what is your disposable income?

[proudmummywife]

Hi all I'm new to this.. my husband and I earn £4500 month but have £2400 going out it's rediculous. Leaves us with £2100 to pay sch dinners petrol food shop bills and general living. I was wondering how much do you have left after household bills are out? I'd like to see how we stand ffinancially as we are about to sign for new mortgage (included in total outgoings above)

My monthly pay pretty much all goes on bills, saving for big expenses etc.

Dh gets paid weekly so we use his pay as our day to day income (so food shop, personal spends, incidental small expenses). It varies from week to week but is usually around £230, so around £100 for groceries/household and £50 each personal money + a little bit over for whatever comes up.

So, over the month we have about £1k after bills.

Slightly off tangent but why do people say they have 'no benefits' when they clearly excluded benefits like child benefit or tax credits?
Child Benefit IS a benefit especially since it is no longer universal. Unless you don't have any children, you are entitled to child benefit if your income is less than £60K which is approx. £3500 net pcm which obviously applies to the majority!

As you were.

I agree with others - finding out that half of us have less than you and half of us have more, makes no difference to your situation.

If you want to get your bills down then there are lots of people on here who will make suggestions for that. You'd need to give out a bit more information.
So, as an example you said you spend £100 (was it?) a week on food. How many people for? Do you want help cutting back on that?
Have you checked you are getting the best deal on all your utilities/regular bills recently ? (Gas, elec, phone, insurances, etc)
Have you tried writing down, over a month what you spend all your money on? That can be quite surprising - for example if you are buying a coffee every day, or buying lunch rather than making your own, it starts to add up.
Are you paying interest on things - loans / credit cards, that you could pay off, or at least get a better deal on?

No point in comparing with others - you need to compare what you do now, with what you could do if you did a financial overhaul.

Myron CB and tax credits are not out of work benefits though that's what people mean.

I'd certainly count tax credits as a benefit and child benefit too now that's it's means tested.

We have a comfortable disposable income, no idea of the exact amount but probably more than OP if I added it up. But partly due to our choices - in having just one child, living in a city centre flat, no car costs, low maintenance home, no gym/netflix, cheap toiletries/clothes etc. We put most of the extra into the mortgage and other investments, so it doesn't necessarily mean we have a better lifestyle.

Before I signed for my first (and consequent) mortgages, I set up a standing order for that amount to go into a savings account each month, and we were able to see if we could get by without that money, in reality. Bonus was, it meant we also had ready a lump sum for any moving costs.
If you are already paying nearly as much in rent as mortgage, then presumably you could do the same with the difference in the 2 figures.

You could do the same with the portion of your salary you'd lose if you went part time - just put in to a new savings account and don't touch it over 6 - 12 months, and see if you can cope with the frugality that imposes on you, or if you resent it. It's easy to do for a couple of months, but then you can get to resent it if you cut back too much, or don't allow yourselves some treats.

I am SAHM and DH earns an alright wage.

My B & SIL both work full time in high wage careers. Their household income is around 3 times ours.

However we have probably twice the disposable income they do, because our outgoings are much smaller.

So earnings and disposable income are not proportional.

Yes am sure you would vivienne.

east that's what I mean, that money is spent on buying them food, and clothes and anything they need. So I don't class it as disposable income.

Good. I find it very irritating when people say they save all their child benefit & then claim they're broke

Around £3,250.00. (No mortgage)

It's crap. We have money because my husband died.

Well, just bad at the moment.

The price of oil has fallen and it really hits our bottom line immediately. We are predicting net operating revenues of just $16.2Bn per month for Q1 2015. We still have to keep all the palaces running, pay for the army and have just given them a 10% pay rise. On top of that, we have just commissioned a large yacht for diplomatic missions, and it will probably run over budget given the depreciation of the dollar. Oh, and we need to pay a dividend to our investors. So, it looks like a loss this year, but we have to wait at least a month for a tax rebate because our accountant cant get through to the tax office on the phone lines.

