Help FORM E

[mylife8410]

Hello
I am trying to fill in form e and I feel completely useless trying to calculate expenses. I have 3 kids aged 14, 11,10 I live in the south east and I was wondering if anyone has got a ball point rough figure of how much they put down for yearly expenditure ?

Hi I've also been trying to do this and the only way I could get there was by printing out a years previous bank statements and using that as some sort of guideline. It won't have everything in there as I'm guessing you pay some things in cash but it definitely helps towards a figure.

I hunted the internet and found some free guides and advice from various solicitors to use to guide me. My ex claimed he needed something like £800 a month for leisure - I had felt guilty claiming something like £100(and that was for me and DC). Round up, and try not to forget things, use old bank/credit card statements to help. Don't forget shoes and holidays.

Use last year's bank statements. I did mine at the beginning of the year and it is all wrong now as I had budgeted for holidays and the dentist but it was a best guess. He queried everything through his solicitor so it helped to have my workings out.

I've had to do several rounds of Form E over the years, and initially started off being very reasonable. I now realise the you should put down absolutely everything... even down to the food you feed your fish or the cups you may need to buy in two months time !

I found this helpful advice, it has a checklist on page 18-19 so you don't forget to add things. My problem is that the space on the form to write in is tiny!
www.advicenow.org.uk/sites/default/files/form_E_proof-final(website)_0.pdf

My solicitor said put everything! I used my monthly budget as a starting point.

But just think of anything you could possible spend.

Allow a monthly amount for diy and house repairs even if they are one off.

Allow for schools trips xmas presents etc etc

Basically your expenses should pretty much come to annual income. I get a bonus and I hadn't included it outgoings so I had to tweak them to show I needed all my income. I think there are some templates on line you can get that give you suggested items.

I went through my entire 2020 transactions and allocated them to something. That way, when ex queries everything, which is likely, it's a simple filter job on the Excel sheet to provide the details. Took ages though 😞