Budgetting

[SpanielsSunflowersSand]

Hi all!

I have recently changed job and next year, we plan on moving to a slightly bigger home so, naturally, we have started to look at our household budget. Do you have a clear budget for everything and if so, how did you work that out, and how do you stick to it?

We have direct debits for all bills and savings but we don’t have budgets for clothing or nights outs, etc.

How much does everyone budget for each outgoing? I.e. does your mortgage and bills account for 30/40/50/60% of your take home, and then do you apportion 5% to clothes/ nights out/ other?

Also, how do you work out how much each person contributes? My salary is double DH’s salary so I think I need to contribute more but how much?

If anyone can point me in the direction of a calculator or an excel spreadsheet that could work all of this out for me, I will be forever grateful 😂🤞🏻

We pooled all our money so that we live the same lifestyle. We are a team.

we consciously chose not to move up the housing ladder just because we made more money. Our home was perfectly adequate and covered every must have, even if it wasn’t our dream home. Our housing now accounts for a small fraction of our income.

We pool our money and then get the same amount disposable money each. Our mortgage is 20% of our take home pay, I wouldn’t want it any higher than that. We make sure we have enough money in the joint account to cover all mortgagee, bills, food, extras and savings each month then have around £900 each disposable income, and end up saving some of that too.

This is good to know. I think our mortgage makes up around 10% at the moment and with a slightly bigger home, we would be looking at 20%. We don’t necessarily have to move but if we want children, it would make far more sense. This is our first ever home so was never supposed to be “forever”.

We have a joint account where we both add money into each month for joint expenses, and I don’t think we would change that now. I don’t think it makes any difference to either of us whether we have different accounts or just the one. We live the same lifestyle, eat the same, probably spend the same amount on hobbies, etc. We share assets, and we discuss budgets, savings, finances all the time. I am someone who watches savings rates etc so we have both joint savings, and our own savings. Also wouldn’t feel right spending joint account money on his birthday or Christmas gifts 😂 I took him on a surprise trip for his 30th birthday, I couldn’t have done that with only one account as he’d have known all the details!

Our income has always been roughly the same until very recently, and in the not so distance future, we will again, be fairly equal but until that day comes, I want to make sure that we have the same amount of disposable income. Just need to work out what the percentages need to be!

Have a look at the information on how much you need for a pension, as they give ideas for how much to spend on clothes, holidays, cars and so on. Useful at any age