[Closed] How much money could you live on per month?

Food/ents only? Well, I've managed on £300 in the past. I usually count on about £600 these days after everything else is taken care of plus savings/ISA etc

If I really wanted to save money I'd ditch my girlfriend. 😈

l'll let you know in a month or two, starting to record every penny. See what i spend see what i can do away with.

The reason is seeing what can really afford to spend if i can get a house deposit together.

pfffff, if it was just me then a reasonably small amount but i have 3 endlessly hungry mouths to fill. I dont even want to think about it 😀

stupid question! - guessing you are single with no kids and living alone?

Are we counting broadband and TV in entertainment, or just going out? If just going out, I could get by on £0 a month. But maybe not every month unless I had to.

Food-wise, if we shop at Aldi our weekly shop is about £60 for a family of four.

Should one include or exclude staff?

How much money do you think you could get by on, purely for food and entertainment?

What you think is a decent average amount?
What you could get by on if you had to skimp by?
And How much to you reckon you really spend?

I'd say a round thousand is a decent amount. You can eat well, drink well and go out a fair bit

I've gotten by on around £40 a week before. It helps if you are focussed on stuff other than socialising though.

I really spend around £600 a month on food and whathaveyou. Could spend more but me and my wife are working hard at the mo so out and about in the evenings a bit less.

What isn't excluded?

I could survive on nothing. When my previous job was in trouble that's just what I did lunches for the week were no more that £5 in total, i ate cheap fruit and a wholemeal roll with a bit of processed chicken... I list loads of weight, it was great. I did pretty much nothing out of work because I couldn't afford to. It was a sad existence and my relationship was nearly a casualty because of it.

With my new job i'm at the opposite end of the scale, but I still do the same, except I eat more for lunch and I've put on weight. I have zero outgoings except those excluded in your first post. I leave myself £300 for the month, everything else goes into my savings. At the end of the month I tend to still have most of the £300 left and that goes into my savings too... I never feel guilty about spending silly amounts on a bike or garmin though for no reason other than I want it.

GW - Member
stupid question! - guessing you are single with no kids and living alone?

miketually - Member
Are we counting broadband and TV in entertainment, or just going out? If just going out, I could get by on £0 a month. But maybe not every month unless I had to.

Food-wise, if we shop at Aldi our weekly shop is about £60 for a family of four.

Could I get by on? If I was on my own and I had to,

purely for food and entertainment

I take out £40 a week and that covers it all....there's a bit of cupboard raiding by the end but it's usually ok. Bear in mind I don't drink/smoke/socialize or have what most would consider 'a life'.On the flipside I'm sat here staring at a brand new Giant TCR sl ISP frameset :0) (2.5k)

<£100pm???? WTF?? Some of the young ladies that provide my evening entertainment, if you know what I mean, charge at least that per hour...

Lovin' = free*
Bikin' = free*
Food = cheap

*apart from the ride that goes wrong

As a singleton I budget on £600 per month. No booze, fags, drugs, or hookers and I barely go out. WTF

Single and £600pm on food and entertainment that doesn't involve booze, drugs, hookers or going out? WTF??

When i was an undergrad i remember buying loaves of bread for 7p in Tesco and value cheese for about a quid. It is amazing how far you can stretch money when only eating cheese toasties.

When i was an undergrad i remember buying loaves of bread for 7p in Tesco and value cheese for about a quid. It is amazing how far you can stretch money when only eating cheese toasties.

I reckon I live off about £30 a week.

don, you spend that much on phone sex? dedicated 😉

pfffff, if it was just me then a reasonably small amount but i have 3 endlessly hungry mouths to fill. I dont even want to think about it

+1, its not me its the unbelievable amount 'they' get through

When i was an undergrad i remember buying loaves of bread for 7p in Tesco and value cheese for about a quid. It is amazing how far you can stretch money when only eating cheese toasties.

I recall buying living off a tin of beans and a loaf of bread, bought with a cheque....

When i was an undergrad i remember buying [s]loaves of bread for 7p in Tesco and value cheese for about a quid[/s] fresh chicken, pasta, fresh veg, tinned fish etc etc for a few quid. It is amazing how far you can stretch money when only eating [s]cheese toasties[/s] well.

don, you spend that much on phone sex? dedicated

About a grand, maybe a [s]bit[/s] lot more

organdonor
for a few quid.

