Budgeting with a small child!

[MissB83]

So I have recently started back at work after maternity leave, bought a house and have just drawn up a budget. I've worked out that once I take into account childcare, commuting to work by train, mortgage and other bills, I will have £700 pcm of "spends" ie food and all the other bits and bobs! Is this doable?! Any tips to save here and there? It's much less than I managed on before my DS arrived. I'm a single parent. Thanks!

£700 per month for you and a small child, after all bills and childcare is tonnes of money.

What other spends apart from food are you anticipating?

Hmm. Clothes, toiletries, house stuff (whatever needs doing), entertainment, I guess? I would probably have previously spent £80-100pw on food but it would be nice to get that down.

I spend £40 a week on food. You dont need bits and bobs.

The only bits and bobs I can think of is £3 a week for swimming with School, but that has just finished.

Weekends, we dont spend anything as we just go to the park on bikes. Weeknights we are indoors.

The key to minimising food spending is to plan ahead, and meal plan for the week rather than nipping in each day.

Also consider that some of your children's meals will already be covered by childcare, so that will also cut the costs for those days.

Entertainment can be cheap and cheerful, and depending on your child's age there are also a lot of free activities and opportunities.

I'm sure others will be a long with more ideas soon.

DS is 16 months (bit young for a bike yet ) but we do swimming, going to the playground etc a lot.

700 sounds very manageable.

Say you did get the food shop down to say £50 a week. That would leave you with roughly £480 a month to spend on clothes, days out and savings for various things (holidays, rainy day fund, birthdays etc.)

For tips I would say try and reduce the food shop as much as possible, places like Aldi and Lidl are great for this.

I batch cook and freeze a lot for those nights I CBA to cook, it saves loads of money and is great when you only want a portion or two.

Frozen veg is really great, frozen almost straight away so maximum vitamins, cheap and much less waste.

Second hand is great for little ones, it literally makes no difference to them.I've got a lot of really expensive things off of eBay for less than half the price and practically new.

Congrats on the new house, I know how hard it is moving without kids so hats off to you doing it with a toddler in tow.

As they say, watch your pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. A friend who's a single mum manages on £300/month (she looks stylish and her LO does go to some groups etc so their lifestyle isn't that bad at all).

I'm sure you can reduce your food bill a fair bit - we also spend £80-100 but I've also got DH to feed and shop in Waitrose... So I'm convinced it's possible to save there.

Just make sure you save on bills, e.g. a phone contract can cost £5-10 per month if your old phone is still good to use.

JoJo that's a good point about the phone, my contract is super pricey but it is up in September so I'll try and get a sim only deal as the phone is still fine.

Food shopping could be around £50pw. Maybe even less if able to down brand/swap to Aldi etc.

That leaves plenty for everything else.

The only difficulty with food shopping is that I do need to get delivery as I'm not near to any of the low value supermarkets (Aldi/Lidl) and I don't drive. It's a shame they don't deliver'