I know it isn’t ‘spending’ but I honestly think we save far more than most of our peers. Mostly through ability (generational wealth means we were able to buy a house and acquire more asset that way so now we have the ability to save more) but also mindset of paying off our home asap and building up a retirement fund. I’ve had some scary conversations with 35 year olds who are renting and have no savings or pension outside of their work schemes and just haven’t thought about it.
Ditto.
Fyi
£26 pcm for electric, doesn't vary by much summer to winter.
Gas £6 pcm summer, £36 pcm winter as gas central heatimg.
Do you lot all run 50watt halogen downlights?
a) Tea - you get what you pat for.
b) Cars - 12yo CRV is paid for, reliable, owes me nothing. 16yo Cooper S replaced my Twingo 133 (RIP) but the kids own it anyway 🙁
We spend less on cars I guess. While definitely not at the Bangernomics end of the scale we seem to be fairly unique around here in not having two leased premium cars sitting on the driveway.
Looking at some of the driveways people must be spending £800-1000 a month on cars!
Renting is a pain as the bulk of the income goes there ...
Looking at some of the driveways people must be spending £800-1000 a month on cars!
This always blows my mind as well. They must be earning bucketloads to be saving for the future and comfortably paying for those cars.
I’ve had some scary conversations with 35 year olds who are renting and have no savings or pension outside of their work schemes and just haven’t thought about it.
Ah got it. Although to be fair I was late to that game and didn't really get going until I changed careers in my very late twenties so doing my best to make up for lost time now.
Our food bill would be cheap (veggie, buy booze separately) except my wife feels the need to try every new vegan product she sees. So many tiny expensive blocks of artisan almond "cheese" and the like that just aren't very good.
Nursery bill shut off most frivolous spending, it was OK with one in (although even that was more than the mortgage and household bills together) but the year where both were in full time nursery was brutal. Youngest now in school nursery and 30 hours funded, it's nice to be saving a decent amount each month again. I dread to think how nice a car I could have bought instead.
Haven't spent much on our house since buying 6 years ago (for the reasons above) but could do with it now.
Cars? We have a 15 year old petrol MPV, but most miles are on an electric car leased for just over £200pm (and costs next to nothing to fuel). Both are good solutions for their purposes IMO.
LOL ... in response to this thread I just went and splashed out on some new jeans as the pairs I have are mostly decades old ..
Gap Straight Jeans with GapFlex
MEDIUM INDIGO 28W 30L £21.99 1 £21.99 Mail only
Gap Straight Jeans with GapFlex
MEDIUM INDIGO 28W 30L £21.99 1 £21.99 Mail only
Gap Standard Jeans With Washwell
resin rinse 30W 32L £14.99 1 £14.99 Mail only
Thats me sorted for the next decade or so....
On the other hand just spent £80 on a new RCT charger 2 damper for no definable reason except perhaps I can stick it in whilst I rebuild the charger.
Can't think of anything obvious that we spend alot on. Maybe some nice meat occasionally.
Definitely spend less on haircuts. I do my own and my wife has managed to get in with someone at a local salon who is training so it's free (just pay for the colours). She was in there the other day and someone paid £91 for a cut and colour!
Somehow we still have no money left at the end of the month though. I blame it on the three children who never stop eating. And also the recent house move so little DIY jobs and materials seem to add up pretty quickly.
Looking at some of the driveways people must be spending £800-1000 a month on cars!
If I had paid my mortgage properly I wouldn't have one by now so could just spend that on a car and be no worse off than I am with mortgage. Maybe they are in that situation?
Interesting thread, everyone's hobbies and priorities vary massively. If it makes you happy then no one can judge
The other thing is earning levels vary significantly, so something that seems reasonable to one person might seem extravagant to another
My Wife says I'm tight, I'd argue I'd be less tight if we ever had any money... but still.
a) Subscription services, yeah it's the future, everything is heading towards "... as a service" but they have a way of creeping in and making themselves feel at home, not to mention going up in price with little fanfare. We've got Virgin, which has just doubled in price for various 'reasons' to £65 a month, add in Netflix £15, NowTV because well, Virgin doesn't do multi-room, £10, HD upgrade for it £3, Hulu so the eldest can keep up with the Kardashians £4, Disney+ £8 and Xbox gamepass £12 so that's £113 a month to keep the TV pumping out endless mindless repeats of US shows.
