Can I live on £350.00 a month (after bills, food and childcare)?

[Lorddenning1]

• [NB: Title edited by MNHQ at OP's request to add text in brackets]

I am panicking a little bit as come April, my financial situation will change and i dont know if I can manage. bit of a back story, me and my partner work full time and have 2 kids, we pay £230.00 a week on childcare.
I have come back to work recently after having DS2, so at the moment i am not paying tax, as i am under the personal tax allowance, this will change in April. Also i claim tax credit and this years award is based on me receiving Maternity pay, so my income in quite low.
In April I will start to pay Tax again and my tax credits will go down, so I will be £280.00 a month worse off. So my question, after bills, Credit card/loan, childcare, Food and Petrol I will have around £350.00 a month to live on, this will be for birthdays, clothes, beavers, school trips, dentist etc, basically everything else, is it possible to live on. This will be my finacial for the next 3 years (until little one goes to school and i pay off a big loan, which all happens at the same time).

Thanks to the people with constructive help, I'm going to try selling stuff on eBay and also putting money away in different pots so if stuff does break it won't cripple us, wish me luck :)

If you can't face spreadsheets for savings and whatnot have a look at Squirrel.me or get an account with Starling bank which has a great app and you can set up. Saving pots and sit money in those separately from the main account.

I'm not sure why peeoole are saying its loads. It's really not. I appreciate many people survive on less disposable income but to be honest less than £100 a week for social spending, luxuries, birthday presents, savings and unexpected costs is actually really tight tbh. You'll be able to cope but you won't be saving much for a while and you'll need to be strict with unnecessary spending

Thank you, after I have taken out money for birthdays, Christmas, car maintenance, that sort of thing I'm actually left with £57 a month

I manage with less than this (have 2 kids) but do have to be very careful and often am skint by end of the month! Sometimes I find it helpful to divide the amount by how many weeks there are and not go over this each week. If something big comes up then I will divide whatever is left and readjust things. I also try and do as much as possible that is free, e,g walking, we love going for walks as a family and take snacks with us that have been bought from the food shop budget.
I am surprised that other posters are being quite harsh, I don't think £350 is a huge huge amount, but it certainly isn't on the breadline and can understand that other people may feel frustrated if they have much less available for the luxuries in life. Honestly i'm not sure how other people survive, if you have less than £200 a moths disposable, is this because of debt? low earnings?

We have a combined income of around £36,000 so not bad, we pay around £325 a month for debt, which will be clear in 4 years :( and we pay £930 a month in childcare, he goes to school in 4 years time, right when the debt ends so tie in nice.