Is £500 a month ok to live on after bills?

[forwardsandbackwardsandup]

I'm having a ridiculous argument with my husband and I have so completely lost sight of what is reasonable. After mortgage/bills, food/petrol, all fixed costs etc. we each have around £500 each month. I usually save around £200 and spend the rest on bits and pieces throughout the month. Coffees, train and lunch the one day a week I go into the office. Little bits for the kids. I pay for swimming lessons and another class from that too. I don't feel rich but I also don't feel poor. The classic "comfortable". I have savings built up from this as well as a bigger (not huge, under £20k) savings pot which has had around £10k from inheritance as well as money from the sale of a property from before I even met him. I appreciate having this cushion and the ability to dip into it if need be, although I rarely do.

He gets to the end of his £500 before the end of the month and thinks I am being rude for suggesting that it is easy to live on this. He cycles, doesn't drink or gamble, I have no idea where it goes.

If it matters, I work part time while the kids are young and he works full time. He pays the majority of bills to allow us to be left with the same figure to spend on us each month. He's starting to complain that he is having to "financially carry this family". I've looked into increasing my days but with 2 in nursery me going up to full time only gives us around £80 more per month so doesn't see worth it.

My question: should £500 be easy enough to live on?

This

He won't take on any suggestions that he keep track of the money. He is extremely averse to being told what to do. So we have an explosive fight every few months about how £500 is perfectly liveable. Then get over it. Then suddenly a big, yet not actually unexpected cost comes up - boiler service for example - and he gets himself worked up that all his money is going on bills and he doesn't have a penny to himself blah blah. His football season ticket is due for renewal soon. Same cost every year. Last year I had to lend him the money. He paid me back £50 a month until it was paid off and he grudged every single month. Has he saved up for it this year? We shall see.

He rarely goes into the office. Not once a week anyway and cycles so has no travel. He's never been good with money. Never had savings until long after we've met. Even now when he has savings it's more of a putting £200 away and hoping he doesn't need it before payday type thing rather than building up a significant pot. Sorry. Sick of moaning about it. I'll be back grumbling about it in the summer when the car insurance is up for renewal.

Show him those calculations then. Bear in mind the additional pension and tax contributions. Calculate full time nursery, and childcare and nursery runs he'd have to take over, losing money when the kids are sick, practical stuff he'd have to do around the house, cost of a cleaner who does laundry, etc.

Tell him there's no more money - if you go back full time you'll be losing out as a family.

Tbh the way you split money sounds silly.

Insurance, a sinking fund for repairs and services, commuting - should all come out of a joint pot. Your fun money shouldn't be suddenly reduced because of X expense.

I would struggle too if I had to cough up X amount suddenly. It might make more sense to reduce your fun money but make sure it's actually fully reserved for fun.

How do you pay for dates/holidays? Who pays?

If recalculate it a bit then.

Car insurance, car maintenance costs etc - divide annual amount by 12, put that away in the bills account. Make a line in the budget for his football season ticket and put that by in the bills account each month too. (Yeah, it’s his discretionary spend but make an equivalent line for you too for something you’d splurge on.) Put by an annual amount for house maintenance/boiler repair etc, divide by 13, in the bills account).

That will mean you both get less than £500 per month but also that there’s less uncertainty and the things you know will crop up are saved for.

Psychologically, if you think you can spend £500 a month on whatever you like, but some months it’s £350, and some months it’s less, or whatever, then it feels shit. But if you know you can legitimately blow your discretionary cash per month because bigger stuff is accounted for then who-hoo.

You’ll never make him a saver if he isn’t one. He’s not going to put by for things like you would. So work it out so that you don’t have to fight to control that.

So, you have separate saving pots?

As to unplanned bills, why not plan for them? You seem so financially organised in other ways, it seems obvious to me. Maybe both reduce your monthly disposable income by an agreed amount and this doesn't get touched for anything except unexpected expenses, such as the boiler repairs And then maybe every year or quarter, if there has been no surprise costs, you spend whatever might be left on having a nice family day out or romantic date, towards a break.
This way, he knows every now and then his monthly free money is not going to reduced by 75%, leaving him with nothing to see him through the rest if the month or have to 'borrow' money from you and get himself into 'debt'

Looks like our posts crossed @NoSquirrels . Great minds...

