Very high spending - where to cut down?

[AguaMolePedraDura]

NC for this so I can be frank. My spending is a mess - DH high earner and great with sharing as needed so it’s not leaving us broke but I’m just losing my mind every month at money seemingly vanishing. To compound the mess some of my expenses are actually work expenses that I claim back in arrears, so I battle to get a handle on my actual domestic spending. Hoping writing it down will help (and what's here is my actual spending, not work stuff).

My income: £1,700 pt work + £600 net rental income from property + £1,000 DH transfers to me for shared costs - £3,300.

Expenses in September:
£1,165.00 - childcare + holiday club for half term. I think there's another £84 for after school care for the month that I paid late
£551 - groceries (bigger shops at Ocado + Lidl, then about 20 tiny top-up shops)
£283 - car finance
£250 - credit card - mix of airbnb costs from during building works + £100 in food shooping + takeaway
£211 - loan repayment, taken out during building works
£150 - eating out (various small meals/coffees with kids or alone)
£145 - swimming lessons 1:1
£80 - one-off physio appointment
£20 overdraft interest
£283 - car finance

£100 - withdrawn at cashpoint. Can’t remember this at all, wonder if it was to buy something 2nd hand for the kids off Marketplace etc.
£60 transport (£23 fuel, £7 Uber, remainder on TfL buses/tube)
£22 - Entertainment (Netflix, Apple cloud storage, bookshop)
£13.00 - app subscription DD
£3.80 - charity subscription
£45 - car insurance
£95 - SumUp - no idea what this was substantively
£48 - critical illness insurance
£4.60 x2 - google cloud - no idea why x2
£36 - gift for friend following surgery
£3.60 - booking for Halloween activity
£20 - new bin

= £3,743.60.

Childcare is about to get marginally cheaper (by about £100 pm) but as I have toddler twins + older child that will be expensive for at least another year.

Groceries doesn't even reflect our total spend because DH tends to "pop in" (doom) to M&S and buy things, plus will get lunches out. But it already feels high, because I often have food home from work (not exactly, but imagine I work in a kitchen and on a weekly basis get £30ish of fresh produce or similar that is surplus to requirements). So should be lower really. I've no idea why it's so high and wonder whether groceries + meals out is the thing to clamp down on. We don't drink at all so groceries is only food + nappies + household things.

Obviously there are other expenses (mortgage, bills) - these are with DH so I haven't included them.

Where would you start?

And yes the mortgage is very expensive but unfortunately going nowhere.

I've not looked at the details but the following should be obvious:

Keep business expenses and family expenses separate. You need a separate account and credit card for things you can claim back from your employer.

You need a proper family budget that covers absolutely everything, including monthly allowances for yearly expenses such as insurance, car servicing etc, as well as for contingencies, holidays, presents etc.

You are married and you should both have equal personal spending money. Your husband, as the higher earner, needs to supplement your pension so that too is equalised. Don't just drift along, working part-time and not taking all your other work into consideration (childcare, housekeeping etc), and without a plan for your long-term career. Too many women find that years down the line the marriage breaks down and they are severely disadvantaged.

If he earns £8500 a month, I would do things quite differently. You should have all shared costs coming out from his account. And then you can decide if he can help a bit with your own spending, or you get to keep what you earn as your own money.

DH and I earn similar and we pool all our money into a shared account that pays all our bills. I then have a monthly automatic transfer back to our individual accounts for spending. I also have saving goals which are transferred automatically to our shares ISA and savings accounts. I'm in charge of the family account because I like to do it. But it can be your DH doing this.

At £8500 a month, he is earning more than DH and I combine. I'm sure he can pay for everything to run a family.

It would be easier to have a joint account for all household/ food/ child-related costs, plus your own accounts for your personal spends. Looking at that list above, there are several costs (childcare, food, Netflix etc) that should be shared. I suspect that with the way the bills are split now, you’re paying more than your fair share, especially with increasing costs of food, but don’t realise it.

If you set up a joint account, work out how much all the shared costs are each month, then arrange to each pay in the relevant amount based on your earnings, it would make things clearer and you’d know how much you have left for your own expenses.

I agree that you need to pool the money - pay all bills from one account and split the rest equally - if you are earning less because you are doing childcare, then that's not fair and your husband is benefitting at your expense.

The other thing you need to do is get an interest free credit card and use that solely for work expenses and pay it off as soon as you claim the money back from work. Absolutely do not ever use it for anything other than work expenses because that is how you are getting muddled. You need to have clear separation between work and personal spending.

Once you've done these things, you can go through all your direct debits and get rid of anything you no longer need.

Hmm, no her DH should be paying 80% of all child expenses as his income is 4x that of the OPs. So all joint expenses should be on an 80% DH to 20% OP split.

What is he doing with the rest of “his” money OP?