Money bags

eeeuuuwwww gross

Trying to buy a house atm so as little as possible without not having a decent amount of fun ..... Although ive hardly raced this year due to cost

Total outgoings < 1000 for everything( rent , rate , fuel, leccy ,food, fun) for the past 6 months - was even less when i was working away - all food and fuel paid for just had rent and rates really to pay for

Wish I earnt a grand a month - think I have less than £200 a month to spend on food/drink/clothes after bills are paid - that has to include any petrol too, so the car doesn't get used very often. Who needs new clothes anyway - apart from the odd new bit of cycle clothing of course.

I have £70 a month for me after bills.

My outgoings before fun are >£2000 pcm

My outgoings before fun are >£2000 pcm

About £ 130.00p per week, this does not include any bills/mortgages etc

don - I can contact jumpupanddown myself ta 😉

I grew up in a cardboard box int middle t road an i were lucky...

I grew up with nowt, lived for a long time with nowt. I'd rather not but its amazing on how little we really need to live on.

im a student managing to live off £30 a week, and i manage to go out to town with that (just about anyway).

Me and the missus spend about £250 a month, including food bills. The only real expenses are wool for her and getting to races for me.

im a student managing to live off £30 a week, and i manage to go out to town with that

How much does a loaf of Tesco Value bread and a tin of value beans cost these days? When I was a student (a while ago now) Tescos were selling beans for about 4p a tin, and bread for about 20p a loaf or something, so it was possible to eat for a week for about a quid.

Our Halls weren't a pleasant place to be if you a)had a sense of smell or b)didn't like beans.

Edit. I spend a bit more than that now, but I still fart a lot.

I have 2 teenage daughters, so I can say I am ****ed... 😐

After returning from the pub the other night (me, not them!) they told me how the money I had spent could have bought them so many 'products' and if I didn't go out at all for a while they could have some GHD's 😯

I will still go out - at least I help keep pubs open and people in jobs 😉

Tescos were selling beans for about 4p a tin

tesco value beens are now around 26p i think, but as ive found, it varies from place to place. i usually splash out and get morrisons value beens as they taste a bit nicer, but are relatively expensive at 31p (they were 25p about a month ago :x). i dont buy the bread so cant get the price on that but value bran flakes are 77p, bagels are 90p odd, ketchup is 14p etc.

i keep meaning to start a blog reviewing all the tesco value stuff, its surprisingly not that bad. its funny how the packaging successfully puts people off buying it...

A couple of years ago I'd just bought a new house and after the mortgage increase I was strapped. So to keep in budget I recorded all spend. I allowed 35 quid a week for food, 100 for ents.I ended the year having saved about 1200, enough for a decent holiday. so, about 110 a week, or nearly 500 a month. That is central London prices.

I lived out of my car for a while about a decade ago. This was in the states, but I lived on about £25 a month. Eating a can of speg and a pot yogurt almost every day. One meal a day. The occasional mars bar. Did work for a construction company on and off, but mostly relied on mates that were in uni for entertainment, clothes washing, and the occasional slice of pizza.

A good way to save lots of dough is to get a national gym mebership (YMCA, etc) One time fee of £200 for the year that way you can use your card to get into any YMCA in the country and use their showers and fresh towels. 😛

I only shop at Kwik Save and buy No Frills™ products. Their version of Spam is simpy devine.

I earns between £1600-£2200 a month, my bills, including car, rent, gym, elec,sky,broadband, mobile...etc were £400 . For the final week of the month I was living off around £20.

I think I need to budget more.

I earns between £1600-£2200 a month, my bills, including car, rent, gym, elec,sky,broadband, mobile...etc were £400 . For the final week of the month I was living off around £20.
I think I need to budget more.

If your enjoying yourself I guess that the main, you'll probably not live to regret it but you may do. My girlfriend is in a similar situation and spend it all on clothes, she starting to learn though.

I save between £1500 and £2000 a month, it get addictive saving, watching the balance go up, then you spunk some of it on an expensive holiday or nice bike and don't feel guilty in the slightest. It's also completely stress free having a year or twos worth of salary banked as you don't need to worry about the worst Happening and loosing your job etc, at least not as much anyway.

I know I'm fortunate, I also know that I could end up as I was a few years ago if the industry I'm in ever decides to **** up, it has another 20 years in theory, but there will be hard times before then. The thought of being how I was will forever keep me being a tight arse, with the occasional splurge.

I save between £1500 and £2000 a month

I have a spreadsheet of known in-comings and out-goings, I try to tweak the savings amount to allow for about £100 a week to live on. But food shopping and fuel are covered elsewhere too so it's pretty solely going out/un-expected costs really.

It's not a perfect system and when I started out doing it I was living on £40 a week so it is possible to live on far less and save more.

