How much money do you live off of per month? Family of 4

[yousaidityourself]

After all house bills and personal bills/subscriptions, how much do you live off of per month as a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 young children)

We live on a very tight budget at the moment with two in nursery. After all bills and savings we have £120 per week for groceries (which is tricky!) and £40 per week 'pocket money', but all clothes/lunches/commuting comes out of the joint account so that's really just for the odd coffee etc. In march both of our wages are going up and we're upping the fun money to £60 per week, woohoo!! All jokes aside it's a very frugal existence and I'm looking forward to school starting

Christ on a mother f**king bike!! the disposable income of some of you lot??? I thought I was okay with like £100 a week to do what I want hahaha

Income of around 4450
Bills 3511
Disposable left (for food / petrol and then anything nice) 939

We have roughly 2k after the DD bills for your list and it's fine. We're not loaded, but we don't have to think TOO hard before spending money.

Holidays are cheap and cheerful. We're lucky (in a way) that my parents live abroad, so summer holidays are just the cost of flights, and we go away 1 or 2 more times, usually a butlins or haven type holiday.

And we don't scrimp on groceries, kids activities or home stuff really.

We would have more, but prioritise DH being home for the children.

After all bills, food budget and petrol, we have in the joint account about £100-150 depending on the month. Personal each around £200.

It is usually taken up by birthday gifts, the odd meal out or day out, clothes someone needs. We save whatever we can for more expensive times of year (aug for school uniform etc)

We have about £2k a month for the things you’ve listed OP and it’s fine. We eat well, have some meals out, take the kids out at weekends etc.
We could have more but put £1.5k a month into long term savings.

Thank you for this thread! Now I have confirmation DH is being a twat for insisting that 3K is "a ton of money" to live on. Bear in mind he's an ultra high earner (self employed, 10-20K a month) and that's all he allocates for our entire family expenses. He pays a few extra bills plus school fees so our total would be around 5K.

It grinds my gears that every few months we have a discussion regarding COL and he acts like we must grovel with gratitude for his generosity. In absolute terms, 3K is obviously not little but far from being extravagant.

I should have also said we live in Surrey so it’s an expensive area and food & fuel per month is close to £1000, family days out these days cost around £100+ - worried we’re going to end up really feeling the pinch!

I can’t imagine food and fuel is much impacted by being in Surrey? Most expensive fuel I’ve seen tends to be in rural areas (that are generally cheaper, but less competition). Mortgage/rent, yes of course.

No the £100 is what is left over after all money has been allocated for bills and savings.

Net income inc child benefit is £4600.

Around £2800 pcm on bills including big food shop, kids' clubs by direct debit and diesel. The remaining £1800 is for clothes, haircuts, with plenty to save in theory... in reality it all goes, every month... spent on holidays, birthdays, Christmas and unexpected bills like school trips and car repairs. There are 6 of us so lots of moving parts but we basically never have to say no to anything for money reasons and spend c. £12k PA on holidays (which is actually a massive whack of our net income)

Personally I think you would be ok with the drop in disposable income if your kids are at nursery age but it would be worth considering ways to increase income again when they're older. I think "spending" (i.e. losing) £1500 pcm for more time with them and less stress is a bargain if it won't leave you shut out at work or scraping by.

We are a family of 4 and we have a 5 year old and a 5 month old. After bills we spend £70 on my daughters activities (swimming, football and scouting), £20 day out once a month or less. Our holiday last year cost £500, we spend about £400 on presents a year.

Our bills and monthly routine payments cost us £1700, annual costs such as car and home insurances cost us another ~£400 a month. We currently only have my partners salary.

We bring home 6.5k - after fixed outgoings (mortgage/ water/ council tax/ car loan plus insurance) we have 4k - we have spends and savings from that - things we could cut if we wanted to but that’s to cover spends, petrol, food, clothes, holidays, cleaner etc. we burn through it.

We both work but have just short of 4.5k net pm coming in roughly - 1.5k of that goes on rent!! Only benefit we are in receipt of is child benefit. So we can't afford to save really.

After bills, food, petrol etc, I have about £100 for “fun”. Rarely go out to eat or anything though, so manage quite easily.

These threads are fascinating.
I feel like I live really well but have a fraction of the disposable income of many posters here. Not sure what I'd do if I had a bigger income -probably just save. I currently have about £300 disposable income for me and 2 DC per month, and cut our cloth accordingly; buying second hand clothing and tech, camping holidays and budget food shopping etc. Looking forward to a tiny pay increase in September (teacher), albeit below the rate of inflation. In real terms, I'm worse off now than I was 15 years ago, despite moving up the payspine.