So sorry Teslaedison

Child benefit (and child tax credit when we got it) is much less than what we spend on the children.
It just gets absorbed into the monthly budget. Kids have swimming lessons, gymnastics, beavers etc, school trips, more clothes then are strictly essential, pocket money, netflix, £1 cinema trips, etc all of which are non essential but we wouldn't be able to afford all of them without child benefit as wages go on essential stuff like rent, utilities, food, uniform, petrol to work/school etc
I can't see how Anyone getting child benefit now the cap is in place can afford everything without using the child benefit!

OP I'm i. Agreement with others that say you need to look at your income and expenditure. To decide what is appropriate for you.
You need to look at a budget for your family, what part of your monthly outgoings are essential and which are luxuries (which I separate into 3 categories - important luxuries, would like and only if) Then you can work out how much you need to earn to live.

For many families this is break even.
I do feel that your mortgage is a very high proportion of your income, but if you work through the budget and are happy then that is your decision to make.

I would be no help in a comparison as my situation is so completely different and irrelevant to yours.

Income approx. £2100. After bills, mortgage, food & car running expenses, we have about £600 a month. We each take £125 (just reduced as we need to save more) out of this which we spend on going out, clothes, anything more fancy than basic toiletries usually bought with food shop, presents for each other etc), but we will spend it on family treats if we've spent a lot on our joint account. We somehow manage to spend another £350 - usually on day trips, eating out, things for the house like paint, curtains, miscellaneous for the house (higher at the moment as we moved last year) - just bought a security light as dark outside) etc, DD's clubs, pocket money & clothes. On average we are left with £200 a month, which goes into savings - unfortunately it's then coming back out as we've had unexpected household repairs three times in the last year.

How much of that disposable income would be lost if you went pt? What would your pt childcare costs be if you had another? How do you find your standard of living now with that disposable income level and how would you feel about it being reduced?

We have around £1200/month after bill but before food (that seems to vary a lot from month to month)and it's entirely comfortable, no imminent money worries. I'm a SAHM and DP earns a decent wage but our outgoings are quite low ie we rent a modest house and don't run a car. i'm pregnant with number two now and when considering the timings have looked at how much a move to a larger house is and decided that we can still manage, the big hit, so to speak, having being taken when I stopped work with ds.

We just keep child benefit, it goes into the one pot. Is this not done???

Hi,

We have about £1600 left as disposable income every month after bills/food. I split it in two and save £800, sometimes upped to £1000. The rest is split between myself, DH and the kids for pocket money each week. If we have any left at the end of each week we put it in a tin and round it up every now and again for an overpayment on the mortgage.
I am part time. Went part time 10 years ago after 1st baby was born (have 2 children).

Our monthly net income is roughly £3000.

Total bills come to around £2000 (we have a lot of old debt).So we have £1000 a month to cover food, petrol and anything else.

We both get an annual bonus of around £3k each each year though so get a cash injection of around £4.5k net each March. This is very often a lifesaver as there's always something to spend it on that's needed. Last year was the house being re-dashed (desperately needed, chunks of the old stuff was falling off) and this year it will be just in time because one of our cars is truly on it's last legs head gaskets on it's way out). Without the bonus we'd have been up shit creek a couple of times tbf.

About £900-£1000 disposable income after all essential bills, food and petrol. Any emergency repairs etc have to come out of this too. We do still manage to save variable amounts each month

I have 2500 a month spare after all outgoings.

2000 goes into a savings account

I'm sorry I've read this thread. We have zero disposable income and aren't particularly frivolous spenders. Just work for the good old NHS and haven't had a pay rise in 3 years etc etc.

Child benefit in our house is spent on the kids' (teenagers) travel costs to secondary school. Or on school uniforms/haircuts/music lessons etc. Do what you see fit with it, but if you can afford to save it all each and every month, one wonders if you really need it

About £50 at the moment. Income about £2700. Live in a very expensive part of the country so rent/bills/running car etc come to around £2350. £300 a month on food. £50 for haircuts/clothes/socialising.