how much do you spend on clothes?

[irregularegular]

I realise this is a bit of a daft question as everyone's circumstances are so different, but I'm feeling in major need of a wardrobe and style overhaul and would like to set myself a budget to work to. I've hardly been spending anything at all lately.

So, roughly, how much do you spend on clothes, accessories, maybe make up etc per month? What does that tend to go on? The occasional expensive item, or more cheaper items? Work clothes or going out clothes? Where do you normally shop? And if you don't mind, for context, what is your rough household income band and how high a priority is spending money on clothes for you, compared to other discretionary stuff?

(and so I'm not asking people for info that I'm not willing to give, we are in the 100-200k total band as a family).

We're lucky enough to be able to afford to be quite relaxed about money and don't have a clear budget generally. But I like a constraint to work to.

Everyone has these insane household incomes

Can we start a thread like this for household incomes around 30k?

I spend about £100 a month, only ever buy sale or discounted, and buy nice stuff that lasts a bit longer (love Baukjen but £££)

Waaaay too much

I live for clothes.
After dd of course

I buy in two batches. May: buy few new pieces to fill gaps in Summer wardrobe. September: same for Winter. So could spend a good bit there especially on boots/ coat etc. Always buy to fit with what l have and stick to same colours so all go together. I am a Winter.
Then about 50 a month just getting a little treat like a new top.
Very little on make up but do get waxing/ eyebrows done regular at salon and hair blow dried every week and regular colour.
Putting on weight is my most expensive habit as l have lots of good clothes a size down!!

I spend very little of my (average for this thread) income on clothes because I’ve been more or less the same size for 30 years and I’ve bought a lot of clothes over that time so it’s very rare for me to need anything I don’t already possess. I literally can’t think of anything I’ve bought this year apart from a couple of pairs of M&S knickers and some trainer socks. (Although I spent 350 quid on a couple of heavily discounted good handbags at Christmas - I trash my handbags and have to buy two new ones every year).

When I do buy clothes it’s a combination of Jigsaw/Hobbs and H&M/charity shop (my most frequently worn work outfit is a Hobbs dress/jacket suit from my local charity shop).

I have put some weight on recently though and need to buy at least three new tops/nice T-shirts - I’ll budget a hundred quid but might well end up getting them for thirty in the H&M sale.

I spend way too much on clothes. A lot of it is linked to my self image as I am overweight and buy clothes when I feel fat in everything.

I try to buy 80% second hand as I'm torn between hating the waste of disposable fashion and needing to buy more! I spend probably £100 - £150 a month on clothes.

I'm losing weight at the moment and my goal is to completely overhaul my wardrobe to key pieces that are excellent quality when I'm a healthy size again. I mainly buy joules, Boden type high street clothes for work. I know that stuff like H&M and New Look just doesn't last as well.

I only spend around £100 a year on makeup and £100 on skin care. Maybe one new perfume once a year. I also spend £30 a month on my nails and £40 every 3 months in hair cuts.

Household income is £100k.

This thread has definitely inspired me to stop spending until I'm a healthy weight. If I could do that I'd have some money saved for when I do want to buy nice clothes in a size 10/12.

Btw I spend regularly on clothes but find make up lasts ages so I hardly ever buy any, maybe a mascara once or twice a year and foundation or lipstick very occasionally if it literally runs out.

Household income of £170k. No mortgage and no kids. Like other posters, I tend to have blow outs on the designer stuff - Burberry, Mulberry, Prada etc but I also love a bit of Warehouse and H and M and Top Shop and I also love a bit of charity shopping. Don't wear much make up -I buy a Clinique foundation a couple of time a year, which normally comes with free gifts. I paint my own nails but do get my hair coloured every month at about £90. I just got a shop on a parade of shops. I work in the City so need to be smart. Loads of great ideas on this board.

I spend about £300 on clothes and shoes and £100 on hair and make up a year so £400 a year or £33 a month.

But our income is a fraction of yours.

I really is worth popping in and having a browse at some charity shops. I got a vintage Burberry coat for £15 just yesterday. I admit most of it is crap that other people don't want, but I have bought quite a lot of stuff for an upcoming holiday from there. Worth a browse!

Too much! I will spend whatever I can reasonably afford on clothing/shoes/bags.

Up to £450pm I guess, but not that much every single month.

I wouldn’t need to spend so much if I hadn’t gained weight - I’m 2-3 sizes bigger now and realistically the vast majority of my wardrobe was never going to fit me again, so I’ve had to let it go and I’m building a new one. That means 7 leather/suede jackets, probably 15 coats, 4 blazers, work wear, casual wear, evening and event pieces etc etc. that I had and no longer have. It’s going to take me a long time to build that up again.