There does seem to be a happy balance you reach of some to spend and some to save - in certainly not in the position of having a years salary in the bank and saving £2k a month like some though. But in my first year of owning a house I have replaced all the white goods (through breakdown/faults) bought furniture, replaced a dead laptop and bought 'stuff' for the house and also managed to stick 3 months mortgage payments into an ISA should I need it (I also have a 3 month notice period so should the worse come to the worse I have time to get sorted). So I personally feel like I'm doing pretty damn well considering

Start the saving off and keep track of it - as mentioned above, it forms a habit which can be rewarding as buying stuff from cash rather than from debt is gratifying.

Also gsp1984 - what the hell do you do?

😛

toby1 - Member
Also gsp1984 - what the hell do you do?

I work for the offshore industry, unfortunately I have to travel a lot, but fortunately when I am traveling I'm not spending my own money.

So swings and roundabouts.

Fair enough then - I earn an okay amount but have little outgoings (car/phone etc all go through my business) but I do get home at 5.45pm almost every night to see my little girls which is a fair trade off against earning £££££££££s

I save between £1500 and £2000 a month.

Fair play mate!

£0 a month was my best last year, most months these days seem to be around £100

It's a simple way of life.

Fair play - if I could I would 🙂

What did you eat when you didn't spend anything Sharki?

finbar

By foraging and bartering, somedays I ate little, others very well.

By foraging and bartering, somedays I ate little, others very well.

+1, it's amazing what you can blag from generous people. People at work used to ask if I wanted anything from the shop, I used to say 'I've got no money but I'll come for the walk and fresh air' more often than not people will offer to buy you something.

Infact met up with an old colleague on friday and bought them lunch to return the favour lol

You can get some nobbers that bring bring out the small violen joke too. Although it's often no joke for the person involved.

I'm impressed. I imagine it'd be harder at this time of year.

Plenty of small ways you can help people, in fact this time of year is probably the best time for a spot of bartering.
Leaves, untidy gardens, logs to chop, etc.

My present one is a roof repair and odd jobs around a stable yard and arena. Food, a place to stay if i need to and i get to ride the horses.

But as always it's a numbers game, you need to speak to a lot of folk, trust is hard to gain, but those that do trust you, usually find a way in which i can help them, and a meal worked for is a tasty meal indeed.

I save between £1500 and £2000 a month

A colleague lives off the interest on his savings, so he's saving his entire salary every month. When I last caught sight of his pay slip, the net salary began with a 3.

The way to achieve this seems to be to never move out of your parents' house and to be in your early 50s.

[i]A colleague lives off the interest on his savings, so he's saving his entire salary every month. When I last caught sight of his pay slip, the net salary began with a 3.[/i]

Ok but how many following digits before the decimal point. 😆

A colleague lives off the interest on his savings, so he's saving his entire salary every month. When I last caught sight of his pay slip, the net salary began with a 3.

Now he can't spend money quickly enough so every month he saves even more and it keeps growing although I am sure the present interest rates make it slightly less comfortable than it used to be - he was earning nearly as much in interest each month as I was earning through working.

This thread of spending vs saving has got me thinking.

I've never been a saver. I'm fortunate enough to have a decent income (by average standards), but spend it all.

Next year Mrs North and I want to do some significant work to part of the house. We're going to have to change our ways and save.

Which is about time.

Thanks for the inspiration..!

A colleague lives off the interest on his savings, so he's saving his entire salary every month. When I last caught sight of his pay slip, the net salary began with a 3.
The way to achieve this seems to be to never move out of your parents' house and to be in your early 50s.

I have a friend that still lives with his parents, he has just swapped his exige for an early gallardo!

I live in the midlands where houses are cheap fortunately my outgoing consist of £1000 into a joint account with my girlfriend, she also pays in £1000 and that covers the mortgage, bills, food etc for the month.

If she ever left me and I move back home I think I'd buy a gallardo to though lol.At least for a short while before buying another house.

I have a friend that still lives with his parents, he has just swapped his exige for an early gallardo

I can only assume his parents are complete mugs 😕

Someone I once worked with sold his house and moved back into his mum and dad's purely so he could buy a brand new Ferrari.

Our bosses forbid him from coming into work in it because they said it gave the wrong impression to clients - they said it would make them assume they were being fleeced so people could spunk money on flash cars.

🙂

Someone I once worked with sold his house and moved back into his mum and dad's purely so he could buy a brand new Ferrari.

Define "A Loser".

Define "A Loser"

It also pretty much sums up the Top Gear studio audience.

I can only assume his parents are complete mugs

If you live away from home for 7 months of the year what the point in having your own house if your single. I would agree with him to a certain extent.

Discussing money is vulgar.