If you work part time, how much money do you have left for food and clothes?

[TrappedinSuburbia]

My first week as a single parent!

Im still getting my housing benefit sorted out, but by rough calculations reckon it and my council tax will be half what im paying just now.

Once i've paid everything out, and I mean everything, I will have approx £100 left a week for food, petrol and clothing.

Im kinda crapping myself at the thought, but then its only me and a non demanding 5 year old, please tell me it will be easy peasy!!

So thats £5200 per year for food, petrol, presents, holidays etc...you will be fine

i would put some away each week for emergency and christams if you celebrate.

Try ebay and charity shops for clothes and I am never to proud to let my friends know I am happy with handouts and have had quite a few since which have picked oiut lovely pbiuts for me and my teens daughter has picked out bits.

i go halfs with grandparents for school trips and christmas if a bigger pressie is required as that can help.

Doa shopping list each week or fortnight and onyl buy what you really need

Yeah, shopping should be easy, we eat the same things and I don't do ready meals.

I pay into a menage that comes out next month a good few hundred that will cover christmas and another out in january.

(ex) dp is buying ds's big present for christmas (amicable split).

I love ebay!

My only real worry is if the car breaks down or something, its fairly newish, so fingers crossed.

Do you think i'll be able to put a few pounds by a week on that? I've even stopped smoking!

You should be ok on that. I've been living off that (or less) for considerable time. When you have spare money - save it, it comes in handy.

Keep a discerning eye on the charity shops and reduced price time in supermarkets.

I work full time and have money for food but nothing but essentials.

My pay has not kept up with my expenses and I'm really struggling now. But as I work FT, I don't have time for a secnd job.

Life just seems to be an ever increasing struggle for me - ten years a single parent and it's no easier thanks to the recession!

I budget £35 a week for food etc and i have an additional £60 a month for 'bulk items' (washing powder, cleaning products, toiletries) so that's £50 a week in all (for me and ds 11), £20 for petrol other than what I budget for work and we live in a rural location. And new clothes, what are those!? I do have about £20 for other things, which includes clothes, extras like easter eggs or birthday cake and the like.

I do also put aside £20 a month for xmas & birthday and I only budget for 12 of my 13 WTC payments so the 13th payment is a 'bonus' or equivalent of savings to pay for anything extra (like when the washing machine, microwave and kettle all broke the same month!) Like today I spent £22 at the pumbers merchant for parts to fix the loo. Now I just have to hope I can manage it myself without having to call out a plumber...

When I was on benefits the shopping budget was between £18 and £25 a week, with no extra for bulk items. Was tough and some weeks we ate only cereal and beans on toast. So am much better off now!

£100 you do need to budget hard and add up as you go round the shops, but it's doable. Also consider getting home delivery for shopping rather than make a special journey. For me it is cheaper than the petrol costs (if I book a loate evening midweek), but then we do live in a rural area so may not be cheaper for you if you live near shops.

I do live nearer supermarkets and do grab the reduced meat and stuff it in the freezers. I buy fresh veg etc as when needed, but so close not much hassle, I can go in without being tempted by other stuff.

I've no fall back for anything going wrong tho, such as washing machine, car etc.

I guess this is where I need to be really careful and start to put money away, I know if stuck my mum and ex would bail me out, but lets get real, for how long, need to do it own my own!

I have £63/week for food, petrol and clothing and it's nigh on impossible. My petrol is £22/week and DD's school lunches about £10/week, but on a bad week I only give her £1/day, which doesn't get her much. She's 13 and the packed lunchbox days are over unfortunately! We live on pasta, homemade soup, baked potatoes and baked beans, which gets a bit boring. You can always tell when it's payday in my house and you can tell what's on special offer at the supermarket just by looking in my cupboards!

I get my DD's clothes from the catalogue and people give her stuff for Christmas and birthdays, which she's quite happy with. My own clothes? Well I own two skirts and one dress and about 15 tops/jumpers etc., mostly from charity shops.

£100 is definitely doable, although as gillybean says, you'll still have to budget. When you work out your budget don't forget to include things that you pay for annually/quarterly like TV licence and car tax/MOT. I could never work out why my budget didn't work out, but was only including monthly direct debits and forgetting about the quarterly/occasional bills (duh!)

Where possible I earn some extra money by babysitting for people and I'm good at things like knitting, so make a lot of presents. That money goes for 'treats' and Christmas presents for my DD who would rather die than wear a hand knitted scarf (although she always pinches mine!)

Thanks, im not extravagant by nature, so with what you've all said, I should be able to save a little as well (im already saving with menage, but thats for christmas and the bleak month of January)!

Its the thought of something big breaking down and I can't afford to repair or replace it thats worrying me.

I haven't budgeted for my car at all, I just taxed it last month and mot not due for another 5 or so months, so should have saved some by then! I really need it to get to work, I could manage without it otherwise!

