[Closed] Living costs?

Thoughts? - check how many pairs of shoes she has..... 😉

It costs me and my GF about £1200 per months (£600 each). That is for morgage, bills, food and anything house related.

yeah i would say the same, around £1200-£1300 a month for the two of us (but we own our car luckily) inc all bills, fuel and food.

We have a joint account that covers all monthly direct debits mortgage payments etc. I pay in £1,100 per month to keep it going.

Works very well.

£900 a month, approx, covers all mortgage, bills, insurance etc. Shared % for % by take-home income. Cant even begin to imagine how you could spend 1K a month on top of mortgage and bills. We cover our own car running costs, insurance, fuel etc ourselves.

I almost posted this the other week mainly because half the time it seems like I earn a lot of money, we have no mortgage and yet we're always skint by the end of the month. I've now tied this down to us both being terrible with money. 😉

Normal monthly bills aside like gas/electric/council tax and stuff, we draw out £280 a week. I get £80 of that, my wife spends the rest on the household food (two adults, one 16 year old) (about £130) and she gets the rest. If she's good with the food shopping she gets more.

I spend my money on fuel for the car, my son's pocket money and hobbies (for example he goes to the Velodrome every week so that costs entrance fee and fuel to get there), which leaves me with about £40 for the week for beer, snacks, coffees and sweets. (sweet tooth, me).

I usually manage on this and I'd expect to look at the bank account and find lots of money in there but it's always frigging empty. It's a mystery.

Our Bills: Rent and all household related amenities, food, and commute costs (I ride, she walks) but we do own a car (BMW 116) of which £3k is financed, come in at roughly £1300 / month. We split this straight down the middle. Rent and council tax make up the bulk of this, but we do live in St. Albans which is not cheap by any means.

We both earn roughly the same as a basic, but I have commissions on top which can sometimes be more than my basic again (if I've worked hard!) but as we're saving for a house deposit, any money left over at the end of the month goes into "the pot"

I pay £30 a month storage fee for my stuff and thats the only outgoings i have.

This is looking worrying, the other half is spending on food and kids stuff about the same as you lot spend on everything. With food costing the whole family about £550 per month I'm sometimes at a loss to see where she allocates the other £500 (if I add everything together I have outgoings of £2900 a month, it's bloody lucky I'm at sea for 6 months of the year!!)

If you eat well I can see it would be easy to spend £1000 a month on food for a family of four. Plus kids costs into that also.

£30! spending a bit of time at 'her majestys pleasure' are we? 😀

no unfortunately I dont get the luxuries they get!

gas/electric/council tax and stuff, we draw out £280 a week

That must be some monster utility bills you have there.

We put £1200 each into the joint account. Everything comes out of that: Mortgage, bills, food, going out, holidays, DIY. Its usually in credit by a fair bit, occasionally it needs a top up for a big holiday. No kids BTW. I suspect some people have a smaller mortgage than us 🙂

I can easily do our (2 adults with a love of food!) shopping for £250 per month and I could get that under £200 if I really needed to. This includes everything that you buy from a supermarket, so things like shampoo and household cleaning products are included in that figure.

My life costs just short of £1,900 a month for two adults and two toddlers including all bills, childcare, mortgage, insurances, council tax, heating, food etc.

It feels like we earn about £1,901 a month.

My Mrs has become addicted to MSE and through some of the tips she has picked up we've cut our grocery costs (including cleaning stuff, bog roll etc) down to £25 a week (on average) and still eat well, so it can definitely be done.

I put in 1150 a month and she puts in about £750.
Shes doing a PHD so doesnt earn 'real money'

covers £210 a month car finance, mortgage (£625), utilities, insurance, council tax, flat maintainance charge, food and a little bit of treating ourselves to things for the flat and holidays.

I swear we could really cut this down if we tried, want to sit down and look at this week, it seems alot for a 23 year old couple in an eco flat. However if it is slowly building a balance thats not really a bad thing right?

What do you think?

Gunz your missus is laughing at you big time, you must be on the highest band of submarine pay to keep her in the lifestyle shes accustom to!

Guaranteed outgoings, excluding food, amounts to £1,800 a month

We have been trying to cut waste and have brought the shopping bill down to around £400 a month for us and a 5 and 10 year old. However a few trips to the local butcher/fishmonger and so on can easily put another £200 on that. Then add

Kids treats
School meals
Out of school activities (Cubs, Karate, Cricket, Football Club etc)
Clothes, shoes, stuff kids need etc and you have another hundred or two

Missus needs to live out of that I assume so a few coffees lunches etc and there's your £1000.

@ titusrider, it can definitely be done.

We've shaved about £300 a month off our living costs in the last 6 months or so by making a few economies (mainly food stuffs and being savvy with "deals") but still have enough luxuries to make sure we don't feel like we're missing out. Cutting out take-aways saved about £100 a month and a few inches off my waistline too!

