What are you spending your disposable income on?

[CherryBlossoms88]

It’s been interesting/always been curious reading the disposable income threads. How much people spend, budget etc.

Today, I wanted to understand how much money each month I have spent (or squandered) on additional items above and beyond our standard outgoings of mortgage, childcare, council tax, bills, food monthly weekly shop. It’s interesting for me to understand what I’ve spent and where I can reign my spending, because things have been tighter but I feel like I have continued spending the way I’ve normally done.

The last 2 months I have spent an average of £650 a month on additional expenditure.
the last month was broken into
32% Amazon
23% entertainment
14% school
11% clothes
15% food
5% gift

I’m so shocked at how much disposable income I have been spending on Amazon!! It’s also given me a wake up call on the amount of entertainment being paid for and additional food which is on top of our weekly shop.

I was actually scared of doing this but now I can see where I need to rein it in.

How about you? And does this inspire you to break it down if you haven’t already?

We have around £2500 and it’s literally, lunch’s and drinks out, awful really! It’s so expensive for a day out now and meals are eye watering! The rest is Amazon and clothes, which is totally all me! I was shocked when we looked a bit deeper at our bank account a couple of weeks ago!

Wow that is a crazy amount for food and drinking out. I’m guessing you both are high earners so can afford that, but seriously it does scare you/me when we drill down into the detail! Will you be trying to cut some things out or will you continue to spend like this?

It doesn't really matter unless you're struggling to pay the bills, and/or not saving anything.

After bills and necessary purchases, and a bit put away for holidays etc, I spend almost my entire disposable income on flying lessons.

Spend it on whatever makes you happy.

I don't spend it on "stuff" very much.

For me, since DC grew up, it's travel, beer and coffee. Basically anything that gives me an excuse to spend time enjoying others' company.

Disposable income?
What's that?

For an FYI, it costs me about 1000 a month for flying lessons 🤣 that's how mad I am.

That’s a cool £1k to spend on!! I imagine you wanting the next role in Top Gun 3!

Ha ha no thanks. I just like to bumble about in small slow planes, see my house and the coast, that sort of thing 😁

A lot of my 'extra' money goes into savings. But that is needed as I depleted them when unemployed

I don't buy many coffees, meals out or takeaways, but that is where my disposal income goes. That and things like soft play or cinema for kids.

I spend most of it on DIY and decorating. The rest goes into savings for holidays.

This month.....

£200 on ds' German trip
£25 new school trousers
£35 new boots for ds
£70 a wool sleeveless sweater for me.

Next month - xmas
January - I owe the tax man about £800

I track every penny, but we'll have enough for a good Christmas 🙂 It'll be ok.

We’re moving to Monzo to make this easier to track. I expect my Amazon % is similar to OP. I would class food as an essential spend rather than disposable. I think kids clubs and classes come pretty high up for us.

You track every penny…. And it shows :)

looks like you don’t spend more than a school trip you’ve budgeted for and some additional clothes!

I think now that I’ve started to track this month I’ll be less inclined to just spend it! :)

At last at my stage in life I can dispose of my income on myself!

Just had a look at my Revolut account which is where I lob my "fun" fund. I don't go out that much at night at all anymore, so it is things like lunches out, coffees and CAKE, kitchen bits like canisters, mugs etc. (new kitchen), bathroom stuff (new bathroom). New thermal base layers, new socks, a knockabout padded jacket (from the men's department cos I like big pockets and an inside pocket lol). And an item costing 30 quid and I haven't clue what it is, only that the shop is M+S.... hmmm could be nice grub of some sort.

Ahh interesting that Monzo can track it for you!

I dunno my food additional spend was restaurants, takeaways etc when I already have food in the house! It’s a luxury that I’ll still want to spend on but I’ll be more conscious of it.

I love that!! Looking forward to that stage :)

Bills. Anything left goes into savings.

H&M 🤦 I have a clothes habit. The money I spend is generally funded through selling on Vinted though, or at least a large part of it.

I work FT & our mortgage is paid off, so I’m in the comfortable position of having a significant amount of disposable income each month. I still try quite hard not to fritter money on non-essential day to day things, eg coffee, bought lunches, flowers, subscriptions, cosmetic treatments, random crap from Amazon etc etc.

What I do spend money on is cars & holidays. I drive a BMW convertible, it’s fantastic & worth every penny. We also take several holidays every year. This is a big priority which seems even more important since covid when we couldn’t travel.

Honestly eating out and drinking and travel! I have phases of feeling guilty but then realise I'm happy and spend within my means (and save) so fuck it .

