No money left each month

[AddingUp]

Hello

I need some help with our money and how to improve. Pensions are already paid out from gross salary from employment. Child benefit goes into another account and we invest it for them. Our monthly net income is £4,400 and our set monthly expenses is £3,000.

However we never have any money left at the end of the month. Each month there is a "one-off" expense such as car insurance, holiday break, something needs replacing... and it is EVERY month.

Mortgage: £1,075
Council tax: £225
Electric/Gas: £275
Water: £25
Mobile: £25
Subscriptions: £25
Broadband: £50
Food: £500
Petrol: £400
Takeaways: £150
Life insurance: £100
Kid's activities: £150
TOTAL: £3,000

DH insists on using a credit card that he pays in full each month. This means that I do not see the the breakdown of what he is paying off which is frustrating. Each time I bring it up, he says I'm being financially controlling and that he wants to maintain his credit rating.

Can anyone suggest any improvement please? Otherwise, we will not survive an increase in mortgage.

You can either earn more (second job for one of you), spend less or use all the income you have instead of investing. Long term investment for children is lovely for them, but not as important as a roof over their head.

I think the obvious thing would be to use your child benefit for living costs rather than investing it. Also I would class the takeaways as an unnecessary expense.

Ditch the takeaways and use your child benefit for monthly costs. When you are in a better financial position start saving for the children again.

Thank you. We can make these 2 changes.

1. Start using child benefit as family income
2. No takeaways

Each month there is a "one-off" expense such as car insurance, holiday break, something needs replacing... and it is EVERY month

Car insurance is an essential and needs to be saved/budgeted for - it's much cheaper to pay annually, so you need to do this. Likewise, you should expect to have to pay for car repairs, white goods replacement etc, so need to save for these. Holidays aren't essential obviously, but again you need to allocate some of your money to them out of your available money after you've paid for necessities.

What are the subscriptions for - do you need and use them all?

You might be able to get your broadband a little cheaper. You could possibly spend less on food, but as you're not on the breadline, and having 'no money' appears to be more of a budgeting issue, not a priority.

Petrol looks like a lot, but unless you're doing a lot of non essential travel, you probably can't reduce without changing your car.

Takeaways and kids activities aren't essential so could be reduced or swapped for something cheaper, eg supermarket meal deals - M&S often have a good family deal for £10-15.

Your DH could 'maintain his credit rating' by putting a single tank of fuel or other small essential on his card. Could he be paying for extravagent lunches or similar that's taking up a lot of the budget?

You need to go through your budget together and separate out joint/family expenses from personal expenses. Have a look at:

www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/

Have you looked into whether that is the cheapest life insurance? No need to share personal details here. I pay £5 a month and dp pays £15. We got it through moneysavingexpert research.

But it isnt financially controlling to want a breakdown of types of expense.
Would it be better to work out the amount of 'fun money' you each have to spend on whatever, and not have so much unaccounted for?

Aim to build an emergency fund, a pot of money, which is used for unexpected expenses. Allocate money to go to the emergency fund shortly after payday, not money left over at end of month.

Is credit card the only debt? Go through bank statements, credit card statements, try to identify everything that is being spent on, be that a monthly recurring or something only paid once a year.

Track everything that is spent over the next few months, down to the smallest thing. If you give a child £1 to spend at the school cake sale, then that goes on the list.

Getting DH on board may be tricky. Do what you can, try to get him to realise that spending money on the credit card is ok but it needs to be tracked, otherwise it can quickly get out of control. Why can he not use the debit card?

Child benefit should be used as family income. £150 of activities for the DC is a very good use of that money if you really don't need it for basic housing/heating/eating. Takeaways are a luxury and you have to decide which luxuries are most important to you. I don't see any issue with you seeing the credit card statement if any supposedly joint funds are paying it off each month, slightly different if you allow yourselves x amount each per month and he uses his cc for that and you use debit or cash.

If I’ve read this properly, £1400 is an enormous amount of money to have left over at the end of the month, even if you say it is being swallowed by unforeseen expenses.

How big is your family? Could you cut down on food? Where do you shop? I’m sure that you could shave at least £100 off your monthly food bill.

Can you look for a cheaper broadband deal? £50 is a lot. I would aim to spend no more than £30.

What are the subscriptions for? I would review them as there may be some that you have had historically that now are no longer relevant/you make little use of.

Ditch the takeaways - you can get really nice equivalents that are much cheaper from the likes of M&S. Maybe aim to have one proper takeaway per month and use meal deals for the other times?

Could you use the child benefit to help fund the kids’ activities instead?

For yearly things like car insurance and holiday, I put money into a savings account each month (I estimate the cost and divide by 12). Once a year I tidy the account up and work out if its over/under what I need.

Can you cut back at all on food shopping? Drop down a brand level or bulk meals out with cheaper options?

