Money, how much comes in each month?

[Rhiannon]

This is a rather touchy subject and I wanted to change my name for it but couldn't work out how to.

The question is, how much money each month comes into your household and out of that how much is your mortgage and other important stuff that has to be paid.

How much are you left with for food, meals, entertaining and clothes?

How much do you save for a rainy day and how much do you save for hoidays?

Before I divulge such info how what is your answer to your questions?! In a nutshell not much as we save a reasonable amount. Never buy new clothes/shoes for myself until my clothes cry out no more honestly and getting stricter by the day - I always feel that everyone I know seems to have endless purse/bank account. Am not in debt (much) but how do others cope nothing is cheap and yet others seem to spend so much eg I have one coat for winter and one for summer several friends seem to have at least4/5 for each season.

So Rhiannon what is your answer to your own questions?

Saving? What's that?

Same problem as Janh.... I'm trying to remember what savings are??

What an odd question. Is it for market research?

after paying our 80k mortgage and putting some into pension we have exactly £100 a week to cover everything-bills,food,petrol.we spend roughly:
£10-15 petrol
£40-50 food,cleaning stuff,toiletries etc
£10 alcohol
£10 to pay off holiday
and thats it.we have zilch in the way of savings,which is scary but just how it is.

Right here goes:

Apart from out Mortgage, Council Tax and Childcare we spend monthly:

£80 bills
£200 food etc etc
£100 Leisure (alcohol, days/nights out)
£150 Travelling to and from work (for both of us)
£60 Credit Card/Catalogue payments

We don;t ever seem to be left with anything at the end of month and our savings disappeared over xmas... none now. Very Scary indeed!

Sorry to admit I have no idea at all - we just spend til it runs out and then live on what's left in the house. Hate budgets and money counting.
The worst thing is we have no pension whatsoever at all - this is the one thing that worries me most.

Changed my name for this, and nearly didn't post after reading it, all per month

mortgage £1000
School fees £1900
council tax £150
Insurances £500
Critical health £200
Gas/elec/water £120
Sky £25
Telephone £100
Cleaner £200
Savings Nil
Food £600 minimum
Wine£150
Cash for incidentals £500

This is horifying writing it down, and all entertainment, two cars and petrol, insurance etc all go through the company, so the above list is just the basics of what we spend a month.

We eat out every friday, 4 of us £100 minimum, a take away curry £40 or chinese as well.

Then there's kids pocket money, I don't think I'll add anymore.

Goodness me spendalot, our monthly income (my wage) is less than your mortgage payment. Thank goodness for working/child tax credit. We also have a mortgage, car HP, and a huge credit card debt to pay as well as all the normal utilities etc

Just shows really,the more you earn, the more you spend, bigger mortgage, more/better cars etc.
Also the more hours you work, the more money you earn, but then have to spend more on, time saving gadgets and employing help so you can fit everything else in.
I supose, we're all in the same boat really !!

When DH is working our total essential outgoings inc mortgage, insurances, etc are around 30% of post-tax income - which sounds fabulous given that when we first married and wed our mortage alone was 30% of total income!

However, over the past three years, he has had one year of not earning in the UK but having to cover those essential UK expenses whilst his salary in Australia covered our expenses over there with very little left over; one year of working on 50% maximum income (so covered basics and gave no opportunity to save but allowed for some extras and some to pay off some debts) and this year has worked 3/5 months. I still can't splurge and find it hard to spend on non-essential items.

We save nothing for holidays. We haven't had a family holiday since 2000 when we visited my cousin in Canada and then spent 3 days in Toronto to meet up with more family.

We have a PEP/ISA/whatever they are called these days which is supposed to pay off the mortgage (ha, ha) and a couple of small endowment policies that have been running for a while.

I save 10% of our essential spending into an account each month which should help to provide a cushion if problems arise in the future. What I really need to do though is save more when I can.

Oh BTW, family holiday to Canada cost about the same as a week in a caravan in the south of England!

Absolutely true Jac34! 3 years ago we earned about 50% less than we earn now. We were renting at the time and the rent was more than out mortgage now!! However we were still able to put £50 per week into an ISA!! It's all gone now and we can't seem to manage to save a button anymore!

Any advice on how to improve your cashflow??

reading this I feel quite lucky. Incoming dosh is between £1600 and £1900, I transfer £1200 to our joint account which covers almost everything, mortgage, all bills on DD (direct debit, not Dear daughter!), food shopping etc. I then have personal DD's like gym membership, and life insurance and mobile phone, credit card repayments. DH earns sporadically and he has about £150 of DD a month. We save nothing! I am not paying into a pension right now (he is) and we just live in our means. It looks like I have loads a month after main bills, but I guess I spend about £50 a month on leisure (one meal out, or one night out) and £50 a month on me (clothes, toiletries etc) If I earn the £1600 it is really tight, £1800 covers it all OK.