Then generally just buying nicer, better quality versions of things. I didn't have a lot of money for a long time so always bought the cheapest of everything but I'm slowly replacing things with more luxury items as things break e.g. I smashed my butter dish last week and replaced it with a Le Crueset one (although that was from T K Maxx tbf!). 18 month ago it would have been skincare and clothes but I'm making a conscious to cut down a bit and have less 'stuff'.

After all bills, pensions, savings etc DH and I also have £650 each to spend on 'stuff'. It doesn't stretch that far!

We each pay our own phones out of that and travel to work (although both can work from home). After travel, phone, contact lens subscription, credit card repayment etc is taken off that that leaves me around £400 a month to eat out with friends, buy beauty products, coffees, clothes. We have 2 DC so socialising isn't huge part of our lives.

I only buy clothes I 'need' these days and if I just fancy something I'll buy on Vinted. I use Klarna to spread largest things over 3 months which I find useful.

Home improvements. New duvet covers have got really expensive!
Clothes
Random shit from Amazon
£200 a month is allocated for eating out, we don’t always spend it.

We do save every month and fund dc at university too so not a huge amount of disposable income.

DH and I are retired, no mortgage. After house-related costs and main supermarket shops there is around £1,500 pcm left. Out of this, there are still some essentials to pay which are annual/occasional costs not on DD, including house and car insurances, car maintenance, petrol for DH’s car (not much as it’s only little and he doesn’t do many miles - my car is electric, most of its charging costs are in with the electricity bill and I have a service contract on it.). If you average it over a year, I estimate we have maybe £1,300 pcm which is for “spends”

For the rest:

we belong to a choir, there are termly fees plus extras for music, trips etc.

We pay memberships for National Trust, local art house cinema, RSPB, local wildlife trust. We have a subscription to the Berlin Philharmonic so we can live stream their concerts and view their archive. We have a monthly subscription to get newspapers at the weekend. We go to quite a few concerts (folk or classical) over the course of a year.

NHS dentistry is non-existent round here, so we are now paying monthly for a private dental plan which covers checkups and hygienist. I recently broke a tooth and need a crown, over £700 after “member’s discount”. I also needed new glasses.

We enjoy days out/shopping a few times a month, which might involve lunch/coffees etc.

We’re always buying books, mostly second hand but some new as well. DH buys CD’s to add to his already large collection.

We belong to U3A and are in several groups - so it’s a couple of pounds here and there, but several times a week each, so I guess that adds up.

We put some by for holidays. This year we had a full week at a folk festival, the tickets plus accommodation cost £2,200, and later we had a week in Scotland with friends, train travel (from Devon) plus car hire plus accommodation came to around £1,200. Then food on top. Next year we’re budgeting already for me to have a city break with my sisters, the folk festival again, a 5 day choir trip to Spain, and there may be more to add to that.

Then we clearly need to buy clothes from time to time - but we’re not into fashion, so we buy what we need rather than for the sake of it. Pay the window cleaner… about to start paying a gardener. Christmas and birthday presents….

Honestly, I started this reply feeling a little abashed that we had so much money available for non-essentials. But reading all that back, I’m now amazed by how much we do with it. And wondering if Monzo or Revolut would help me budget better…… do they mean moving bank account, or is it an add-on?

In the last month I have bought the following non-essential items:
£11 wallpaper paste (ready mixed, when I could have bought powder and mixed it at half the price)
£45 on Christmas presents ( could have done this cheaper)
£8 on an advent calendar & postage (could have skipped this)
£5 on camembert (wouldn't normally buy it but fancied some)
£23 x 2 for meals out
£15.00 2 x pairs of scissors (I do have others I could sharpen but never find sharpening as successful )
£6.60 Bought 3 x newspapers (this is my luxury item) I could read the news online, but quite like opening a newspaper to show I'm on lunch, and then eating my sandwiches, tend to not get disturbed when I have lunch at my desk that way.
Filled the car up fully this week, when I could probably have saved £2.50 by putting £10 in and leaving it to next week (our fuel card price is going down 3.5p/litre, I knew there was a good chance diesel would drop as the wholesale & Brent Crude has been dropping)
But as a family we really don't spend on extras. Clothes tend to get replaced as they wear out rather than bought in a 'that's nice' sort of way. I have spent nothing on clothes or shoes for myself so far this year but DH has had 2 shirts.

It's still almost £150 and I'd have thought it far less, nearer £60! I think recent inflation has not helped my thought of 'it's not much'

My mortgage got paid off in July and so we have much more disposable income. I don't normally spend much on myself but we just got back from an expensive holiday and we treated ourselves to a lot of things. I usually save quite a bit. I'm generally cautious and worry about if we have an emergency.