You need to account for that other £1400.
Holidays, birthdays, car service/MOT/insurance, christmas are not unpredictable. They all need to go into the budget. Requiring a new washing machine can't be predicted acuratly, but things do break, so you need to put aside some money each month for them. No childcare costs?
I'd also be inclined to say savings for you should come before savings for the kids.

You have loads missing from your budget, insurances, car expenses, school uniform, clothes, gifts,

have another go adding in all these things and I am amazed you have anything left

I would question if you need such expensive life insurance, but you might do as you have a relatively large mortgage and DC, unless your pension has a very generous death in service benefit. However, you might not be able to reduce the cost as it's more expensive to buy as you get older.

Yes, the £1400 looks like a lot, but it won't be anywhere near as much once annual and irregular essential expenses, plus a modest amount of extras have been fully accounted for.

Definitely look at your last few months bank and credit card statements to see where your money has been going. You can download transactions into a spreadsheet and sort by categories.

Do you mean your DH doesn't let you see what he is spending on his credit card ?

Mortgage: £1,075
Council tax: £225 is this figure your monthly amount or spread over 12 months?
Electric/Gas: £275 how much are you actually using? do weekly readings and get account altered, this will mean they will not be able to put up DD if your not using a high amount and if your using more it'll immediately be apparent
Water: £25
Mobile: £25
Subscriptions: £25 what for?
Broadband: £50 thats a lot for broadband alone - can you get cheaper - I have phone, mobile sim only and internet for £44
Food: £500 - this added to the takeaways is £650 which is £20 per day - try following some of the feed your family for a fiver tiktoks for ideas to reduce this bill
Petrol: £400 - are you driving efficiently? Do you check tyre pressure, is the driving thoughtful of using fuel efficiently ? how many miles a month are you both driving to use this amount? You're using 7.5 liters of fuel a day
Takeaways: £150 - get a few fakeaway meals in instead, either make yourself read, fish and chips from the freezer or slow cooker meals from taming twins
Life insurance: £100 - Are you both very high risk? seems excessive for life insurance - look to getting a cheaper option if you can
Kid's activities: £150
TOTAL: £3,000

Child benefit is there to help raise your child. So use it for that!
Too much on takeaways and too much on food. Is that including everyone’s lunches. You should have a few nights a week eating some much cheaper meals, it will make a huge difference. are you eating meat every main meal. Do you food plan?

I would set up a separate bank account/savings account for

House insurance, building and contents
car tax, MOT
school uniform
haircuts
other big one of annual payments you have

and a separate bank account/savings account

gifts birthdays
gifts christmas

and work out how much you spend over the year on these items and divide by 12, then have 2 standing orders set up on pay day to pay the money into the relevant account - that way when these times need paying - you dip into the relevant account

Your food bill is high.
during lockdown I learnt how to make our favourite takeaways - they aren’t as difficult as you think and can be frozen. Same for any meal type really.
Het a slow cooker and have dinner ready when you get home - stops the temptation for takeaways.
Petrol costs are high.

Where is the rest of the money going? Do you know?

Can you withdraw £50 each for the week to curb your spending?

Can you get a Munzo account or similar so save in pots of money - so you have a cushion?

Also the holiday break - how often is this and what do you spend? Do you need to do this - can you stop until you have some savings?

Get a starling account and set up an emergency fund with £1000 in it this is for true emergencies like a new boiler or a washer or vet bill etc. and then some pots for annual expenses.

These are mine -
Car repairs/ mot 30
Xmas 50
Amazon 10
Fuel wood 10
School uniform 10
School trips 10
Pet 15
Gifts /parties 50
Clothes and hair cuts 100
Holidays 300
Home insurance 20
Car insurance 20
Medical 20
50th gift 12.50
Home repairs/decorating 50

Use credit card for petrol only
Food spending at 650 is high

£1400 is a lot unaccounted money.

It's nearly 17,000 a year

Where is that 17,000 going.

OP,

Whenever I see people's lists when the person has a family and does have some disposable income, I think of things missing, such as :

Haircuts/colour
Birthdays
Christmas
Kids soft play
Coffee and cake with friends
Presents for kids parties
School trips
Summer fete
Christmas fair
Shoes
New top
Halloween
Car MOT
New kettle
Lottery tickets
Light bulbs
Batteries
Kids clothes
Window cleaning
Amazon Prime
Couple of drinks out

And much more.

You might have some of these, you might have all off these.

Your husband should be able to share his monthly credit card statement with you. It's not ideal that he won't.

But you can still keep track of your won extra spending for a few months to get a better idea of it.

Get a chase account or such like paying 1% on transactions, that way if you food shop and put fuel on the card you'll make £11 per month just for the food and fuel purchases

If you're both employed (not self employed), check to see if your employer has death-in-service benefit. Mine does (it's 4 times my annual salary) and if that's the case, I'd suggest ditching your additional life insurance costs.