Where can I save

[BankAccountLikeAColander]

I am cringeing writing this as I know we are very fortunate and earn way above the average salary in the UK and I know I'm going to get angry people lecturing me about how lucky and stupid I am. But we have very very little disposable cash and I'm just trying to understand whether that's just normal for our earnings or whether we have just spent too much on our house.
Combined salary is £165k. Mortgage is £1400 a month. Nursery just over £2k. Travel about £1k.
We live in the South East.

I think I will scrap the private health and keep a closer eye on eating out costs - I can't believe it is £150 a month - but these are vague costs so I will monitor more closely to check.
We do £15 to charity a month.
Eczema creams and wash are £25 a month.

Yes holiday was probably a bit OTT. The holiday is £2k but it's not all inclusive so I guessed £3k total - hopefully we won't spend that much.

£600 on food includes eating out once or twice a month.

There you go, easy thing to cut out. Eating out is a luxury and an expensive one. Stop that and you've immediately saved more than enough for shoes.

You're living beyond your means (because you save £700 net a month/circa £14k of gross salary per year)

Honestly, people are trying to help but you really can't expect much sympathy when you effectively say "we have no money to buy our small children shoes but we won't do our own gardening/window cleaning/cancel private healthcare/stop paying for expensive meals out/reduce our monthly savings amount"

OP why don't you, just for next month, just say you're not going to put anything in savings and will use the extra money to sort out your kids out with some new shoes and clothes.

Your long term financial situation is not going to be hampered by one month of not putting money in savings.

I'm not asking for sympathy. I just wanted different viewpoints as I'm aware that different people spend and save differently and I felt like we need a review.
Our eating out isn't high end - it's stopping at a chain restuarant or a pub on the way back from somewhere because we won't be home in time for the children's meal time. I may have overestimated but as the majority have said - this is an area for review. Food shop wise we have tried to get this down and haven't managed. It includes nappies, washing powder etc

Oh also the vast majority of savings is from annual bonus so it's not guaranteed anyway which probably makes us view it differently
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I think its natural to view that differently and we are in the same boat. However that only goes to illustrate even more that you are spending beyond your means on a day to day basis and need to start viewing your finances in a different way.

My DFriend is in a similar situation. High earners who then think they can afford everything immediately and are now living on credit cards. You don't want to get into that situation.

I really do think you could cut down on your shopping. There are four of us (one requiring nappies and formula) and we manage on £75 per week.

Anyway , i'd definitely try to track spending for a bit to see where it's going.

I hope you figure it out.

Op

Eating nice decent quality food should be affordable on your salary right?

Wrong! The cost of living is ridiculous in this country and it’s getting worse

Do you love your house? Would you consider moving to somewhere that did not require such expensive maintenance?

When you say travel is £1k, what does that cover? I ask because you mentioned car costs separately.

With regular payments/spending, I find it helpful to work out what something is costing me over a whole year and then decide whether it's something that I need/want that much. So, for example do I want to spend £1800 a year on eating pub food? Personally, no, I'd rather spend £500 eating out somewhere really nice a handful of times. Your answer might be different though, which is obviously up to you. Likewise I don't get enough pleasure from my mobile phone to spend £600 on it per year, but I do get enough enjoyment from going to the gym to spend £750 a year on it.

For me that's the best thing about having a decent income, that you can choose how to spend your money. I get the impression that you're spending without really making any active choices about where it's going.

I think it’s super easy to spend to your income.

How old are your kids? If one is in nursery, I assume there’s only 2 of you needing mobile? I would imagine there are savings to be made there. My mobile cost is £7.50 per month — but this doesn’t include the handset.

I think you may be able to save on broadband too - I would expect to be able to make all calls on my mobile so would anticipate only really needing going broadband here. Even fibre broadband should be sitting at less than this. If you live rurally, you might find that John Lewis doesn’t put their prices up for you (many companies run more expensive options for rural folks).

If you got these down by £75 in total then that would be £900 per year, which has got to be worthwhile.

£700 pcm after petrol, mobiles, and eating out sounds like quite a lot. Is that also after council tax? I assume that holidays come after that, so that then leaves £450 pcm.

Obviously in months where there’s a car repair currently that will be tight. But most months, that sounds like a decent amount for days out, clothes and coffees?

I have my accounts set up so there’s a short term savings account (car repairs, MOT, yearly bills). This has the relevant costs divvyed up into 12 and I add to it monthly. In my case that’s £175pcm. For you it might be higher - I don’t put holidays into this but you could do.

I then have long term savings too. I don’t have a food account at the moment but it’s something I’m considering.

You've been asked several times to complete a SOA so you (and others) can see exactly where your money is going. Why not do this, rather than drip feeding information?

You do have higher than average mortgage costs and bills and it's going to be more expensive to maintain a house in the South East. You will obviously be better off when you no longer have to pay nursery fees.
It doesn't sound to me as if you are extravagent. Perhaps you could have a separate account for buying shoes, clothes etc for your children.
It's important to have savings so I don't think you should stop this. Lots of people on relatively modest incomes have cleaners, window cleaners, holidays and eat out once or twice a month.

Oh it must be so hard to ONLY save £700 a month. Oh no wait, that's almost as much as I earn. And I can still afford to buy my child shoes.
Pay your essentials. Window cleaning and private healthcare are not essential.
Then look at what you have left. Which will be a lot on your income. Buy your children what they need. Save whatever you have left. It's really not hard.