I have £500 spending money but that has to include clothes, cosmetics, osteopath and the dentist.

Obviously these costs vary hugely month to month so I try and save £50 when I haven't got anything to spend on for a month when I do.

I find it tricky to be honest but I realise I'm quite fortunate.

Does his bikes cost a lot? You could argue that running a bike is a family commuting cost that allows him to get to work without the cost of a car/public transport pass, but obviously not if he's chasing the 'n+1 and all the gear' bike ideal.

How much is his football season ticket? That must be quite expensive?

It sounds like he's been more than accommodated in terms of discretionary spending and must have pretty expensive tastes and skewed ideas about needs vs wants if he thinks £500 pm is 'not having a penny to spend on himself'.

Plus it sounds like that's more than the household can afford if you haven't accounted for things like the boiler service in the household budget.

I'd say it's a massive amount of money each month. Trying to work out what we spend month - Under a grand, and I think we live well.

BUT, I also think you should consider reducing the 500 of a monthly basis to give you a slush fund to deal with car services and other "random but predictable" costs.
The end result being the amount of spare cash is more stable month to month.

That’s a massive amount of disposable income.

I agree with PP who says the issue is not so much the £500 but that he is putting in more so there may be a more fare way to split it?

we do a proportion of what we earn but then the fact you do two days off work to save childcare costs should be taken into account

Thanks @Gingergirl70 and @NoSquirrels this was my next suggestion. We're already putting £200 into joint savings but it doesn't seem to go very far. Part of me thinks that's the right thing to do. My brain is full of all the extras and when they occur in the year and I know to be keeping a bit of money aside for these things. Is it fair to spring them on him? Well, could be argued that if he actually listened when I told him he'd find they weren't sprung at all. Or should I ask him to pay (say) another £100 into joint savings to cover them? He'll resent that £100. Or he'll resent them being surprise costs. Can't win. I'm probably doing too much of the budget completely solo but he's not interested in the figures and only engages if it's in a negative way. We had a summer of 100 weddings last year with all the covid catch up ones. It cost a fortune and it came to him as a surprise that we were going to be £2k down and that money needed to come from somewhere. I had been saving money from my share for months. Is it my responsibility to make sure he's doing the same? Seems a fine line of telling him what to do vs empowering him to do it himself.

I'm going to have a look at YNAB. It seems quite visual, it might help.

The £350 worth of extras to cover last month are actually all things I paid for at the time as they were required and he is only having to pay his share of them now after payday. So the way he sees it I'm hardly paying anything out this month towards actual bills, plus I'm another £175 up from his half of that. So while he's feeling hard done by I'm feeling flush, except it wasn't that way 2 weeks ago. I just didn't moan about it.

I've rounded figures in a few places so these might not add up entirely. Our income is split 38% me, 62% him. If I pay 38% of the bills I'm left with £450ish and he's left with over £600. Is that fair? I don't know. We're a team. Our FT salaries are almost identical, I just work 3 days so earn 0.6FTE. After both maternity leaves I floated the idea of each working 4 days a week but he wasn't keen, for reasons I can't actually remember. If we had done it that way our incomes and therefore contributions would've been equal. Why should I lose out just because he opted to work full time? I chose a 3 day contract to come back to as this is what worked out the best compromise on income vs childcare cost vs time with the kids.

Of course you having £450 while he has over £600 isn't fair, especially as you spend some of yours on DC and the sole reason that you earn less is because you spend more time with them.

You mention nursery costs, which suggests that they're quite young, so need a lot of looking after. Your personal spending money shouldn't suffer because of this, you should be splitting 50/50 what is left after all joint costs are covered.

Who does the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the general organising and running around - buying clothes, dental appointments, hair cuts for them, that sort of thing? If you do most or all of that, don't undervalue your contribution to the household.

