home between us is £46k plus up to £8k bonus. Feel very fortunate we do have some cushion for non essentials, better than alot of people I'm sure but I am just shocked at how much our basics are once I wrote it down as we are spending every month. What are other people's basics COL? Is this high?

We're in the North West.

Your bills come to £3250 and you take home £4500pm. That's £1250 left over for 'non essentials' which seems like a not-too-terrible balance to me; especially for a family that has deliberately chosen to stretch on the house?

However, maybe the point is that you realise £54k take home is pretty high actually and so perhaps are thinking about people who don't take home that much? It's the equivalent of one person earning £75k a year (maybe more if you've already taken pension payments out too) which is obviously a much higher salary than average.

I missed that it was take home, but I still think it’s high.

Our take home is more than that, and I’m uncomfortable with the current amount of our mortgage.

It's your mortgage and council tax that's doing it. Our family income is similar, but our mortgage is around £300 on a 3 bed in a 'nice' commuter town, and we overpay by £500 at the moment (won't do that forever as will eventually hit the 10% overpayment penalty). Even with overpaying I'm still laying about half of what you do on your mortgage. Unfortunately there's not a lot you can do about that if you want to stay where you are.

If you're still working part time it will get easier when your DC get older and you can increase your hours and possibly promotions.

Yeah I don't disagree it's quite high but I think it is hard to avoid at some stages of life.

Are you not making any pension payments if that's your take home?

Have you checked your council tax band is correct as that seems very high

No mortgage thankfully as we are mid 50s, now saving into pensions, but we spend a lot on good quality food. Both work full time, joint income £5500 net, 2 older DS who are here some of the time.

Council tax £200
Water £53
Gas/Electric £120
Netflix/TV licence £28
Broadband/mobiles £52
Food/household £800
Petrol £40
Car insurance/tax £60
Dog £200

It does get easier when the mortgage is paid off, but we stuck with our cheaper terraced house to have more money.

Is that £90k gross or net?

I posted above saying that our outgoings are very similar to OP’s (mortgage is £1600 so same as yours).

Our incoming is £60k net, so £5k per month, which is around £85k gross.

We have two kids and we manage fine.

The mortgage is a big chunk of cash, granted, but we have all the space we ever need and won’t have to move again.

We save around £700 per month in long term investments which we can stop if things get tight, but so far we haven’t needed to.

Other surplus income gets split between house renovation costs and holidays. We usually manage 3 holidays per year, at least one of which is abroad. Usually self catering in Europe so it is budget but due to using annual leave to cover school holidays throughout the year we wouldn’t have the time to go on a long haul holiday anyway.

Husband is vegetarian, so meat consumption is fairly low. He cycles to work and I usually take the bus. We have a second hand car which is cheap to run.

OMG people telling you that you can't afford your house! Rent would be WORSE people!!

Yes OP, it's fucking awful. Just EXISTING is incredible expensive.

I'd look at the car and house insurance.
We pay around £200 for the year for each.
Food looks high - that's about what we spend on adults, 2 teens and a cat, and includes all cleaning and toiletries.
Might be able to do something about gas and electric.

But, yes, that's sort of what comes with a "forever" house when your drop hours for childcare reasons. If you can up your hours, it will probably make a big difference.

Council tax £330?!?!?! Jesus where do you live?! That's extortionate! We live in an expensive / sought after area in the North and ours is £170?!

Yes but some of my income is not pensionable

Sorry just seen your further post that you're in South Manchester. Makes sense now. I grew up in Didsbury but wouldn't be able to afford to move back there unless we won the lottery!

Anyway yes your mortgage and council tax are high, however your transport costs are low which is good! Between me and DH our cars cost us approx £1000 a month (and that is with us buying them outright with no finance / PCP!) 😭

We earn just under £100k between us:

£850 - Mortgage
£175 - Council Tax

£150 - Energy bills
£75 - Sky and broadband
£700 - pets - insurance, food and dog sitter
£250 - CSA
£500-£600- fuel
£50 - car tax
£250 - car insurance
£150 - life insurance / critical illness / income protection
£50 - house and contents insurance
£75 - phone bills (x 3)
£100 - gym membership and hobby costs for me and DH
Food - roughly £500

So out-goings of about £4k of necessities. I was going to say that means we have £1500 "spare" but never bloody ends up that way!

I was about to say if they think my mortgage is bad they should see the average rent in my area which is £1650. 🫣 I really feel for people who are struggling to get on the housing ladder, we bought before the housing market went nuts and rent was cheap enough to save a deposit, (we rented a 2 up 2 down that was £700 a month, think it would be double that now) overpaid our first mortgage like crazy before we had our baby and we were both working full time and life was cheap!

I know we stretched our affordability to it's limits for a bigger house but we had a bad neighbour and with stamp duty and the cost and stress of moving we decided to just go all in and only do it once, borrowing the max the bank would lend us. I love our house, it's a project but I'm so incredibly happy here with our lovely neighbours and safe street.

I 100% get that we are privileged, we still have some disposable income, we need to budget but we're not struggling, I guess I was shocked when I totted it all up though. Xx

I feel you - our income is bigger but so is our mortgage and our house isn't even that big (crumbling 3 bed terrace). Before we had our DC at the end of 2019/before pandemic/before CoL, I felt we were frequently going out and doing fun stuff. Obviously that changes as you have a child but I expected to be able to save a lot more than I currently am. Life in 2018 seemed affordable and pleasurable.

I'm due to get a promotion later this year but even that really equates to 2-3K pa extra - wages have stagnated so much that the payrise will hardly make a dent and I've already earmarked the funds for house improvements - we too have an old house. We're overpaying on our mortgage too to try and get ahead before our cheap fix ends. I've spent years studying and working, and even though we are very lucky, I always assumed I'd be in a situation to live a bit more freely and book more weekend getaways and impromptu restaurant trips, but no [moan over]

😂

I mean, this is a subject for a completely different thread but £100 a month on food?!?!

With hindsight the best financial choices I made were around housing - the years with young kids and buying your home are just tough no matter what CoL has thrown at us but they do pass. Living where you live is a great situation to be in

I’m sorry, it sounds very tough :( your mortgage does sound very high for your income.. I know it’s a forever home but can you really afford it, if it’s overstretching your monthly budget and it needs a lot of work? Don’t mean to sound harsh, just thinking it’s eating in to a lot of your income ❤️

Your mortgage and bills seem extortionate to me - we’re also NW and don’t pay anywhere close to those amounts a month.

But we’re not in Manchester or anywhere near - we’re very rural on the coast so that will account for the large differences.

I think £1500 mortgage in NW is a lot actually, I would consider a cheaper home - I earn a bit more than you £55K NW on my own with one child and I wouldn’t pay that for a mortgage but we are all different, you could have a lot more left if you halved your mortgage and council tax

It's true. I never buy ready meals or pre-prepared anything. I don't buy much meat. I really enjoy cooking everything from scratch.

When DH works away all week, I can feed myself on £25 for the week.

For me, that involves meals of vegetable egg fried rice, veg stir frys with noodles, omelettes, pasta pesto with peas, homemade vegetable and lentil curry (using tinned and frozen veg).

A banana a day as a snack.

Our basic bills are about £2k pm, with no mortgage so I think yours are pretty normal. It's just the time in your life that things are tight, they should improve immensely over the next 10-15 years and you will glad for your nice house, almost paid off then.
(council tax of £349pm here (for 10 months) for our modest 3bed, 1 bath house so completely understand! Bring back the Poll Tax!).

@TwinklyRoseTurtle it really isn’t in nice areas of Manchester

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