It's directly related to income for most people I'd have thought.

[i]That must be some monster utility bills you have there. [/i]

Unless you're making a joke I don't get, I think you've misread my post.

Costs me 1200 for childcare so I can go to work for 200 a month 🙁 Mrs pays mortgage bills food ect . Can't wait til little ones start school 😉

Can't wait til little ones start school

(But yes - I am counting down the days till my two are three and they get 15 hours childcare a week so my wife can up her hours a bit). ((Then when they are three I will be counting down to 'proper school'...))

@ samuri. No joke, £280 a week just on electric gas and C.T seems high to me that's all. That £14.5k a year so something like £20k+ earned income just on utilities.

Dynamite - there is no amount of extra money that would get me in one of those. Skimmer all the way.

I think you're all being very selective about your living costs.

What about the little things that add up every month, or the big things that come annually? A tin of paint, some wallpaper, the annual holiday, a blocked drain that needs a plumber, some plants for the garden, re-roofing the garden shed, vaccinations for the dogs, car insurance, MOT/road tax....all of which I've had in the last few weeks.

Factor all these sorts of costs in and average them to get a true level of monthly outgoings.

The Brick, i think you read it wrong:

Normal monthly bills [b]aside[/b] like gas/electric/council tax and stuff, we draw out £280 a week.

I read that as [b]other than bills[/b] another £280 a week goes out in cash.

This thread is interesting to me. I get married in May, we have a joint account, but at the moment that is just for paying for the wedding. After the wedding it will be for all shared expenses and we'll each pay in a certain ammount.

Not sure exactly how it is going to work, we both are doing quite well, but she is earning more and has more savings to put into the house we are going to buy.
We currently split everything more or less straight down the middle. We used to work it out to the penny every few months and do a transfer to balance it. But we've gotten lazy with that as we've become more committed to each other. Now I pay for some bills, her others and we only really split big expenses, this is working OK whilst we rent. I think we will make much more use of the joint account after the wedding and when we buy a house.

£2K a month into joint account for 'everything' - mortgage, food, bills with 3 children. Certainly don't live extravagantly, don't go out much, never have takeaways (switched to supermarket ready curries as a weekly treat), generally shop @ Asda/Lidl which seems a lot cheaper for little change in quality. Wife on maternity so no income from that direction, and we're considering her not returning to work (see firestarters childcare costs.. hardly seems worth the bother when she'd rather be with the children anyway).

Still lend up paying for a lot out of 'my' money, still never seem to save a great deal. Have a ****ting great mortgage on a rubbish rate though, the price of living where I want to live, with biking on the doorstep and work commutable by bike.

2 payments of £425 into a joint account pays our monthly recurring costs - specifically household bills (gas, electricity, water, Band F council tax, BT line rental and minimal phone calls) and the supermarket shop for food/household goods/toiletries for a family of 4 (of whom 3 are female, so the toiletries bill is sizeable 😉 ) - but not the mortgage.

At the end of each month we shift the surplus to a joint savings that part pays for our summer holiday...

brassneck - I would see what help is available to you - if your wife goes back to work 15hrs + a week she could get some help in the form of working tax credits. If it wasn't for those we couldn't afford for my wife [b]to [/b]work (well we could but it would be such a small increase in income as to not be worth it).

Got monthly outgoings of £1600, food and travel are extra, only got wifes income so things are tighter than an extremely tight thing!

Gunz, you're going down a perilous path there!

I did and still do leave the family finances to the wife. Over a three year period our gross annual incomes rose by a combined £33,000 but we seemed to be no better off. So, I decided to look at the books.

Over £1,000 each month unaccounted for. Many months it was closer to £1500. Still haven't got an explanation and I've had to decide to leave it that way to keep the boat afloat.

Over £1,000 each month unaccounted for

😯

Can you not check the statements? As that's a serious amount of cash to just vanish each month, unless she has a wiggle account of course!

two of us no kids. Monthly outgoings around £700 inc mortgage council tax bills and food.

As averages go - about £6k a month for everything (house, shopping, cars, commuting, school, bikes, maintenance, horses...) for the 3 of us - when I earnt more we somehow we use to spend £9k 🙄

£6k is that all?

I spend that on servant wages alone.

[i]I read that as other than bills another £280 a week goes out in cash.[/i]

Correct. The 280 a week is our grocery, fuel and spending money.

We spend around 75 a week on food for a family of four. Genuinely interested in how people spend such large amounts!!!

We recently did a big budgeting exercise and found out that we spend >£600 on food alone and we seem to get through £600-£800 per month on "other" stuff. All in it's about £4300 per month
(2 small kids, 2 cars in Denmark)

I have no idea. A quick fag packet calculation to include mortgage, bills, food, petrol, nursery fees would suggest just under 4K 😯

I need to sort my spending out 😳