What on earth does he spend all that money on? Can you reduce costs as a household (mobiles, broadband, TV subscriptions etc?) How much do you spend on groceries? Is he pretty spendy in these areas as well as his personal spending? Latest mobile, Sky Sports for the football, lots of meat, alcohol and snacks?

I do find it surprising that you apparently have no idea how he gets through £600 in under a month with no obvious signs of where his money goes? Clothes, tech, coffee, lunches, nights out, bike kit?

You really do need to tote up the annual expenses like insurance and have a portion out into family savings for them so that free spends are exactly that, free spends. To fritter away without consequences.

I don't think £500 disposable each month is that much, and certainly doesn't mean you're well off. I have about that much left too after all fixed costs, and all it takes is a failed MOT, a washing machine to go wrong, any sort of work or repair on the house etc and that £500 quickly becomes hardly anything to live on!

Your salaries are equal, he’s not paying more because you’re “paying” for 2 days of childcare with your list salary. Remind him of that if he starts with any nonsense.

Or should I ask him to pay (say) another £100 into joint savings to cover them? He'll resent that £100. Or he'll resent them being surprise costs. Can't win

Look, it seems fairly clear that whilst you have a strong grip on the budget and what’s due when, he doesn’t and isn’t ever going to.

So be more proactive with allocating more ‘joint’ expenditure and have less discretionary cash each.

If you start from the premise that all money is joint - that it ALL goes into a joint account, and only then is ‘paid back’ to each other’s sole spending account when EVERYTHING has been accounted for - then it’s better than starting from the inherent premise that it’s ‘his’ money and ‘your’ money that’s being generously paid into joint funds. That seems to be the idea you both hold, even unconsciously - that you’re ‘asking him to contribute more’ when really it’s ‘we need £XK per year as a family, then there’s Y divided by 2 to share out’.

I love YNAB. I’ve never got my DH to love using it day to day but it’s helped me see clearly where we can tweak things to make things happier all round. And then to show him in a way that’s less ‘I say we can’t afford this/need to do this’ and more ‘Look, if we add this goal/expense/holiday/fun thing then we’ll have to cut back here, what do you think?’ It leads a discussion rather than being ‘I am boss of the budget and nagging you’.

I'd consider getting his suits and shirts cleaned to be a work expense that should be added to bills, rather than paid for from his personal spends.

Tying to convince DH that 5000 is enough after mortgage, council tax, utilities, insurances, phones, internet is enough.

And yes, I do mean 5,000

He's the lower earner but seems to be not bedded in the real world since he met me

We sat down and did our finances last week. Calculated we need £1100 bare minimum for bills, food, and everything to keep a roof over our heads. But that we need another £500 to cover our regular spending for a family of four.

So I'd say yes. £500 after bills is about right. The extra covers take aways, petrol, MOT, car insurance, posting stuff, gifts, treats, gardening, coffee out, memberships, life insurance, school bus, minor house repairs and all the other little extras.

I agree that it would be a good idea to rejig your finances so that some of the bills you currently pay separately are joint. Car insurance isn't a discretionary spend. It's essential. It's also a good idea to have a boiler fund as some parts - e.g. a new pump will be really expensive. If he is unlikely to have saved for his car insurance and is really bad at budgeting, you could even wait to suggest this when the renewal is due as this will offer him a solution. In the long run, you would both find it easier to have less in your discretionary spending fund and more in the joint household bills budget.

Gosh we have £500 after bills between us and food has to come out of that. We still have enough left over for the odd bottle of wine and a takeaway. What on earth is he spending his money on? You definitely need to get him to sit down and go through bank statements and see what he is wasting his money on.
We found that adding up how much we actually spent on nothing was enough to stop us in our tracks.

You have £1000 after bills

You certainly arent poor

After bills i have - £0…
In debt , every single month

Outgoings are more than incomings
and there is literally nothing i can do about it

From what you’ve said it’s not actually £500 on personal spends if it has to cover household bills like insurance, boiler service, weddings etc so you need a fund for that before you each get your personal allowance each month.