I shop at Jigsaw, Jaeger, Toast, Whistles, Reiss, White Company, John Lewis, Hush, Uniqlo, Joules, Barbour. M&S for my basics and jeggings/trousers as they fit me well, plus supermarkets for the odd thing here and there to supplement. If I lived near any charity shops I would happily sort through to find the odd gem, and I’m going to look to eBay for coats and jackets this A/W.

I have quite a lot of make up. Palettes from Urban Decay and Bobbi Brown (my favourite), also lots of Estée Lauder and some Chanel and Lancôme. I’ve put a block on that, though, because it’s easy to keep buying multiples of very similar things and there is always, always more to tempt you. I have my eyes on a Tom Ford lipstick but it’s £40, so I would only ever buy that in the sale.

I’ve never spent much on skincare because I was lucky and had great skin and a youthful face. Now I’m 43 my face is starting to really need some help, so I will need to come up with some kind of regular routine. I wouldn’t spend much though - maybe £15pm at the very most after initial outlay (I don’t actually know what a good routine would mean for me but I would aim to keep it as cheap as possible). In a similar vein, I’ve never really done anything in the vein of beauty treatments and such, but I am considering getting eyelash extensions and gel nails done on a regular basis so that will come under beauty expenditure. I’m estimating that could easily come to £100pm.

I’ve decided that as Im getting older I need to go back to exercise - it’s time to start investing in myself and the mechanics of my body. So that will become another expense and I suppose I will need to adjust my spending elsewhere to compensate for that. I can’t run due to injury/long term condition so it would need to be gym/PT.

My biggest expense is handbags. I love them and aim to buy a Mulberry or similar in each seasonal sale, so that contributes greatly to overall spend. But I love clothes/shoes/bags so as long as I can afford it I will continue to buy more. I get a lot of pleasure from it, so I consider it my hobby.

Household income £80k ish.

I'm terrible as hate spending it on myself but happily will spend it on my son....

So for myself I only really do two big shops a year which is Birthday and Christmas as I always get money as gifts for both, then buy the odd bits here and there if I need or really like.

We're not big earners, so sadly can afford to dress on the clothes we would like!

My husband has a full on designer wardrobe, but wears the same scruffy comfies all the time...it infuriates me! He chooses a horrible coat over a £350 one hanging up! 😂

I would say spend what you can afford as clothes aren't worth getting in debt for...so what ever you have money wise go and enjoy a big spree and splurge on what you like and want 😊
eBay is always good for bargains and often still has tags on!

Oh, I didn't count makeup/skin/hair in there. I get my hair cut every five/six weeks at an Aveda salon, which is £60, eyebrows threaded every fortnight, which is £8.

I buy makeup/skin stuff when I need/want it. Skincare I tend not to chop and change with, because my skin can react badly to new things. Last month I bought an Hourglass blusher, and Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair, both of which were straight replacements for finished items. This month I bought two Glossier cloud paint blushers. I am also a sucker for red lipsticks, and have 100s.

Hair/nails/skincare/waxing/laser/Botox is a whole different thread

I hate clothes shopping. Hate it.
I probably spend about £50 a month or less on clothed and makeup/skincare.

Last item of clothing I bought: sweary socks for a tenner last week. Also spent about £20 buying new face cream and wash.

May I bought some fabric for £15 to make a top. Maybe £10 on eyeliner and nail polish.

Spent about £25 on fabric and a pattern in April. And £20 on jeans after old pair wore through.

Bought new work trousers in January.

I just hate clothes shopping. I prefer to buy fabric online and make own clothes nowadays as at least then I can make what I want rather than look for something in the shops that doesn't exist.

I have been both sides. Pre kids, we had a family income of about £130k. Now we have a family income of about £65k and two kids!! So disposable income has dropped massively.

Pre kids/more money - I didn't have a budget as such, but I realised quite quickly that it made more sense for me to buy fewer items that were nicer/ better quality. Many of those are still in my cupboard or were finally retired after they fell apart from constant wear (a silk blouse I bought for about £150 worked out to probably have cost about 10p per wear as I wore it constantly for about 4 years).

Now, I can hardly ever afford clothes and when I do buy them, I need to keep them to relatively low cost. So I'm even stricter on my policy of buying clothes that really work and can be dressed up or down and will last. Since the beginning of this year I have bought one (relatively expensive) t-shirt (with gift money), a cheap dress, some socks, a pair of jeans and a cardigan. Last year I picked up two reasonably priced dresses from Next which have both been a godsend. And I still have a cupboard full of well-made jackets that probably all cost at least £100-£250 from when I still had money!

Household income of just under £100k. I spent a lot in 2017 because I lost weight (~£200pcm on clothes and shoes) but now it has settled to about half of that per month.

