How much money do you have left after all your outgoings each month

[b101]

If this is your set up-

Family of 4
1 parent full time work
1 SAHP
1 child in primary
1 child at home (2 years old)

How much money do you have left after ALL outgoings

Outgoings meaning bills, food, petrol, travel, savings (if any)

I am trying to gage what is normal for people to live on

Nothing

Outgoings meaning bills, food, petrol, travel, savings (if any)

Bills, food, petrol/travel are all variable, so it’s a bit of a how long is a piece of string question.

Savings (if any) - again, what do you mean by this? Short term (Christmas, holidays, car repair, clothes & shoes) or medium term (car replacement, white goods etc) or long term (pensions x 2, savings for job loss/rainy day, savings for DC)?

What do you want ‘leftover’ to cover?

The scrapings of my overdraft if its a good month,if not then in debt to my friend, she's the same, we tendvto swap the same £50 back and forth between us.

2 working parents and 1DC, £0
Our outgoings exceed our income until we no longer need childcare.

I mean how much do you have for

Meals out
New clothes
Family trips to cinema etc
After school clubs
Soft plays
Presents for a friends birthday
Drinks after work

That kind of thing

After everything is taken into account we have about £500 left between us a month.

We've always had equal individual spending money regardless of or our working patterns. The spending money has stayed the same since our income was a lot less, we put more into savings now.

About £500 . I'm guessing though , no idea it's a joint account and every 3 months or so we go in to the bank , transfer the money into his account and he pays the credit card off each month . We dont have to worry too much to be honest, today we've saved £40 a month by ringing Virgin and sorting out a better deal
Housekeeping goes into a wallet so that's £70 a week and we dont really use that unless we have to pay cash for things. I'm using it at the moment as I'm off sick and am losing money as I don't get sick pay
But when I return to work in 2 weeks time that housekeeping money will go in a wallet again
£350 in a separate account for any emergencies, but we are using the bulk of that for a new kitchen at the moment
Yeah about £500-£600 a month I suppose.
That's after all bills paid , a takeaway once a week , shopping bought , dinner money topped up , petrol bought for 2 cars.
We dont really buy many new clothes, I love charity shops and pay no more than £2.00 for a jumper or trousers

We have just worked out what ours is and works about to be £900 when im on mat leave however i feel weve missed things!

Our set up is slightly different in that we are both working full time and both dc in school.

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

About £700. I should probably save more tbh

Why does this question get asked every other day, what am I missing? Are we meant to compare ourselves to other familes, to make us feel better, feel worse? It's not even as if it's question you can get a standard answer to, am I the only person who has no clue? If I can afford to go out I do, if I can't I don't, I don't spend the same amount on everything every month, does everyone else?

@SirensofTitan I understand it might not be of relevance or interest to your life. But I am a first time homeowner, trying to sort my finances out and understand how people survive with what they earn and spend.

It doesn't make me feel better or worse.

At that age, not a lot. Now a fair amount which is put into savings for retirement

[quote b101]@SirensofTitan I understand it might not be of relevance or interest to your life. But I am a first time homeowner, trying to sort my finances out and understand how people survive with what they earn and spend.

It doesn't make me feel better or worse. [/quote]
Basically you can only spend what you can afford.

As a homeowner you need to save for repairs, maintenance and how you’ll pay the mortgage in case of job loss. If only one of you earns then that’s really important.

After that you cut your cloth according to what you have left over. If you have £500 you can spend that. If you only have £100 then you’ll be doing less meals out or work drinks and prioritising kids clothes etc.

Answers will vary.
Some have nothing left and will be unable to consider any of the items on your list.
Some will easily afford all of them and still have money to save or invest .
Some will consider your list frittering and prefer to use the money to pay down their mortgage, to pay school fees or to max out annual £20k isa allowance.
Very few people can afford it all.
Personal choice. Do what you can afford, not what others do.
Try to budget rather than "target" spend .
You dont have to spend "leftover" money, maybe consider saving or investing.
A Millionaire mindset would look to maximise investments not spending.

It also depends on what your other assets are, we are very cash poor at the moment due to ridiculous outgoings, but we have a lot of property equity (£500k+) and final salary pensions and a BTL house. So whilst we run out of money every month at the moment, in a few years we’ll have £1.5k min surplus and we have long term assets. That’s different to having £0 left now and no prospect of that changing.
For now we use 0% interest credit to bridge the gap. So if I want to buy clothes, go to soft play etc I card it.

[quote b101]@SirensofTitan I understand it might not be of relevance or interest to your life. But I am a first time homeowner, trying to sort my finances out and understand how people survive with what they earn and spend.

It doesn't make me feel better or worse. [/quote]
Sorry. Just realised it's all new to you.
My comments are more useful because you have more years to accumulate.
Just giving advice my younger self should have heeded.

[quote b101]@SirensofTitan I understand it might not be of relevance or interest to your life. But I am a first time homeowner, trying to sort my finances out and understand how people survive with what they earn and spend.

It doesn't make me feel better or worse. [/quote]
I can see that if it's new to you that you need to be careful but my point is really that how one family manages their money doesn't have any bearing on how another family does it.

Don't compare to randoms on the internet, get yourself a piece of paper and write down your actual income and spends and work out what will suit you. There are literally no two familes with the exact same circumstances and you need to really know your budget. You can only manage you

Thank you all. Some great advice

It all varies depending on outgoings .
There's me (sahm/student ) , DH (full time work ) and DD and we have around 1k leftover after all outgoings and savings. We are very lucky . We live in a cheaper area and don't have a sky high mortgage .
We could give up a lot of 'luxuries' (Netflix , Disney plus , sky ) and have alot more disposable.

Comparing with others doesn't help because everyone has different budgets and priorities.

Some want to pay down their mortgage as quickly as possible and will sacrifice day to day spending to achieve it.

Some people's idea of normal grocery shopping is £250 pw from Waitrose while others choose or have to manage on £60 pw at Aldi.

Some people's normal is a coffee on the way to work every day and lunch from Pret, others take a flask and a sandwich from home.

You get the idea. Some things you can't do a lot about, eg council tax, some you can. You can only spend each £ once, so you have to prioritise.

But what's important is to not spend all your money on day to day spending and make sure you account for annual and irregular expenses, and big purchases like home improvements or car replacements, pensions and emergency funds, as in you shouldn't be spending all your money on day to day little luxuries like adult clothes and beauty treatments, days out, food and drink out of the house etc etc, without accounting for important essentials in the future.

It varies. To save money I make use of free services at libraries etc. Instead of buying fruit or veg from Sainsburys I like to buy it from a farmer market once a week.

And rather than go on holiday abroad, we stick to beaches and go on vacations in this country. I like to take advantage of free kid friendly events whenever possible. Lunch I either make at home or buy on the go a cheap sandwich and eat that quickly. Definitely meal plan often in addition.

Not a lot, recently early retirement, I do save the change and save some each month.
Awaiting my next enegy bill tho🙁, harder when single

I would check out YouTube for The Budget Mom process. First steps include tracking your income over past 3 months to see what you are spending. That is your current budget, so if you spend £500 on groceries, that’s your number. The aim is over time to see if you can reduce spending and increase savings gradually to get on top of finances. Good luck. I’m trying to do it too as have been living in my overdraft.

Take home after taxes is £11.2k. Spend roughly £6000 on bills (water, gas, electric), groceries, mortgage (live abroad with v high property tax), nappies, childcare (£2000 for one DC), petrol, cleaner. Put £2400 into pensions every month. £300 into investments. Rest into cash savings/spending money. Both parents work full time & DC has morning preschool + almost full time nanny.