Money DOES matter! How much left after expenses ?

[Ozster]

Would you please share how much money you have left each month after ALL essential costs ? ( mortgage/rent/bills/food shop/petrol/car insurance/council tax/childcare)

We are thinking of buying a bigger property and I am number crunching.

It would be good to get some perspective and comparisons, please.

Thank you in advance

Combined DH and I bring home £7000 per month (£3000 me, £4000 DH)

Once we have paid for the essentials (which total about £1850) we have left over £5150.

£3300 goes into savings and the rest we spend on ourselves (food, entertainment, etc)

If we had kids we'd definitely put less into savings. I'm 27 though, so no rush. We're just focused on saving so we can buy a house soon.

You’ll get a huge range of replies here that won’t help you in your individual circumstances at all. Why not tell us your proposed budget and lifestyle and get some feedback on whether you are being realistic?

Uncliche How fo you earn so much? I'd love to boost my income. We have nothing left after expenses each month and are very often OD

Can’t see how the information you are asking for would even help you because
a) you don’t know size property posters own/rent
b) you don’t know how much said property costs per month as housing costs vary within and between countries

Youd be better off using Zillow’s calculator for properties in your area to calculate mortgage payments, insurance costs, council tax/property tax and utility costs.

After we pay mortgage, all bills, groceries etc per month, we each have £500 in personal spends, and just over £5000 that goes in to savings.

None of this is relevant to you or your situation.

Why not just post your income, outgoings, planned mortgage increase, and ask for advice based on your actual numbers?

Our combined monthly income is about £7500-8000. Our mortgage is £2500, everything where possible is paid as a lump sum expect my credit cards which I use only for fuel and shopping, so around 1000 a month total. Any bills left overis phone bills. heating, water, electricity etc, these are around 500-1000pm, depending on the time of year etc. The children's school is 9000pa each. Anything else is put into savings. Despite having good incomes I still try to stick to a strict budget, don't use credit cards for luxury purchases and avoid unnecessary spending. This will allow us to retire earlier and pay our DC university. I'm not sure how useful this will be as we don't know your personal circumstances or expenses.

@coronafiona

Uncliche How fo you earn so much? I'd love to boost my income. We have nothing left after expenses each month and are very often OD

We've both been fortunate with our jobs. I'm a consulting engineer and DH heads a data science department.

Not this again. It isn't helpful to see this boasting.

About £25,000 per month left over. Does that help with your budgeting?

We are thinking of buying a bigger property and I am number crunching.

If you share your number crunching, posters can advise you based on the stats.

We have 8k a month spending money. This is unusual though

Don't ask questions like this. It'll only make you feel bad when you see people having £5k left to play with a month...

Feeling very poor reading this thread🤣

I thought that I was doing ok but maybe not then!
I was financially abused in the past and mostly not allowed to work so I’m more than happy with my £400 a month after essentials!

As well as other people's circumstances not being helpful to you (different lifestyle expectations for example) everyone defines 'essential' in different ways.

A family of 4 might spend between £50 and £200 pw on groceries for example and the £50 pw family might feel perfectly happy with this amount while the £200 pw family might not be able to see where they could cut back.

Mobile phone costs vary enormously, as do cars. Some see a £60 a month iphone contract or a £300 car payment as a basic essential while others wouldn't even consider spending this much.

Some include things like Christmas, insurance, car repairs etc in their essentials, others ignore them and express surprise and disappointment when they occur.

Some spend a significant three figure sum each month on childcare or school fees, others spend little or nothing because they use informal free/cheap family childcare or work opposite shifts.

The list is endless and hearing how other people with possibly vastly different circumstances spend their money doesn't really help you manage yours.

Fiance and I earn 4.5k between the two of us. Our bills including rent and with budgeting 400 for food and 150 for petrol comes to about 1600. We also save 1550 a month between us. So we have about 1300 a month left over disposable. Which I have no idea where it goes so I have started a beautiful spreadsheet to track everything. We are also in the process of buying a house so our bills will come down even though our mortgage will be a bit more.

I don't see how knowing what other people have left will help you.

Feel free to ask the question OP - there is no need for people to reply if they do not want to.

I have £400 a month left after all expenses.

Fuck I’m poor. For me I have around £450 and I spend around £678996 of that on Starbucks that I don’t need so I’m left with around £300.

I don't actually know how much my partner has left over...I could probably work it out as it's not a secret but we don't have joint finances (1 joint account for joint bills).

After I've paid all my bills, I have about £2300 left, although about £800 of it is tied up in a second property and investments that I don't touch. So I would say I have £1500 truly disposable. Obviously if I needed it, I could use the other £800.

I don't have many bills at the moment, but that is likely to change in future. No childcare, car payment, gym, expensive phones, Sky etc. Likely to buy a new car next year, and repayments likely to be quite high for 3 years.

I'm not a big fan of massive monthly bills where they can be avoided (always buy cars with mixture of savings and loans - not PCP, have NOW TV instead of Sky etc). I wasn't always like that but when saving up for a house we totally reassessed and have been pleasantly surprised with how much can be saved with a small amount of change.

We've had hardly any money when we bought our first property.
Do a monthly budget for Christmas, birthdays, clothes, holidays, Days out, coffees and magazines, dentists,hobbies, savings for emergency fund for day to day things, savings for long term. You can decide what to spend on each category to work out what you need for the minimum standard of living.

Go back over your bank accounts and see how much you spent last year so you can use that as a basis for calculating your outgoings.

I don't see other ppls "left over" money helps you crunch your figures. Only you can do that.
If I said I have £1,000 left per month, how does that help you? You don't know if I rent/own, married/single, DC or not, how many hours I work. Slightly absurd

Not much, but enough that I don't have to count every penny. We have a low income but I only work about 15 hours per week and so long as we don't move house we will be mortgage free by 50.

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