Woollyideas, I don't know how you manage, but hats off to you!

gillybean, good luck with your loo!

If you can afford to not include the £80 month child benefit in your budget a good idea that I adopted is to have it paid into a separate account and leave it - it will mount up and will pay for tax/insurance/mot on your car - so that is one less worry.

Good idea, I think I will see how I go for the first couple of months or till after christmas (more realistic) then start doing that.

I fixed the loo! At least the flushing bit so I don't have to keep sticking my hands in the cistern to pull the bung out... nice
The handle is still a bit dodgy (has beeen for months), but as long as I warn visitors only to press it gently we're usually ok! Not that we get many visitors!
At some point the whole thing needs replacing. But the bath needs repacing before that, as the hole in the side is now very big and there's another rust hole starting to break out near the taps...

You do seriously have to budget everything. I list out everything that comes in and then I work out how much each month I have to put aside for everything, including a big chunk for the car service/insurance/MOT. Anything that doesn't get spent on the car in the year I put aside towards a deposit on a new one.

I have a separate savings acount which I transfer money into each month as soon as I'm paid or get my WTC & CTC. Then when a bill comes in I transfer it out again and pay the bill.

I keep a spreadsheet of what that savings account is made up of and I'm really strict about only spending what is saved on what it is meant for. I do it this way as I used to get a significant amount of interest on it (£50 ish a year), but this last year with the rubbish interest rates I only got 55p! So am thinking I may go back to paying the bills each month instead on standing order. If you do it that way then you don't get tempted to spend it.

So at the moment I put money aside each month for childcare, car, xmas, bills, other savings (for big/broken things).
The bills section is then broken down again into telephone/internet/mobile top up, electric/gas, council tax, water, house insurance, tv licence.

I then budget out petrol for work, petrol for other journeys, car parking for work, and food. You should have rent/mortgage here too. I think there's 30p over on my budget each month after everything!

At the end of the year if the bills in each section are less than what I budgeted I keep it there to start building up a pot. If they are more (like the electric was last year) the money has to come from somewhere else. So I check my budget and swap it about where necessary every year.

Little trick I also do is pay my council tax calculated amount each month, even though you only need to pay it for 10 months. Then the last two additional months I pay into my savings. So after a couple of years I started to build up a savings pot there again. Then if I get a mega bill or an emergency then I have some extra put aside.

Has taken about 5 years but I no longer have to worry when a bill comes in as I can cover it. It is horrible though when you struggle to pay for food sometimes yet you have savings money put aside. And I do get tempted sometimes to spend it. That's why I list out exactly what bills etc each penny is for so I know if I spend it then I won't be able to afford the electric bill for example.

So my advice is account for every penny and stick really strictly to your budget and you will manage.

Have a look at moneysavingexpert.com and sign up for the weekly newsletter. They also have a really useful budgeting tool. It works out the weekly stuff, as well as the one-offs.

Also use things such as cashback sites and check your utilities etc. I recently switched from Virgin to Sky and used quidco. I got £130 cashback and a £25 M&S voucher which bought me a new handbag.

Well done on the loo lol.
You should post on freecycle for a bath.
DP's brother got us a bath for free when we moved here (shower only with baby!) he is a gas engineer/plumber or something like that and they were clearing a house, you should ask around, he fitted it and tiled the whole bathroom as well (handy guy).

I pay absolutely everything monthly direct debit, my biggest expenditure will be food and petrol, i think I can keep the food bill pretty low cooking from scratch and I really only drive to work.

I still have some debt to pay off, so i'll be concentrating any extra money on that.

I can't remember who it was who said that being poor was hard work, but judging by these posts they were bang on the money!

We have £70/ £80 per week for food, fuel and extras. It normally breaks down as £40 food, £20 diesel and £10 spending money.

We would have more if I wasn't paying an old debt off, and also if I wasn't renting a workshop for my business, which is still, ahem, waiting to take off. But I firmly believe that if I persevere, in a couple of years I will be earning more than if I cave in, give up and take a part time cleaning job now...I hope.

If I get an extra £20 or so, I invest in a bulk buy of nappies- especially if Sainsbury's are doing one of their special third-off deals.

It WILL get better..just trying to deal with the waves of anger I am feeling towards my family, who want us to go to theirs for Christmas, and for us to all buy each other expensive and useless presents..they will give me the diesel money to get up there if I beg, but I know that there'll be a bit of grumbling about them having to dig into the spending money for their holiday in the Maldives!

Apparently men think about sex every four minutes or thereabouts. I think it would be true to say that I think about money with a similar frequency, and not in a good way...

I really resent the mental energy and time I put into worrying about money. I'm sure my mind would be better focussed on higher things!

Being poor is pants!

:)

Im trying to take a positive slant on it (we'll see how long that lasts) and view it as a challange!
I'm doing an access course for law, so only another 6 or 7 years left of this lol.