Excluding bikes, obvs. In fact, any specialist hobby type stuff, just normal day-to-day spending.
A couple of threads on here got me thinking. Obviously it's all about relative priorities, what different people deem important or desirable for different reasons etc etc, but some of the amounts people spend on some things boggles my mind. Likewise, I'm sure what we spend on some stuff would make others think "are you mental?"
So:
a) what do you spend more on than most seem to and why?
b) what can't you believe spend (what to you seems) so much money on?
I'll start
a) Meat. MrsIHN is a recovering vegetarian, and has decided that if she's going to eat meat, it's going be 'happy meat'. So, everything we buy is free range and, mostly, organic. That means it's not cheap; last Sunday's roast chicken was £16, which I'm aware some people will find, well, mental
b) Cars. I can't believe that people pay multiple hundreds of pounds on lease deals per month to drive a new car, when they could have an old car and spend that money on other stuff like holidays, or stick it in savings and retire earlier.
With you on cars for sure, that's the first thing that came to mind. Food wise too - we buy quality ingredients from local shops which cost perhaps a little (ok, quite a lot) more than supermarket equivalents, but they last longer before they "go off" and rarely reach that point as we eat almost everything anyway
not really, cheap meat is grim & doesn't do anyone any favours long term. What I found mental was that a live chicken, bought from the farm where it was hatched, costs me £20+, and a dead one which has been processed and shipped across the country can be bought for what, a fifth of that?last Sunday’s roast chicken was £16, which I’m aware some people will find, well, mental
wallpaper...
Clothes probably. My finance program tells me £155 over the past 4 years.
WHen I was looking at retirement costs the average was £700 a year!
My spend on bikes over the same time period was £22000
a) Music - I cannot get on with streaming apps. So I must spend at least oooh, £80 a month? on music. On CD, MP3 and occasional vinyl. Most folk with the £9 Spotify subs would find this a little bit crazy. But it's just ma thang.
b) yeah cars. My 11 year old Passat hardly ever goes anywhere. Have insurance by the miles so £6-£10 a month, and that's all it costs - fuel is almost negligent. £100s a month to have a posh thing sat on the drive would be insane.
More on stuff I keep and use like tools and cars
Less on stuff you don't like hair cuts and beauty 'essentials'
More on cheese and milk. Much like the OP, my missus is a recovering vegan, so everything is organic and ideally from small farms.
Less on phones (still using a Blackberry 9100, on GiffGaff PAYG).
Cars for sure, I don’t spend much on cars overall.
My last car cost 9k, but i fully expect 7+ years out of it, it’s japanese, so likely to be reliable.
Once it’s hit 200k miles, it’ll end up being cheap overall.
Bikes, I wouldn’t dare add up what I’ve spent on bikes.
Have insurance by the miles so £6-£10 a month,
Ooh, tell me more...
Ooh, tell me more…
It'll have to be a PM, cos I'd (and you'd) get a referral bonus
Sent you an essay (dunno if received? it stayed on my screen after I clicked send)
PM me baby, PM me good...
Honestly - most things. But I would be pretty confident I get many more years use out of most things than your average consumer. I feel my overall spend is similar or less over time, I get the pleasure of owning high-end stuff, and I'm less part of the whole 'disposable' culture - I feel it's a win win, but I seem out of step with most people so perhaps I'm deluding myself.
Bikes. Both high and low, I consider my Scandal to be my expensive bike and it cost me about £900 including the upgrades. So higher than probably average, lower than most of STW it seems (and about 15% of anything that the mag would consider reviewing).
Ohhh
Excluding bikes
Car was very cheap (£650), even my previous car was cheap by most standards (£5k at years old and kept for 10 years).
House was expensive, that's where all the nice holidays, car on finance, bike on 12 months 0%, trousers not from TKMax, food not from Lidl money went. Although 6 years on it's proved comfortably affordable for us.
Clothes - infrequent. I've usually only got one pair of "smart" jeans that get worn till they're filthy, then washed and dried overnight. Ditto office clothes. Tshirts and jumpers I get given more than enough at Christmas/birthdays. This is a bit like letting spotify pick your music all the time, eventually, it drifts off as it starts recommending stuff based on stuff it recommended previously. I own a lot of black/navy t-shirts despite only ever buying really bright ones!
