Surely this should be enough??!

[Spectacledone]

Morning,

I’m worried about our finances and the amount of money that we seem to be getting through. We both have good jobs and a good joint income. I’ve been through all of our outgoings and after all bills plus £500 for food shopping, we should be left with £2700 between us as ‘spare’ money…. But it all just goes. I know our spending needs to be controlled. Clothes shopping, holidays and weekends away/days out are a big problem. We’re getting to the end of the month with less than nothing left!!

I think that £2700 is a lot of spare money and that we should be able to manage well on this. Dh thinks that it’s “not that much” between us and that “it is what it is”.

AIBU to think that this is massive overspending??

YANBU. But you are going to struggle if you don’t both agree.

Clearly you are overspending and yes 2700/month discretionary spending is loads. You need to start keeping track of what you do spend before discussing changes.

It sounds like you may be fundamentally incompatible in approach to money!

That is a huge amount of money left over. You need to prioritise saving. £1000 a month between you for fun. £1700 to save. £20,400 a year in savings Plus interest. In a few years that may come in real handy if you lose your jobs or need to take a career break for a family. Don’t let it slip through your fingers.

Oh I don’t know. I’ve done similar assessments before and ‘should’ have more money left than I do. It’s the unplanned things like window cleaners, boiler repairs, kids needing extras for school etc that happen every month. The only way is to look at a years’ data and look at where you have spent it and look at what categories you missed out. So in your budget for example what have you allocated for repairs and maintenance? I imagine its a decent whack, it was with us. Or kids’ school extras. Holidays.

if you look at historic data you can build a better picture of where you can cut back. We realised we couldn’t really and it was just a case of accepting that we really did spend all our salaries and didn’t have as much for savings as we’d thought we would.

I may be wrong and you’re buying fresh Gucci head to toe each month (in which case, stop, lol).

Oh we were shocked actually when we add it up how much we were spending on eating out, that was something we cut back on. A few deliveroos here and there, pub lunches with kids on the weekend, babysitters here and there when we went out. That massively added up.

YANBU. Is your husband the biggest spender? That's why he doesn't see it as an issue? Do you manage to save?

I use Spendee to see where my money goes.

Set up a standing order of £1500 to go straight into a fixed term savings/stocks ISA/premium bonds account the day after payday. This way you have less money to waste and can build up a savings pot. You could potentially save £18k in one year.

Then go through your budget & see what you can cut out completely & swap to cheaper deals. Check out money saving expert for budgeting advice.

Yeah but when OP says they ‘should’ have more left, I just wonder if the budget which says that they should have that much is really all-in as that really would be a huge amount to fritter away.

I say this from having done a similar exercise with husband when we were pregnant with first child. We did a budget which had:

mortgage
Utilities, council etc
phones, internet etc
food
childcare
holidays
travel to and from work

this budget showed we’d have loads of money left each month and we were shocked when we were constantly broke 😂

we re-ran the exercise a few years later but with historic data about what we’d actually spent as we knew we weren’t being frivolous, weren’t buying loads of new clothes or stuff. Actually we’d just missed out loads from our original budget which were essential but more one off or annual payments. Things like needing a boiler replacing, or repairs or replacement to furniture. A rug that gets eaten by moths and needs replacing. Kids’ fancy dress for world book day. Birthday parties. Stuff like that. They come up every month.

A lot of our money left over covers annoying things like buying lightbulbs, specialist dogs shampoo, window cleaner, annunal pet insurance, hedge trimmers, a new garden hose, sudocreme and calpol for baby etc.

Obviously we could not buy some of it but equally... we kind of need them.

Is the 2700 going on stuff like this or literally holidays and going out?

You need a proper budget especially if you dont have savings.
You could be putting 20k pa in isa savings and still have 1k pm fun money if it is truly going on non essentials. In 5 years with interest thats £120k....

You can't really know or be able to have a knowledgable discussion with your DH unless you know what you're spending the money on.

Do an analysis for 3 months (or longer if possible) and then you'll have a clear view. It might shock you both to see that you're spending x on ad-hoc snacks or Ubers or whatever.

Jeepers! Unless you have £10K plus on savings you’d be buggered if anything happened and you or he lost a job, particularly given your spending!

Your DH sounds highly irresponsible tbh. I’d be clamping down now. But that can’t be done unless he agrees otherwise he’ll continue living the high life while you make cutbacks.

I'm seeing a lot of these "we earn good money but seem to be broke" threads.

If you have a good combined income, which you do, there is often an expectation that you can live a certain lifestyle.

Money is very easy to spend. And you can only spend it once. It is very easy to spend all your income each month. For some that's what it's for.

As others have pointed out you can do some amazing saving with your excess income. But you have to want to do it. There is also the middle ground of saving a chunk & getting a grip on spending in a fair way.