We struggle with the housework and garden. Weekends typically involve a bit of catching up on sleep, one of us will probably have brought some work home and then there will be some time for the children to go to the park/playground with one parent whilst the other cleans or gardens. We probably need to shift this to both of us doing stuff at once. Youngest is 14 months so often gets in the way of cleaning and gardening.
Will do the soa this eve with my DH.

I think you should shop around for a cheaper window cleaner, gardener etc. This kind of work is cheaper if done by someone self-employed rather than a company.

Also have a look at your energy providers website for tips on saving energy. Many have useful comparison tools, so that you can see what a typical house like yours costs in energy for other families. I have just stopped running one out of two fridges and when it's empty, I will stop running my second freezer as well (added benefit: eating the food in the freezer should cut down my grocery bill).

I think for most people, your needs adjusts according to income. We tend to spend all out money any given month.

Do you ever use your health insurance? Perhaps an income protection insurance would be better?

I don't think you should stop having the occasional meal out. But perhaps be mindful that if you do go out, it means that there are other things you can't do.

Where do you put your savings? Do you get enough interest/return on investment? Perhaps put half of the savings money in an unforeseen expences account? Then if you haven's spent that half the following month, it can go in the savings account?

Also, what are you saving for? Is it your pension? Holidays?

For the record (wish I hadn’t mentioned it now!) my children have shoes and I make sure they are fitted at Clarkes (funny shaped feet) but if they are scuffed, they don’t get new ones until they are outgrown. And I notice buying them and have to consciously make room for them in the budget. I try and buy them in the sales where possible - this goes for all my children’s clothes where they are bought new. We get some things second hand too.

where are house insurance, car insurance?

do a proper budget. get rid of brick phones, £10 text and talk jobs, home broadband and unlimited calls including mobiles are £30 a month.

My heart bleeds

The only way you will work this out is by writing everything down. We all have different finances, it doesn't matter what anyone else spends only what you spend.

Don't forget that nursery years are some of the most expensive and it will pass. I don't think I managed to save at that time.

FWIW, we earn a similar amount to you, a bit less. Our mortgage is around £1k but we have no childcare expenses anymore. We have around £700 travel costs though. We do, however, spend about £15k a year on holidays and much more than £150 a month eating out, plus shop relatively expensively, both for food and clothes. We don't have a gardener but do have a cleaner. I also save just over £1k pm. It is doable, but you need to know where your money is going.

I got a Monzo card last year, it's brilliant, it has an app that creates a spending report every month so you can see where your money is going. It also has "pots" for short term savings. Maybe your bank does something similar?

So, what is your gross separate salaries which make up £165k? How much pension contributions do you make? £7.5k net means that there is definitely room to decrease your significant pension contributions if you’re finding it hard to buy your children shoes!

£115k and £44k but there is no way we'd decrease pension contributions. We CAN buy children's shoes, just not as effortlessly as I'd have expected. Part of my question was perhaps this is normal for our situation?
I think pensions are vitally important and I'd like to be able to have a roof over my head and eat in my old age!
Me and DH had a good chat last night and we are going to do a big budget and money health check in July after we've had bonus news and a chance to see how much we are really spending on things.
We are also going to get rid of the private health insurance and use our work schemes.
I'll get a cheaper phone tariff in June when my contract is up, DH has only just started his.
We are going to re-jig our accounts and possibly get Monzo - still looking into it. Basically we need to monitor our spending more closely so that we can identify where we are spending mindlessly. Probably food/eating out by the sounds of it, so we're going to start taking lunch to work. And I think we need to up our DIY skills.
I think the crux of it is that our house is too big and expensive to maintain but as a previous poster said, it's expensive to move and we are in the catchment of some good schools so we will see if we can make it work. I mean it does sort of work anyway, we're not in debt other than mortgage, but we worry about things like car bills and costs like going to weddings etc.
Thank you everyone for your brutally honest advice and opinions it's what I needed.

It's great that you only have debt on the mortgage, well done! I'm finishing my student loan repayments this summer, and I paid my overdraft last year, it feels great to only have it as an emergency!

That's excellent if you have work health schemes, hopefully they work out cheaper.

Yes, I think your situation is pretty common. We spend what we got. But you are saving, and that's fantastic, and you have pensions, that's wonderful.

I like to keep a sum of money in an account for holidays/emergencies/car repairs etc. I just spent £800 on redecorating a little and some new furniture for DC, and I still have the equivalent left in that account. For the next few months I will be topping that up as we're going on holiday in August (already paid for flights).

I think you will like Monzo! Don't be put off by the waiting time, I think they do that to make it look desirable, you do get the card quicker than they estimate. If not, you are welcome to PM me, I think I can send you a referral to bump you up the queue.

I think that you also probably fall into the trap of mindless spending at times. Tracking what you actually spend will be eye opening.
All the small things like coffee, cards from Moonpig etc, magazines add up. Look on the frugal living board on here or money saving expert demotivator.

I’m not surprised people are not sympathetic. You earn about 5 times the national average! We all have to make a choice in our spending habits and accept the consequences.

Long term you will be fine. Not sure why you’ve been paying for private health insurance if you get cheap cover through work.