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£100 - withdrawn at cashpoint.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?

I'd start with food. You've listed £550 food shop plus an extra £100 on a credit card + £30 a week free food (so £120 a month) plus whatever your DH buys.

That's £800 of food a month or £160 each. Since you pay childcare, I assume your children aren't hollow-legged teens, so that is a HUGE amount on food.

I shop for me plus one 15yo boy who is eating for England at the moment and spend £30 a week each. We don't go without, plenty of fresh fruit & veg, ds hasn't run out of snacks yet. 😀

I'd start by making a weekly meal plan. Then go through your cupboards and make a list of what you already have. If you're like me, you have tins and bags of rice & pasta stored away, so stop buying them for a month or two. Only buy what you will cook that week.

Move from brand to own label unless there really is a difference in taste. Involve your family and have some fun. Heinz Ketchup for example is a ridiculous price, so buy them some chips and do a blind taste test. If they can't tell the difference, move to a less expensive ketchup.

Finally set yourself a target. When you've saved £1,000 on food, the whole family gets a treat weekend out somewhere.

Sorry OP, it’s not really worth commenting when your DH has an unspecified amount of monthly spending money possibly in the £1000s, whereas you are overspent.
All income and shared expenses and savings for every expense need to be pooled. The remainder split in half and then you choose your personal expenditure from that.

Can your DH not lay down some of your debt abs free up that money? Seems silly not to if he has that much coming in.

Car finance, loan repayment, overdraft interest etc how much debt do you have in your name?

IME children only get more expensive as they get older.

You and your husband have plenty coming in think you both need to sit down and discuss tackling the issues together rather than dealing with it piecemeal.

What are you trying to achieve OP? Is the problem that you (personally) are running out of money every month? Or do you think you should be spending less as a family?

If it's the former, just get your OH to contribute more, nothing you have listed looks unreasonable, especially given your joint income.

If it's the latter you need to look at everything together and decide how much of your income you would like to try and save vs. spend.

A couple of things though -

You shouldn't be paying OD fees unless your OH is also overdrawn (in which case you have a problem) so get him to give you money to get you back in the black, it's not a lot of money but it's just silly.

Why not have a joint account for all your joint expenses that you both contribute to? Mortgage, bills, childcare, car, food etc etc. It's obviously stressing you out because you feel like YOU are spending loads but you aren't and most of it is on the family. Your OH would clearly need to contribute a lot more given your relative earnings.

Sorry OP, it’s not really worth commenting when your DH has an unspecified amount of monthly spending money possibly in the £1000s

@HairyKitty it’s as above - this month was a big credit card bill for a holiday (which is unusual for us - I hate travelling with my kids at this age!), prior to that it has been eight months of renovation costs. Before the move £3-4k would be in savings but those savings have now been spent on the renovation.

OP I’m so glad you posted this, I could have written it myself- I have never dared for fear of being insensitive when a lot of people are struggling.

I’m the higher earner, every month I have nothing left. Some really good tips on this post that I’m going to apply myself. So just saying thank you

@AguaMolePedraDura you say 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.

It's the same disbelieve a lot of British has about their maths ability. (I've just watched a youtube video by the FT about this). You have to first believe you can do it. The joint account will be strictly for household expenses. That are things like kids clubs, childcare, holidays, insurance, cars. Likely to include money spent when going out together. If you don't trust yourself, make sure you book a 1:1 meeting (like work) to go over what you have spent with your DH. It's so you know you have to justify what you spent, similar to being at work.

You can have your own money to spend on whatever you want.

You have quite a large joint income. It's not a case here of having to find savings somewhere.

Wait-your husband has 8.5k net income yet you’re paying £500 on finance??

I think, until you tackle your own financial issues you will make things worse in the long run by hiding behind your husband's income.

There is nothing more liberating than solving a problem by changing long term habits.

Your debt is what is hurting your personal bottom line and this is due to living beyond your personal means. I would tackle this on your own. You should work out an equitable division of expenses and then go from there.

Read up on short term debt / compound interest.

You aren't financially incontinent - rather a bit lost, having young children and big life changes.

You are not asking me this but you are in a period of your life with quite a lot of expenses like building work and childcare that are temporary. Things would get better after this. Do not be so hard on yourself and pay little attention to the comments about downsizing specially if you are in London that is pointless as it is so expensive and a nightmare to move, stamp duty, EA fees. I think people who comment like this have not clue or ignore certain facts for some reason.

For now you can reduce on food shopping. Plan meals and avoid waste.

What are you trying to achieve OP? Is the problem that you (personally) are running out of money every month? Or do you think you should be spending less as a family?

@Londonscallingme I am anxious about money all the time and feel like this ought to be a solvable problem so I don’t feel that way, and I feel like our food spend is too high. I never “run out of money” because DH just transfers me more, but I’m not keen on a “whoops, broke again” kind of approach - that’s really not me though I seem to have ended up here.

You need YNAB (You Need A Budget). It's a lot of work in the beginning but persevere and it's worth it and definitely worth the subscription cost.

Nick True has lots of videos on YouTube to help you get started. He had one about managing work expenses that settled a two hour argument between me and my DH (who couldn't understand my explanation at all).

When did you agree the £1,000 figure? Prices have increased a lot in the last year, has that been taken into account?

Only if she also pays 20% of the mortgage and other bills too though. She isn’t at the moment.

This is a mess because of the uneven split.

We don't fully pool our money but have a joint account for joint expenses. Work out your joint fixed monthly bills (house, kids, cars, entertainment, etc) and then add a bit for contingencies, eg car repairs. Then split this according to your incomes. I have not done the maths but if he earns 70-80% of your combined income he pays 70-80% of the monthly total needed in the joint account. You do the same with your income. We keep whatever is left to ourselves so the higher earner ends up with more left over; some couples split it 50/50.

It sounds like you have plenty of money between you but at the moment you are paying more than your fair share, which is why you are ending up in debt.

Get a joint account. Work out your regular outgoings, you both pay into it according to income. Then the rest is fun money.

Car finance, loan repayment, overdraft interest etc how much debt do you have in your name?

The loan and credit card are about £2500 together, I’m just trying to pay them off aggressively. I can’t remember what’s outstanding on the car - it’s the kind of loan where you pay every month and then at the end of term (which is two years from now) either hand the car back or pay a settlement figure. Because the car barely goes anywhere- except Sainsbury’s obviously, 23 times a month it seems - it has very low mileage and we probably will want to keep it after the term.

I can understand that with both your incomes you should not need to be putting holidays and food shops on credit cards.

You both need to make a plan for future expenditure and get yourselves out of your debts (apart from mortgage).

You need a family budget this all sounds very confusing. And get a specific credit card ideally 0% which you only use for work expenses, then pay it back once you claim expenses. And now seeing your DH income, I don’t think you need help…

£283 per month is an insane amount for a car you barely use that you'll end up having to buy at market value at the end of the term if you want to keep it.

You need a joint account which pays for all family expenses-mortgage, bills, child care and activities, groceries, insurance, everything that is related to the household and the children.

Then you each need a separate amount of money that you can spend without running it by the other. All other purchases are made by joint decision. It's not hard. You just need to do it.

Change swimming to group lessons. I pay £40 a month for a lesson a week

When did you agree the £1,000 figure? Prices have increased a lot in the last year, has that been taken into account?

Again, can’t remember.

Am I right in thinking you have around £10k per month coming into the household?

What is your joint net income? You do 't say if your if your in omes are gross or net