Add into the mix His & Hers Online PT memberships £80, Daughters Gymnastics club £60 and Swimming club £25, Son's Tutor because he doesn't like doing homework £100 and that's 265 reasons to wonder if we should actually have any time for watching TV.
b) Holidays, I do get it, there's nothing like the thought of a week or two in some sunny place of your choosing to get you through a wet February morning, but I can't help but think a lot of people lose their dam minds over them, and worse still, they pick really shit ones. £3k for a family of 4 to spend a week in a grubby hotel in Spain - why? £8k to visit Micky in Florida - "Florida" is basically a by word for violent crime and general craziness or worst of the worst, £5k to spend a week on a floating hotel / petri dish so you can see the world, but only from a safe distance amongst PLU, they couldn't pay me enough. I hear people (relatives mostly) bemoaning this country or that, mostly based on how willing the local population were to make the environment as close to a High Street in a rough UK town, only with Sun and Sand as possible. They don't want to learn anything or experience anything new, they just want to lay on their arse all day in the sun. £3k+ to better your chances of a sunny sad, it's tragic really.
LOL … in response to this thread I just went and splashed out on some new jeans as the pairs I have are mostly decades old ..
Gap Straight Jeans with GapFlex
MEDIUM INDIGO 28W 30L £21.99 1 £21.99 Mail only
Gap Straight Jeans with GapFlex
MEDIUM INDIGO 28W 30L £21.99 1 £21.99 Mail only
Gap Standard Jeans With Washwell
resin rinse 30W 32L £14.99 1 £14.99 Mail onlyThats me sorted for the next decade or so….
On the other hand just spent £80 on a new RCT charger 2 damper for no definable reason except perhaps I can stick it in whilst I rebuild the charger.
I give it a week before you're cursing "**** off Gap" I've never known any company who spams quite so much, 2, even 3 mails a day sometimes. Still, they will stop if you ask them, eventually.
Oh, things I spend less on:
Cars (pointless living in London; hire/use cabs if no other alternative is available)
Mortgage (own home outright, only insurance costs)
Mobile 'phone contracts (£40 per month just to have the latest flash gadget?)
Subscription services (Just Netflix at the moment, and standard TV licence fee, fairly cheap broadband and no addo on sports/film packages or games console stuff).
The top two are probably the biggest costs on average that most people in the UK pay for on a monthly/regular basis. Not having such expenses, and 'saving' money on the last two, means a hell of a lot more disposable income than otherwise. I can understand the need for a mortgage, and a car if you really need one (I wonder how many people genuinely do), but I'm constantly hearing other people moaning about their 'phone etc subscriptions, and then about not having enough money for stuff...
I once knew a bloke who, for over 30-40 years, had enjoyed free electricity via a spliced cable from the mains supply, which somehow went underneath his house. It was only discovered when he died. Know of other folk who've run cables off lampposts etc, but 30-40 years of free electricity? Get in mate. 😀
This is a good and thought provoking thread (like the recent one about pensions/retirement)
The comments around holidays are interesting to me -
We've never done packages and have always put something together ourselves.
We like to get out and explore/live like the locals rather than sit on a beach/around a pool day after day.
The amount people pay for a 2 week break in a faceless Greek/Spanish hotel complex astounds me - you can do it so much cheaper if you spend a bit of time on-line and put it together yourself.
Yes, it won't be fully catered/all inclusive but i've had a lifetime of mediocre hotel food whilst traveling for work.
More than most:
* Cars. I like cars. I'm not ashamed of that. So I buy/rent nice new ones.
Less than most:
* Hair cuts. I bought a set of Wahl clippers 25 years ago, set them to 0, and never looked back.
Off the back of this thread we cancelled our Netflix subscription this morning 🙂
P-Jay
I give it a week before you’re cursing “**** off Gap” I’ve never known any company who spams quite so much, 2, even 3 mails a day sometimes. Still, they will stop if you ask them, eventually.
Yeah I actually tried guest checkout... and unclicked the box but I'm fully expecting my spam to fill up. Just checked and not found yet nestled between
Got to be forward: I saw ur profile picture and I reckon u look hella charming. It's worth a shot – wanna get down with me? U can check out my pics by clicking my profile...
and
You can spank me if I get too naughty!