I spend £360 per year on haircuts (pixie cut so cut every 6 weeks) but nothing on hair dye and last year I spent a similar amount on perfume, this year DH has been buying me perfume from my wishlist so it's off my budget and onto his! Don't wear makeup and use very cheap moisturiser so negligible costs there. Exercise I spend £22 per month on gym membership, I swim 4x a week so it's a bargain.

Over the last couple of years I've spent quite a lot, probably about £1,000 a year on clothes. This is because I've been building up my wardrobe after I dropped a few dress sizes. Now I have - more or less - everything I need, I'll be spending a lot less - just replacing things when they wear out. I spend about £400 on haircuts, as I have shortish hair that needs regular cutting to look ok, and very little on make-up - a couple of stock-ups a year say at £50 each. My income is about £30,000 a year, but my other costs are quite low, so I have been able to afford this, but don't want to continue at this level. I've also sold clothes on e-bay (paid for my autumn clothing splurge, more or less) and buy most stuff in sales or second-hand to keep costs down.

Depends... for me I'm like a magpie. I see something new and if I like it (especially dresses!) I have to have it.

So far this month I've bought a new Next Directory navy work dress and jacket for interviews - disappointed with quality but wore already so £70 down the drain. £35 on a H&M classics pleated sleeveless dress - well worth the money.

£35 on a Top Shop shirt dress (green print) but I found a gift card I'd got which I hadn't used.

Oh and a Cath Kidston printed green dress in the sale... £35/£40

I am really trying to think about whether I need new clothes going forward.

I

ah income for me is approx 34K a year and husband's salary is approx 110K a year. He is a typical man though and though he likes clothes and nice labels doesn't overspend much if at all.

oh and makeup and hair... depends.

recently spent £80 on balyage and cut which was ok.

I do like and have nice foundations, eye-shadow etc but don't use on a day to day basis. I do use and buy eg Max Factor/Revlon foundation, Maybelline mascara daily. I don't spend too much on it - I buy it as it runs out.

Shower gel/bath stuff - tend to buy it as it runs out but do like nicer ones, huge Imperial Leather ones for £1. But splurged in Waitrose the other week on their reduced bath goodies and got a Korres shower gel too. Kids use anything...

As little as possible! Really not interested in clothes. In the past two years I’ve bought (in total) a job lot of 10 white t shirts and ditto undies, one pair of sandals (my ten year old pair had fallen apart), one pair of cheap trainers (my twelve year old pair... etc) two pairs of cotton summer trousers, and two smart tops for evening wear on holiday.
My winter coat is 20 years old.
I haven’t bought a dress since my DDs’ graduations, 8 years ago.
It helped that I never needed clothes for work - I always wore scrubs in the operating theatre, and lived in jeans.
When you see the awful environmental impact of the fashion industry, from the synthetic fabrics shedding polluting plastic microfibres, to the sweatshop labour, to the landfill of discarded items (or dumping of them into 3rd world markets, destroying livelihoods for local dressmakers), it makes you think about whether the planet can stand much more of this shit.

This is interesting, thank you for being willing to answer.

As I suspected, I've been spending far less than most people in our income bracket. For a while I've mostly been buying second hand (for ethical rather than financial reasons). But a lot of it is just not quite right, so ends up being just as wasteful. Also I've just not been buying much at all recently, due to lack of time and interest. Everything seems a bit worn out or not quite fitting right.

So I'm going to have a bit of a push. I think I do actually know how to shop and dress fairly well - I just need to get out and do it.

Will probably not worry too much about budget immediately. Just won't go crazy. Then settle back down into a modest-ish, but a bit more than lately, budget to keep on top of it.

Do keep the answers coming though...

I think that unless you happen to know that a given brand and size fits you really well, (so you can scour eBay accordingly) the key to second hand shopping is to browse the charity shops really regularly, always try on and be ruthless about rejecting anything that doesn’t fit perfectly (or can be altered to fit) or is otherwise not spot on. No matter how much of a bargain it is, if it doesn’t work for you it’s a waste of money.

Yes being ruthless enough is the problem. And not having enough time really, given how long it takes to find the gems!

Ninkanius - I hear you re exercise as you get older - recently spent money on Groupon bootcamp and monthly gym pass.

Tempted to get a personal trainer but don't like people shouting at me...

Am lucky that I really do look approx 17 years younger (so everyone tells me) than my 47 years but have always used decent skincare. In past 10 years have pared it down to La Roche Posay Antihelois SPF50 sun factor, and boots essentials day cream and Sainsburys night cream with Q10. I do use Rosehip oil (ebay), Avalon Organics Vit C Serum and a REN serum.