How much for a month after the direct debits

[Hamsteronrollerblades]

Our income has been steady then flat then great and will now be middling before bottoming out again. We manage ok and have saved dor the next lull but thinking longer term I am interested in spending. We have a trio of children primary to high school ages and I was just interested in how much everyone else finds they need per month. Outside of mortgage, insurances and all the other dds when it comes to food and fun and emergency funds and general life how much do you find you need?

What you need and what you have can be two very different things!

We have about £2k after DDs. More would be nice!

After all the bills are paid (these are spread across the month), including nursery fees and the essentials of food etc, we have about £20-£25 a week. :)

When I had a very limited budget for myself and 2 children. I paid bills. And had £50 a week for food and £50 in my purse. It was painfully tight as that covers shoes, clothes, haircuts, school trips etc.

But things like tyres car repairs. Boiler servicing. Broken washing machine. Hoover etc was not in my budget. I was lucky I have family to helped me in those situation.

Pre Covid it was ok. I got school uniform as and when I saw it. But they both needed everything replaced returning to school. I could of cried. But I made it work.

I'm fortunate that my budget has a bit more wiggle room in it now.

About £300 per month - that's after putting £100 in savings and setting aside £200 for fuel (which I haven't used much recently thanks to getting a job closer to home and WFH because of COVID).
For info - single income family with baby number 1 on the way in a couple of weeks.

Our direct debits take 50% of our income. The remaining 50% covers all things that cannot be set up on dd. Fuel, food, everything the kids need, gifts, holidays, savings etc.

We have a low income but we also have low costs.

After bills and savings we have around £800-£900 a month for food, fuel and everything else.

Need is a difficult one. My husband and I spend far more than we need to on socialising, shopping and hobbies but we're both spenders and would struggle to cut down. After bills, mortgage, pension, food and savings we have around €2500 a month in the joint account for fun, random expenses and non-essentials. I'm ashamed to say we struggle to stick to this budget. On the other hand our direct debits are low because we bought a much cheaper house than we could afford so as to allow us to spend freely and enjoy life.

Around 8 or 9 years ago we had far less money and used to get by on €100 a week between us. It was okay at the time but we've fallen in to the lifestyle creep trap we would really struggle to go back now.

I should add we live in Ireland where cost of living is a little higher.