Look into using an ap like YNAB. Many mners have had their finances revolutionised by using this budgeting ap & you can both use one account.

Is this £2700 'spare' after savings/pensions etc? If so it's a healthy amount. If not, then not so much. You need to apportion your funds. On pay day, savings etc get put away. Then have a separate joint account for 'household things' - maybe include food in there. Then discretionary is what is left over split equally.

Clothes
Haircuts
Window cleaner
Phones
Insurances
Car costs (tax, repairs, petrol, cleaning)
Parking
Socialising
Birthdays
Christmas
Dry cleaning
General repairs

All included?

As an experiment, for 3 months completely stop:

• buying clothes (unless emergency)
• eating out
• getting takeaways
• coffee on the way to work
• going on holiday

Also put £2,000 into your savings as soon as payday hits AND DO NOT TOUCH IT. That will still leave you both with £350 each spending money for the month.

You'll quickly identify where all your money has been going.

I was once in this position with exh, I looked at my joint bank statement and started calling out items - for instance he was spending £35 a week on coffee and croissants on the way to work, a similar amount on afternoon coffee and a cake then up to £10 on lunch, whereas years prior before kids ate so much he always took leftovers from home.

We also were eating out 3-4 times over weekend, a takeaway midweek ... adds up!

You could start simply by doing ‘save the change’, I average £25/30 monthly, ( on income £1,000 monthly), and save too.
Save via direct debit, no thinking required.
Get a realistic budget too

If that is all discretionary then yes it's a pretty huge amount of money to get through each month.
As others say look at your monthly outgoings from your account if you haven't already done so to work out the essentials. Then for the month write down all other spending to see where the moneys going and then agree more reasonable amounts.
Might help to post online to see if there are particular areas that stand out.

That's exactly my and DH's total net income 🤣

The annual bills of insurance for house, buildings, life, car, MOT, car service, boiler service, etc are surprisingly costly.

holidays, birthdays and Christmas likewise.

you need a spreadsheet with loads more categories on it than you think.

and totally agree with the advice to send straight to savings on payday, as there is never anything left at the end of the month

Is the £2700 before or after annual and irregular essential costs like car servicing/MOT/insurance, Christmas, white goods replacement etc?

If it's before, some money will go on these things and you'll need to make sure you put some aside to account for ups and downs in costs over the year. Also ideally so you can do things like car replacement without borrowing.

Do you have any savings and what are your pensions like? Do you have a mortgage and if so, has it gone up yet?

The problem with being used to spending all your money on non essentials is that you have no resilience. You probably won't be able to carry on your lifestyle in retirement and things will unravel very quickly if you lose an income, eg due to illness or redundancy. To be frank, it's utterly stupid to be in this position when you can afford not to be.

You need to budget and be honest about what are essential costs and what are extras. Plus you need to account for all essential costs, including those that are annual/irregular (school clothes/shoes etc, car maintenance etc, insurance, replacement of essentials like cars, white goods etc) and the 'what ifs' (illness, redundancy), before seeing money as available to spend on things like clothes and days out.

Have a look at Moneysaving Expert and do everything that is relevant. Set up standing orders to savings accounts for money that needs to be saved for irregular essential expenses then, once you have identified what money is truely spare, how about putting it into separate accounts (eg one for you, one for DH and one for family days out etc) to be spent on a 'when it's gone, it's gone' basis?

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/

As pp suggested you may have forgotten a few things. Theres a helpful spreadsheet on here that covers everything.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/

You need to scrupulously write down all your expenses for your month and analyse it to see where your money goes. It's really easy to spend the odd fiver and tenner and then they all add up.

I'm guilty of this all the time. For instance after dropping DD off for a morning activity I fancied a cup of coffee so I went to a cafe and spent about £8. Then I picked DD up for lunch and drinks and that was £20. Popped into supermarket, £12. Dropped DD off in the afternoon for another activity and spent another £10 on drinks and snacks whilst waiting for her. Each time it didn't feel like much but they've added up to £50 over a few hours.

It's the unexpecteds that can just wipe that out. Saturday I bumped the car into another car- excess is £400, poorly cat had to go to emergency vet yesterday - consultation £186, antibiotic and anti-inflammatory injection £64, total £250 She has to go back to our vet today-will be at least £90 and possibly £500 depending on what they decide to do (but thankfully she is lots better and I don't begrudge her a penny of it).

£2,700 after all bills plus food is a huge amount and it sounds like you don't really know where it's going. If you're spending all of that every month to the point where you're ending up with the "less than nothing left" you are massively overspending.

Are you certain that that is what's left after all bills? Are there direct debits you've forgotten about, for example?

Are you putting money into savings before you get to the £2,700?