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.

We are all in different circumstances. Just because you earn a high wage does not mean you are not allowed to ask for financial advice.

I make your net household income before pensions to be £8.8k pcm.
So, after pension contributions, you have £7.5K net. After mortgage and childcare, you have approx £4K left.

What are your travel costs of £1k pcm? Can you make savings here?
I thought our commuting costs were high at £500 pcm!

You can definitely shave at least £50 off your gas & electricity bill. Same with your mobile phone bill without huge effort. Use your non work day to go through all your household bills and change deals/suppliers. Same with the gardener or tree surgeon - get a few quotes in (on your non work day). You can prune back deeply every other year (I have a conifer boundary and a half acre plot and get a tree surgeon + lackey in with chainsaws to do it for less than £1k!). I don’ bother with a window cleaner but I do have a gardener for half a day (£15 ph) once a fortnight for general garden maintenance.

Honestly, even shopping around will save you at least £50 pcm on your family medical health insurance.

Don’t you have work mobile phones or work expensed mobiles? This means that you can get a cheap payg tariff for your personal mobile. We have giffgaff for our personal mobiles.

If you cba to shop around, just dip into your savings from your past annual bonuses. Seriously, if I was more cynical, I’ll think that you’re taking the p*.

I do think when you are used to this level of income it is easy to fall into the trap of overspending. Having children is much more expensive than I imagined - not just nursery fees but shoes and clothes, classes, entertainment...

Fwiw we currently have about £8.5k after pension payments coming in - our outgoings are less than yours as we do not have a mortgage and our nursery fees are £1200 a month. DDs and food come to £1,500 - this includes an expensive gym membership, cleaner and £100 a month for annual bills such as insurances, MOT and car tax. I also have a regular saver account for £300 which is savings towards a new car (we get a car every 8-10 years, our current car is 5 years old so we need to get saving).
We save a further £1,250 a month for “short term” savings - holidays (about £6k this year as we are going away for a special birthday), house maintenance (we have an old house - something always needs to be done, this year is some new sash windows so around £3/£4k), kids clothes and other one off expenses.
We each have £500 personal spends- clothes/ haircuts/ lunches/ coffees.
The rest of the money is put into our ISAs (we usually max. these out each year, they are our retirement pots/ kids education savings).

I think it's about changing your mindset. The mortgage, nursery and travel combo means you can't live as well as you think you should be able to on your salaries. You need to spend what you can afford, not what you think you can.

You can't feel entitled to a £3k holiday if you can't buy essentials like clothes for your kids. Ditto for other non-essential spends.

Just a word of caution about using a work scheme rather than a private scheme for healthcare. If you have a pre existing condition and your employer choses to change its healthcare provider (which many do frequently to save money) then it may not be covered. This can render many employer funded private healthcare scheme practically worthless. You are not in control of whether they do this so it might be worth finding out how frequently they change.

We've been stung on this with DH's workplace scheme.

I don't actually think you need private healthcare. I'd cut it out for a few years until your budget is back under control.

I don't think you are overspending. I think you are keeping too much of your money. You are saving in three ways every month through large pension contributions (wise), big mortgage (an effective form of saving) and saving £700 on top. I think that of you feel you don't have enough disposal income you should reduce the £700 to £200 or halt that savings pot altogether until your short term nursery fees have stopped and release another massive amount of money on a monthly basis. If you have been saving £700 a month for a while your rainy day fund is already very healthy and your pension and mortgage are there for long term savings.
Nobody I know would think they can't comfortably afford shoes for their children if they had £700 going spare every month. They would buy the shoes and whatever else their children needed and then put anything spare into a savings account. I don't think you are overspending. You don't spend that much after pension contributions, nursery fees, commuting costs, mortgage and savings. I think you have just lost perspective on the pursuit of collating as much money as you can.

We are in a similar boat but earn a little less. Our take home is 6k. 2k nursery fees, 1k mortgage, 1k insurances and bills and council tax. Then another 600 on car payment, a bit of cc debt and a few things in 0%. By the time we pay for food and fuel and put a little money aside for holidays, there isn't as much disposable income as you would think for a family that earns 6k a month.

We’re on very similar but our mortgage is £1k higher so your housing costs are not hideous for the level of income. While no-one will ever have any sympathy, it is an indication of broader cost of living issues. We’ve fallen into the trap of mindless spending- it’s our food bills that do it and we’ve been trying to get a grip on them. Some months they’ve been around £1k which is ridiculous and embarrassing. The problem is that your idea of essential spending becomes totally distorted and this effect is even bigger if you’re around wealthy friends. You’ll be able to save more etc, it is just going to be a matter of choices and once childcare fees go down, you’ll be feeling pretty wealthy again.

user I think that's very good point, you do get very used to what you are spending and your priorities/life choices. My SILs DH has a very high income, but he has 4 DC from a previous marriage and pay a lot of his income in child maintenance. They also have a large house with a huge mortgage. At the end of the month they have very little left. I spend more than they do on food, but less than half of what they spend on clothes/shoes/makeup/hair (I shop in charity shops and sales, I cut my own hair and I don't war makeup) even though I earn half of what he earns, because that's my priority, and I don't have to pay child maintenance for 4 DC from a previous marriage or a huge mortgage. I don't think anyone has the right to judge other people on what they choose to spend their money on, if it's cars, health insurance, shoes or holidays. And it's not very nice to be jealous that someone can afford more than you can.

It's quite simple. You need to create a spreadsheet with your incomings at the top then list all of your house bills including mortgage which are presumably paid by direct debit and have to be paid.. Your Nursery fees should go in there too. Then you'll have a sum of 'free money' left once you've taken them off. From that you allocate some money to a savings account, some to a food and petrol account and then you and your DH can split the rest for day to day incidentals.
This is how we manage our money. We have £6k net a month, £1.6k mortgage, £800 Nursery fees and save £1k per month.

I think @Donotbequotingmeinbold makes a good point. Why are you saving £700/month as a 'rainy day' when you can't afford children's shoes? That is kinda warped. Even dropping down to £500 would free up loads of money to buy your children clothes!

Once the little ones are out of nursery our disposable income is going to go up massively - that would be a better time to save a it more.