Winter cycling (and to a lesser extent sailing) gear on the other hand...... I see no point in riding round with cold wet feet and hands, so for years I've had Northwave boots that cost more than my singlespeed!
a)more of? In the Before Times it was frothy coffee. Before, during and after work. Was embarrassing and expensive
b) less of - clothes and shoes. Worn till they fall apart or don't fit. To be fair, after lockdown I need a spending spree, but I'm starting with cycling shoes because, well, priorities
but some of the amounts people spend on some things boggles my mind. Likewise, I’m sure what we spend on some stuff would make others think “are you mental?”
priorities innit. some folk place value in things that other's wouldn't. I shan't tell you what I've just spent on tickets to see an opera but I'm reasonably sure it falls into your "Are you mental?" category
a) Failed experiments. I try lots of things, usually to do with something I think I can make into an small business so I can "make my own job" unfortunately in half hearted way and fail.
b) i) Hobbies. I just can't justify spending on pleasure in general as I feel guilty.
ii) Holidays. I love them but I am amazed at how much of a persona annual income people will spank on one holiday. Again justifying / affording them. Maybe its just income level?
a) Lego - currently got around £3k worth of the stuff dotted around the house. If finances allowed it would be a lot more than that.
b) I'm with OP on cars. I don't see the point of spending upwards of £300 per month on a car for 3 years and never actually owning it. Then what happens after 3 years? You get a new car but continue paying £300 a month, and so on and so on. I was thinking about this the other day and realised that most of the cars you see on the roads are less than 10-15yrs old. They have become yet another throwaway item.
I probably spend more on guitar lessons than most people, not so much on guitars.
3 of each
a) Lego, mortgage (although no idea what most spend on a mortgage, just know mine scares me), pension (I put as much as I can in, any 'pay-rise' I have got through job moves goes into pension).
b) Bikes (although to some I am sure my bike spend comes under a), other hobbies (£40 a year on my allotment, otherwise very occasional pair of walking shoes/boots when wear old ones out), maintenance of anything (if I can I do myself, even if it cost me more in 'time' than to get someone else to do it - which annoys the crap out of my wife).
I was thinking about this the other day and realised that most of the cars you see on the roads are less than 10-15yrs old.
Become is an odd choice of phrase.
At 15 years old my MG underwent its first restoration. This actually involved a whole new chassis and body. I think the owner intended to keep some bits as I still have the original door hinges in a box, but that's about it!
At 15 years old my current car has reached the point where rust is moving on from MOT advisory to he can't fail what he can't see, but it's definitely rusty where you can't see. Some car's do better than others as they age (my previous Ford was significantly better screwed together at 15 than this Citroen at the same age) but on average it probably averages out that for every Ford there's a Fiat
Make some sort of allowance for car's written off in accidents at a relatively constant rate through their life and 10-15 years starts to look like about as long as you'd expect a car to last on average.
ii) Holidays. I love them but I am amazed at how much of a persona annual income people will spank on one holiday. Again justifying / affording them. Maybe its just income level?
Actually, that's something we spend quite a lot on (well, did, when you could). Justification is both "it's big world out there" and "what else are we working for, if not to enjoy the time we're not working" (the latter also applies to the %age of income we put into pensions, which I'm sure is much greater than most, but I want to work for as short a time as possible)
Subscriptions. Recurring fees for anything, in fact. But the modern world is full of people that must pay hundreds of pounds a month for Spotify/Amazon/Sky/Netflix/Youtube Premium/Adobe Suite/Cloud Storage never mind their Phone/Car/Car Insurance/GAP insurance etc etc. Baffling.
And there's a special place in stupid-hell for people who prefer to pay monthly rather than yearly even though it costs them 20% more and they have the cash.
But yeah, also cars. I mean, I understand why some people might like driving fancy cars. I just don't understand how/why it's literally everyone!
a) Can't think of anything particular, maybe crisps?
b) Holidays, motor vehicles, furniture, random house tat.
I do buy a paper copy of a newspaper every day, which is silly expensive really, but I think we will have lost something significant when they all go under.
I don't pay for any digital subscriptions - no Sky, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+. Just have Freeview and the free version of Spotify. My mobile is £8 per month. Don't spend much on clothes - the jeans I'm wearing now are about 5 years old, the fleece 10. Almost never eat out.
Cars; I don't get the 'badge' thing and if I want to go/feel fast, that's what motorbikes are for.
Holidays; we spend a tiny fraction of our income, though we did invest in a campervan so not cut-and-dried.
Bicycles; I've spent a fair bit but can't imagine ever buying an ebike just on cost alone.
Lunch/coffees etc; Mrs Routes and I like eating out together during the day, even if it's just tea and cakes. We've "saved" a fortune due to Covid.
Business class seats when flying (yes I know this is still a minority thing and not exactly relevant at the moment). For the sake of a few hours of a different level of discomfort, I'm amazed at the price people pay for those seats.
I sometimes think of the cost of something in terms of how many days work I have to do to earn the money to pay for it. I'll take an economy seat and a few extra days off thanks!
1) Cars - I like cars, current car was over £30k, albeit the loan represents a relatively small proportion of take home salary (certainly compared to my mortgage!).
2) Business class seats; who cares, you’re flying in a tin box waiting to get to the destination, spend it when you’re there.
the only things i have spent any sort of money on is bikes,guitars and gaming (consoles,games).
compared to some on here though i don't have a lot of bread to spend so it will be relatively cheap (although not cheap to me).
a) more on curtains - reason = wife
b) less on insurance - always max out the excess and only insure what would be life changing if I hadn't insured it - reason = you are ins co valued customer until you make a claim
Edit, also more on bread, bought a breadmaker last week, so far it's worked out at £80+ per loaf
**Spending lots**
Food/Cooking stuff -
We've become proper foodies over the last year -
Bought my wife a £450 Mixer for Christmas, and am waiting on delivery of a £650 Kamado BBQ.
