How much disposable income do you need?

[Flowerpot882]

Hi, I'm just about to move house, not through choice, really trying to be realistic about how much I need left over after mortgage, bills, fuel, food etc..?

I have 2 children, 11 and 14. No partner.
How much disposable income I need will change how much I can afford on a mortgage.

Birthdays, Christmas, new clothes for children, saving for a holiday, school trips, house improvements, emergencies, car maintenance, days out, takeaways, it all adds up doesn't it.

What do you think is a comfortable amount to live on?
At first I thought £400 but now thinking that really won't stretch far

All depends on the lifestyle you want to have. The calculator is useful.

https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/everyday-money/budgeting/budget-planner

I aim to have £1000 left over after all bills are paid and food shopping for the month is done

How long is a piece of string?

What car/transport costs do you have?
How much do you spend on food?
What's your lifestyle expectations in terms of tech, holidays, activities, clothes, etc etc?

People spend such hugely different amounts of money on many things which means that what is very comfortable to one person, is a miserably low amount to someone else.

You need to go through a budget planner like the one linked to above and look at all the categories and enter known costs or reasonable estimates then play around with the numbers if you find you need to make cutbacks somewhere to balance the books.

I mean we probably aim for £800 to cover that but it doesn’t go far when you break it down:

• Takeaway twice a month - £50
• Birthdays and Christmas -£100
• House maintenance -£200
• School trips - £30
• Days out - £150
• Savings - £200
• General spends (coffee, odd cinema, film rental, maybe a cheap haircut) £70

Do you track your current spending? If you get a budgeting app you can go through past months and categorise all your spending for previous months to give you an idea of what your current disposable income spending is going on. Then work out if you need to cut back on certain things for it to work for you.

I wouldn’t be considering a mortgage until I’d understood the basics of a budget otherwise you could get yourself into the deep end pretty quickly. There are lots of free budgeting tools you can use.

I don’t even have £400 of disposable income after bills and food.
if you can’t spend loads you have to prioritise things or say no to stuff

It really depends. Once our mortgage is paid we have £4,000 pcm. Out of that we save £1000 for long term bills and Christmas etc and the rest is to live on.

we do fine but live well and never have much over

Just by way of example. Ds1s guitar lessons are 25 a week, DS2 plays foot ball and so new kit and subs were 300 the other month. Life just all adds up

I aim for at least 30% of my income, based on the 50/30/20 rule, but my income varies every month, so the actual amount of disposable income could be anything from £600 to 1.5K. I also forecast my incomings and outgoings based on previous tracking - it's very boring tracking but it's the only way to see where you're going right and wrong.

Do you have a personal pension and savings?

Same here, would love to have £400 disposable income

No one can answer that for you, our income has changed massively over the years but I e always found a way to spend it! I would start by going through month by month what you need; birthdays, Christmas, school holidays, school trips etc to try and set a base line.

Depends on what savings u have. We have £1000 spending money. But after bills we put money into other savings and car funds etc. if I would have more.