Well why not sell the other property you own that you're getting £600 a month for? There's always options.

Yes pool your money. Your DH is not sharing well and that's entirely the problem. He has 5k left after mortgage, car finance, groceries, child care and activities. How much of that is he paying on other household bills and on holidays, building costs? How much does he have left over to enjoy and fritter? He is being unreasonable. You have a serious DH problem here.

Eating out, and 1:1 swimming lessons are luxuries you can't afford.

The financially dh could go too.

I do not agree with all the posters saying your DH should give you more money , you don't know here your money is going already!

Make 3 lists
Essential
non essential
And debt costs such as bank interest and finance

And then cancel everything non essential.
Work on eliminating all debt costs , with your level of household income you really shouldn't be using your income to pay interest on anything but a mortgage and your DH is covering that.

Is the £8500 he earns after tax? Even if he pays the £3500 mortgage and holidays, petrol etc. and gives you £1000 per month he is still presumably left with 2 or 3 thousand a month to play with. Meanwhile you are left using ALL your income to pay for shared things like childcare, car finance, stuff for the children, netflix...

He needs to contribute more. You should both have fairly equal fun money at the end of the month.

£764 of the total is for loan/car/credit card without factoring in your overdraft. That's 17.5% of your take home, so a lot if you could get it paid down.

You should tackle this first by being ruthless with other expenses and redirecting the savings to your short term credit.

I would do this by:

£551 - groceries (commit to reducing expenditure by 10% - no more M&S) = £50 saving
£150 - eating out - CUT
£145 - swimming lessons 1:1 - CUT - resume when the weather warms up.
£100 - withdrawn at cashpoint. CUT
£22 - Entertainment CUT

You could redirect £467 per month to short term debt (pay the highest interest loans first).

The other thing you can do is have a good hard look at the items cluttering your cupboards. If you could free up your storage space and sell a few items - popping the money into an ISA this is a good medium term offset.

Not sure what your debts total but by adding £450+ to the repayments, you should be debt free in far less time.

I would start by looking at my relationship and wondering why my husband, although earning a high wage, is able to simply pass over £1000 (definitely not his fair share) and let you deal with everything.

What exactly is he doing with his £7500?

You're married. You've literally signed a binding legal contract to pool all your assets. Why haven't you... pooled all your assets?

Oh and if any of those are shared debts, do make sure your OH stumps up a fair share / equal lump sum repayments.

Twenty top up shops a month!

What you need is to have completely joint finances rather than having to rely on your husband transferring ‘his share’ . All money into one account , bills paid , savings put away and then what’s left for general monthly spending - food / fuel etc .

What is he doing with the rest of “his” money OP?

@minipie it varies. Since we moved house it has all gone on building stuff - we did an expensive renovation. Then this month he had a very large credit card bill (like, £5000), from paying for holiday flights and accommodation for us and his parents over August. So most of his money went on that. Generally he is a homebody who doesn’t do or spend wildly, so I suspect that other than a very expensive work lunch habit he isn’t spending much else.

@littleblackcat27 again, it’s possible. The flat is my former home and (again, may not be sensible) I pay the interest + capital off each month - so when I am in my mid 40s it will be paid off and can provide an income or perhaps the kids will use it. I haven’t sat down and properly thought through the implications of what to do with it.

I think I am scared of joint accounts because I feel financially incontinent, rightly or wrongly, and don’t want to drag the financially sensible person down with me.

What’s he doing with all the extra cash he has?

We have similar joint income. Ours goes into one pot, and then dh and I take out the same amount as each other on a monthly basis for our own spending money (goes to individual curent acount)

Joint account pays for all household bills, car, kids lessons, insurance, stuff like contact lenses and haircuts, savings and holidays and repairs

We’ve tried doing it loads of ways ^ this is the only way we feel i. control of the full budget

Married = joint money. Easy really

Oh yes good point by pp about pension.

our finances are almost identical to yours except I earn a little less and my dh earns a bit more.

all money goes into same account

EQUAL amount of pension and isa savings going out each month. My dh has been topping up my isa / pension savings for 16 years, especially during years I was on mat leave, so our pension and isa saving amounts are near identical.

OP - a joint account doesn't have to mean everything is joint, it's just a way of having different pots for different kinds of spending. Whether you both put everything into the joint account and then take some out for your personal accounts, or you get paid into your personal accounts and then put an agreed amount into the joint account for bills (I do the latter), it will help you share the expenses that should be shared and give you both some control.

so I suspect that other than a very expensive work lunch habit he isn’t spending much else

Ok so presumably a lot of his salary is left over and is stacking up somewhere, apart from the months when it is wiped out by building work or travel?

And yet you have debt you are paying interest on? This is crazy.

This is just one of the many reasons why you need to pool all your money, otherwise you cannot make sensible financial decisions as a family.