I'm also a lot happier to buy better ingredients than before, as in i'd rather eat less meat but better stuff, and have really noticed the difference.
These days we'll buy the 'staples' from Lidl/Aldi but the nice stuff from farm shops or local butchers.
**Spending not a lot**
Clothes - i don't buy much, and struggle to justify big sums on certain things.
I don't drink tea/coffee so spending £3.50 in Starbucks every morning baffles me.
Set of 5 wood chisels = £358.
Electricity. i sometimes read the column in the paper about how someone manages their money and they always seem to spend around £20-£50 per month on their utilities bill. Our monthly direct debit is £238 for electricity.
a) Meat. MrsIHN is a recovering vegetarian, and has decided that if she’s going to eat meat, it’s going be ‘happy meat’. So, everything we buy is free range and, mostly, organic. That means it’s not cheap; last Sunday’s roast chicken was £16, which I’m aware some people will find, well, mental
b) Cars. I can’t believe that people pay multiple hundreds of pounds on lease deals per month to drive a new car, when they could have an old car and spend that money on other stuff like holidays, or stick it in savings and retire earlier.
weirdly similar on those
The car thing can be a catch22. Our last car was in some ways a disaster as it it has 3 bills over a grand in 5 or 6 years. It cost £6000 and was driven away for scrap. But it never failed to finish a journey. Call it 10,000 for five years I think it was. Could have been 6 years I know it was 100,000 miles. So £0.10 a mile or £166 a month (or £140 if it was 6 years). Which is cheap considering how badly it went wrong. But you have to have courage to survive the large bills which is harder of you have less money, even though its cheaper
The other car was given to me by my mum. Would have cost £1000. Did 10 years with no major faults. Never let us down. So that was under £10 a month!
ooh - I've taken to buying quality clothes and shoes. £320 on some lovely Barkers kicked it off but I've had some Loakes since than too. Got a locvely tweed jacket from the charity shop, but it's older than me and will probalbby last longer than I do. Bought some Hebtroco kex recently...
Like a lot of prev responders, I spend more on groceries to get better quality / welfare (they tend to go hand in hand).
I also spend more on tools than many people would think sensible as I no longer use them for my living.
Maybe booze on a £ per unit basis. We dont drink much, but we are happy to pay more for locally brewed (nice) beer, decent gin and (for me) nice whisky.
Spend less:
Again, to repeat what others have said it's car(s), clothes and holidays. Some of all of those is down to trying to reduce our environmental impact but some is just we dont see the point!
Si
a) coke
b) hookers
a) Tools/Wood. I don't spend much money in general, so even my tools aren't at the custom japanese end of things, or even the axminster power tool end of things (especially as I don't have the room), but I do like a good excuse to get a decent tool. If I can build it, even better (like the CNC router, but it's still way more than anyone else I know would spend).
b) Clothes and cars. Keep my cars until they die (current car is 10 years old and still feels like my 'new car'). Clothes are limited to about £100 a year. I know some people who spend £2000. Yes, I'm scruffy, but I don't care.
I reckon i spend less than pretty much everybody on here on most things.
Cars, holidays, bikes, gas, elec, clothes, booze, phones, monthly subs, food, computers (tech), Deisel,
I seem to spend around £150 a week though to cover all the above.
Although currently i am topping up my ppp so thats my biggest monthly spend by far.
Don’t spend much on:
Clothes, or rather, I spend a lot on a few things that will last me ages.
Car, I don’t have one. MrsTH does, it’s a practical box with wheels and comfy enough chairs.
Booze. I cut right back a few years ago, have stopped completely now.
Spend extra on:
Food, both at home and going out.
Lego, joint hobby with MrsTH.
Visual entertainment, mrsTH has all the subs, I have Sky, we both have unlimited cinema passes.
Bikes. Present company accepted.
I spend a lot on food and not much on anything else other than bikes of course. Wouldn’t have a car if it was up to me and we’ve had a hole in the bathroom ceiling for a year. Priority is basically bikes, I mean the kids!
Bills. Neighbour (older couple, grown up daughter living half at home still) asked me how much we also spend on gas.
I said our bills (family of 5 Inc 3 young kids) had just gone up to c.104 per month. He said, "and how much for electricity?".
Nope, that's combined. He was very taken aback. His was 130 for gas alone. And around 210 for them both.
I seriously can't work out how he spend so much. I'm not willy waving here - I'd love ours to be much smaller/more efficient. Anyway, it amazed me.
I have clothes older than my marriage. It was our silver wedding last year.
Expensive for us is food (like others we spend more on meat and good food rather than cheap stuff), lego and decent outdoor gear.
Tend to not spend much on going out (in normal times), and we but good clothes and they tend to last a long time