I suppose we are better off than we were a year ago and have very few debts, less than £1000 on credit cards and the mortgage. I have have shares which were worth a lot and are now worth about half!! These are my very very rainy day emergency funds which if my house fell down I would rely on!

Coming in,

£1500 (total)

Out
£600 mortgage
£220 d debits, bills
£3/400 food
£200 credit cards
£150 petrol
£90 insurance (2 cars, home)
C. tax £120
Misc cash £400 (50/week ea)

Month end = whopping overdraft. My name isn't Rothschild really.

Eeek! £8K net per month (cringe sorry).
£4K savings (school fees etc)
£900 mortgage
£300 for holidays
this probably sounds ridiculous but we are not rich, we are not going abroad until next Easter as we can't afford it.

Spendalot, I know you're a nut in disguise!!! Or am I mistaken?

Please ignore last message, am a little drunk.

Tut tut Rhiannon! How does one define rich?

£8K net a month and not rich??????

Ours is a bit variable but approx:

2440 net per month in (inc child benefit)
1200 per month out - mortgage (£480),endowments,
other DDs (phone, other utilities,
council tax, insurances, charity donations,
pension (£50), loan)
300 per month petrol
700 per month food & other misc (inc alcohol...)
(there are 5/6 of us)
240 (balance) everything else

The idea of saving £4k a month, or paying anything for private health or private education, makes me ROFL.

We have had 2 holidays in the last 12 months but my Dad died last year and what he left me paid for one of them - we will not be doing anything like it again!

Recently surrendered an endowment and used the money to pay off a variety of loans/credit cards which saved us £600pm - I was only able to do that because I knew I would be getting enough to cover it from my dad's estate, once sorted out (no will). Prior to that we just got deeper and deeper into debt every month. Now we are just about solvent.

2000 mortgage
70 council tax
1500 saving/holidays
40 ds's bank account
80 travel
500 food
300 bills
500 renovations

Approximate. I find it hard to budget even though I set one all the time.

Nagger, £2000 mortgage but only £70 council tax?

Presumably this is London house price inflation.

Ours is £480 mortgage (and that includes some improvement loans) and about £110 council tax. Proportions a bit different!

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Rhiannon - how does one manage to get £8k net to come in each month? Please tell!

coming in... approx 1200 left at end of month nil, don't have a mortgage always struggling to get account back into the black can't say how much we spend each month except food bill usually about £100 each week only spend on entertainment for the children and only spend really on the children other than petrol for car which we try not to use much. Maybe I should start keeping a closer eye on where the money goes but never have the time to keep it up when I've tried in the past usually holiday every other year due to lack of cash. Savings amount to approx £100 each month but only because of a direct d. so should probably not save anything but then if we didn't I'd worry about the unexpected expenses if we didn't have anything to fall back on. I am one of the worlds greatest worriers!

As snoobysnax asked how much! 8K net ? ! Rhiannon? and did anything special prompt this question apart from how do people manage?

Oh dear had to change my name 4 this as I have 8k coming in each month too and don't want to get a hard time...

Mortgage £1500
Nanny £1000
Dogwalker £100
Cleaner £120
Bills etc £200
Going out £300 +
Babysitters £100
Car £350
Wine £100
Food £600

Save about £700 a month unless we are going away on holiday or something.

In answer to how do you get £8k a month coming in, dh and I both earn £75k a year.

And yes, the more you earn the more you spend. In 1997 Dh earned £28k and i earned £20 and we lived quite happily on that. We just don't have to worry about money any more, but both of us having well paid jobs does have it's own stresses I can assure you

It really is daft to have to change our names to admit things are going OK at the moment isn't it. Goodness knows where we'll all be in 5 years or more which is why we save such a lot.

I don't have designer gear, I do have a Burberry bag and a nice watch but that is the extent of it. I shop at normal shops including Primark. I do my own cleaning and ironing.

We pay for private health insurance because my DH is self employed so no one will pay him to be off sick so it is a necessity. Nor could he have tons of time off if I was suddenly unable to look after the children.

Council tax is £140 a month I think (has just gone up). We stopped paying into pensions, we have a water meter so we only pay about £200 pa for water and sewarage which is a big saving.

Gas, electric, water, phone, council tax all on DD.