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.

rich people thinking they are skint lol

How many people spend £16,800 a year on one-off expenses (£1,400 a month) yet claim they have no money at the end of the month. Husband is probably syphoning off into personal savings.

there is a difference between being skint and not being able to account for where your salary is going each month due to lack of planning etc. OP asked for assistance in changing that status

Whatever you do make sure you carefully consider your options.

A work benefit of life insurance is great as long as you are employed. But if you lost your job tomorrow then your life insurance would also end immediately (with some exceptions).

It's actually quite a good idea to have your own personal life insurance policy even if you have a work policy. The earlier you take a life insurance policy the cheaper it is. So don't ditch your personal policy just yet.

Having said that, £100 per month seems A LOT. mine is half that and we have a payout of almost £1,000,000.

Totally disagree with those saying lump the CB into the spending pot - all that will mean is another £80 a month gone that you can’t account for - and £1400 is bad enough!

As others have said - you need to work out where that £1400 is going, and it’s obvious some is going on predictable expenses that you don’t budget for - like car insurance.

It’s a bit time consuming but pretty easy to get your last 6 months outgoings into a spreadsheet.

Harder if you’re a cash spender to see what’s going on, but still worth doing. There’ll be transactions you don’t remember - was that M&S transaction him spending on an unnecessary or necessary jacket, you spending on a birthday dinner… etc. But you’ll get a good idea of where your money is going.

Can you explain your boyfriend’s point? You say he wants to maintain his credit rating - but are you actually asking him to stop using the card, or just to share the transactions?

I do personally think that everyone should be able to pick up a cheeky McD without their partner seeing what they spent, questioning whether McD is a bad health choice… we all need privacy! So if I were him, honestly I also wouldn’t want to share every transaction. But you fix that by allocating spending money into a personal account. Let him use that for paying off his credit card, which should only be his personal spending. I’m fairly suspicious that a chunk of your missing money is going on spends for him.

Where are your savings? Do you really book holidays for under your £1400 every time you go away? Or are they booked on his credit card and actually not paid in full every month?

Wrote everything down… even if you don’t shortcut to the answer by going back through 6 months, the good thing is it’s not magic - you’ll soon see where it’s going, as soon as you look !

My food shop was £500pm too. I am cutting out the takeaways and trying to cut £500 to £400 a month instead. Lots of pasta and baking!

Well the obvious answer is look at the credit card bill to see what he is spending

or what the cc payment is monthly from joint account to pay it

but to lose £1400 a month is insane

if you have that extra left over every month ans can’t account for it you have serious issues

As you're both employed, do your jobs include death in service benefit? Many jobs do...mine does (4 x annual salary). If so, you could ditch the life insurance.

£500 food bill too high -
Do a food stock inventory in your kitchen & then design a menu with what you have got in. Only buy fresh produce & ingredients needed to complete the meal plan. I did this last week & saved £40 just by using ingredients I already had in.

£150 take away bill - Batch cook and meal plan so you don't have to buy takeaways. Double up when cooking meals & freeze additional portions.

Look at all utilities and see if you can swap to better or cheaper deals

I'd leave the child benefit alone because you'll waste it by putting in to the main budget. You're better off saving it for your kids university fees/driving lessons.

**

That's what in was going to suggest. Can you reduce the kids activities? Or use the benefit to help pay for them?

Go through your statements and see exactly where it is going. Be brutal and cut down on things like coffee out etc

As long as your DH is being secretive about his spending you won't get on top of it.

He should only be using his CC for personal spending. Everything else should go through the joint account.

Parental contribution for university for a family with 60,000 joint income and above is currently sitting at £5,000 for each year they are there. That’s with the maximum student loans. If you have two children that’s £30,000 you need to have ready unless they are going to take a year or two out and try to earn it themselves. If you can afford to put your child benefit aside it’s therefore worth it. Might of course be much higher by the time your dc go.

its the £1,500 we need to see broken down really rather than the £3,000

I love takeaways so we have them but try and limit them or do them once every 2 weeks.
As others have said lower your food bill.
We save for annual things e.g. Christmas, birthday, car service/mot so when we look at what is left over we’ve already saved for that.
I do a weekly budget so I can account for what I’m spending week to week. This will then affect what we spend at the weekend e.g. this week extra we’ve paid for panto tickets, costume for a show and a present for a party. That means this weekend we’ll go on walks/to the park to keep costs down.
Doing a weekly budget works well for me as I don’t spend loads at start of the month but track exactly what I have.

Try YNAB it's a game changer!

Another one saying there’s no point in trying to save a few quid here and there on takeaways etc when you’re pissing £1400 up the wall every month.

Add space in your budget for all the “unexpected items” (divide annual expenses by 12 and start saving). Start an emergency fund for truly unexpected events.

Allocate yourselves a spend allowance each month so your DH can feel like he can spend guilt free.

Whatever is left in your budget, agree between yourselves what to save vs what to put towards other things (eg increasing the spend allowance).

That life insurance looks really cheap to me - my partner spends £240 a month on his for £500k cover. Does everyone just have a far lower coverage amount?

I think yours sounds very expensive! Are you sure that's just life insurance or does that also include income protection or critical illness cover?

My life insurance costs £100 per month and pays out almost £1,000,000. Covers me & DH, plus kids (smaller amount).

Critical illness or income protection pushes cost up significantly

I just got a small additional £50k policy for less than £3.50 a month. So 500k would have been £35, if his doesn't include any extras then that is insanely expensive.

But probably about right if it has critical illness cover (though would be a bit overinsured for me to have 500k for critical life cover)

Tinkering around with what you have listed isnt going to solve the problem.

Identifying where the other £1,400 a month is going is the big issue.

I think him calling you financially controlling is a massive worry and alos dont think he understands how credit ratings work. Its not how much you spend its how you repay it.

Yeah. Stop having bloody take aways!!

You need to start accounting for every single penny.

You BOTH need to get a receipt for every single transaction, starting next payday and tot it all up the day before the next payday to see where the money is going. If you cannot get a receipt, make a note of what it was and what it cost and put that in.

Not being able to account for £1400 every month is unforgivable.

Also, lose the takeaways and curtail half of the kids activities.