After bills, how much do you have left?

[Mummsnett]

Curious to know on average what others have left after all bills are paid?

Just tallied mine and after mortgage, utilities, car loan, petrol, childcare, groceries it's about £200-£300.

I'm a single parent. How do others compare?

I have the same left over but groceries/petrol is taken out of that.
Thankfully DD is an adult and although not earning much she does pay for her own stuff these days and a little rent.
I have recently had a promotion so should be better off by another £200 or thereabouts so that's good, I don't think I'll see the full benefit of that that until christmas though!

I'm around the same.

After all bills we have around £1400. This is before savings though.

Around 850 a month before savings. That’s between me and DH.

As long as you have enough this is not really a comparison that it is worth getting into. You have people in their 20s through to people in their 60s. Single parent, no worker households through to two parent high earner households. Lower earners with no housing costs due to having paid off a mortgage, downsized or inherited, high earners with huge mortgages, do you factor in overpayments etc. People with low spending money because they are making huge pension contributions etc. Some people spend very little on groceries but eat out more, others have insane grocery bils.

If you want to benchmark yourself you could try the below, although it is not spending money related.

ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/where_do_you_fit_in

Take home salary - £1800

Rent including council tax and water - £693
Gas and electric - £60
Food - £50
Transport - £40

Left: £957

23, in a relationship and living together, work full time, no children, live in London.

At the moment the majority of my disposable income is going towards a house deposit, after I have a house it will be going into a savings account for a rainy day/old age.

Agree its meaningless. You might as well ask for a random number between -500 and 10000.

Plus everyone has different definitions of 'bills' and 'left over', eg which category does additional pension contributions or mortgage overpayments, food and petrol/bus fares and essentials that come up annually or irregularly like insurance, car servicing etc and replacement of white goods etc fall into.

We have about £1700 after mortgage, bills, food, petrol etc.

We aren't high earners but our outgoings are low.

This is only a recent thing after paying back family for some unavoidable debt due to a house sale.

We plan to use it on two good holidays next year, upgrading the car and savings.

I am older
No mortgage
No debt
2 income streams
Savings
Lots of disposable income
Of course my life was not always like this
The bills still come in
An white good broke recently & bought a new efficient one

What's your point ?

Take home £4K between us. Bills £1.5K savings £1k and 1.5K left for petrol, food and anything else.

@BarbaraofSeville

Agree its meaningless. You might as well ask for a random number between -500 and 10000.

Plus everyone has different definitions of 'bills' and 'left over', eg which category does additional pension contributions or mortgage overpayments, food and petrol/bus fares and essentials that come up annually or irregularly like insurance, car servicing etc and replacement of white goods etc fall into.

This, exactly!

Apart from anything else does everyone have lives that cost the same each month, I certainly don't and I can't imagine how other posters do on threads like this.

Anyway, if you're making some kind of spreadsheet my random number is 6545132

About £1000. I don’t have to pay childcare though; and don’t have a car. I am quite strict with my savings goals so have Iess disposable income each month.

As I usually say on threads like this, what does it matter if you are starving to death.

It's pointless and meaningless.

Can you live and do what you need to do. If you struggle then you make changes or just feel bad that loads of people don't...

Wouldn't a percentage of disposable vs spoken for money make more sense? which case my personal income I have approx 65% of my income disposable which I save a good % of for savings.

council tax £150
food 400
petrol 90
gas/elec 150
credit cd 200
loan 100
Insurances 50
church 80
dgc pocket 32 money
gd tuition 130
dog 100
dental plan 13
Total £1496

Disposable £70O. Seemed good when I first totalled but then realized this would mean no entertainment budget at all, no replacement of clothes factored in. I realize that those things do come under disposable income but factoring in a meal out/cinema trip occasionally would take us down another hundred. Not much left over to be honest once we factor in annual holiday,Christmas/birthday gifts/incidentals not thought about here but very grateful to feel 'comfortable' these days.

I have £0 before I've paid all my bills

Based on percentage of our take home pay, it's around 32%.

If we didn't have childcare to pay for, it would be 45%.

26% of our take home pay goes on bills, mortgage, medical, pension, groceries. We save around 40% which leaves 34% for spending.

Once my maternity leave ends in 9 months we'll be paying for childcare but earning a little more and bills will go up to 35%. We'll probably cut back on the saving rather than the spending then.

About £200

Rather depressingly we have no money left over each month. However paying back debts run up when the 3 kids were small / maternity. So I have chosen this route! Plan is to get debt free in 5 years. Till then we really need to focus on not spending recklessly although we will still have the odd day out and a couple of uk camping holidays.

I think it depends what you class as bills. Some people will just include gas, electric, council tax and water as bills and others will add on phone, car costs, savings, pensions, childcare etc

Take home monthly
6200
Bills monthly (actually 4 weekly)
Electric 100
Childcare 400 (term time only)
Life insurance 70
Waste 25
Broadband/tv and phones x2 95
Food 480
Fuel 280 (car isn't very fuel efficient but its not a big deal!)
Kids activities 50

I can't think of anything else

So 6200 -1500 = 4700 left

We pay house and car insurance and car tax annually.

No mortgage/rent

Between both of us when all priority bills are paid we have £2170 left but with food and petrol it's about £1770 but I work part time and have no childcare fees.

@Spicybean you spend £50 a month on food? How?

[quote MyDcAreMarvel]@Spicybean you spend £50 a month on food? How?[/quote]
Eating only spicy beans of course!