My Wife says I’m tight, I’d argue I’d be less tight if we ever had any money… but still.
a) Subscription services, yeah it’s the future, everything is heading towards “… as a service” but they have a way of creeping in and making themselves feel at home, not to mention going up in price with little fanfare.
Not to mention the stealth "free" services. Had to intervene of the OH's fitbit linked premium whatever for over £100 a yr... not to mention the other "free" stuff I've been invited to as part of a product purchase. All on the "we'll only start charging if you forget to cancel in x months...
Utilities: thousands per year rather than hundreds. Seven bedroom Victorian place with original features we don't want to obliterate under Kingspan. Also a disabled adult daughter at home 24/7 so heated more often as well as more volume.
Food: all our meat/fish/eggs/most veg comes from the local market, quality stuff, costs about double supermarket prices. Don't do organic though.
Holidays, I wish, desperate to get away right now, but actually I'm as happy in a Youth Hostel as a five star, though if I'm somewhere hot I need somewhere to swim.
Cars, an S-Max and an MX5, what more could I want, though this week have been eyeing campers, had them before the kids, but don't think I want to pay Covid tax for one, so may wait another year.
Bikes, an original Fargo, a 2004 5-Spot, a £100 Ribble roadie from the classifieds and a Sturmey geared town bike covers all the boxes I need, though I'm curious about what a light gravelly thing might do for me, I know I don't ride any of them enough to justify spending loads on a single bike.
Eating out and nice wine, yes please, after lockdown. Sat outside at Bella Italia for my son's birthday last week in Leeds and it was grim. Roll on reopening, three places booked.
Clothes, starting to get into them a bit again after decades of dad fleeces, and a quick count revealed 62 pairs of shoes lurking about, so maybe a slight problem there.
Pension/ savings.
At present me and t' missus are putting away about a bike a month into our pension pot.
I just hope we get to use it....
Everything. I look around and I can't understand how people spend so much money on loads of things.
Massive houses with a equally massive mortgage payments, fancy cars, hugely expensive bikes, expensive holidays, expensive meals out, horses, fancy clothes and pretty much everything else.
You'd think I'd have loads of left over money with my aversion to all the stuff above but I don't. Either I don't earn as much as others or somebody drains my bank account when I'm asleep?
We seem to spend a lot of food, two of us + 4 cats and a dozen Hedgehogs, meals mainly cooked from scratch 5 days a week and WE is normally something from M&S. £800/month every month, does always seem a lot when I see the CC each month. HHs eating a few Kg of food every week at the moment - probably £10 a week on them and £20 a week on the cats at a guess.
a) School fees
b) Pension - I really should save more, but like nice cars, (sometimes on PCP / lease deals), holidays, clothes, designer furniture and happy meat.
1) Electricity for heating the house. But... Spring is coming and that will stop until we get to winter again. Currently the only draw other than the two radiators we have is a fridge, a freezer and the UPS that powers the router. Solar is coming too and that should help solve that problem.
2) Falling out of planes. It's expensive but about our only hobby, so more than most people, but i would argue a lot less than other jumpers. GF is injured this year, so no training for her and COVID has whacked the indoor season for the last year, so i guess we saved money(???!).
Crisps. Too much on Crisps.
Partner and I are lucky, we both have pretty well paid jobs and no kids at home. We have a regular terraced house in Manchester, I think our household running costs are about average. We have one car (partner likes to walk to work, I commute by bike) neither of us have outlandish tastes in anything really, we're neither of us keen on shopping as a hobby, but if we need/want something we'll go and buy it. we have a Virgin telly/broadband package and some subs for online stuff like Spotify and Netflix. We both book worms so there seems to be a regular amazon delivery coming to the door (Although she's researching for her next book currently so lots are for work)
so, a) eating out, nice hotel-breaks, opera/theatre/films...so going out, I guess.
b) never really thought about it, but a friend of ours has clothes stuffed into wardrobes in every room of her house, some that's she's never worn, and never will, as she has a regular clear out every year or so. So that, and I don't think she's particularly uncommon
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.
£26 pcm for electric, doesn’t vary by much summer to winter.
Gas £6 pcm summer, £36 pcm winter as gas central heatimg.
I'm WTF with both of those. Gas consumption completely depends on how large, and how well insulated, your home is. Oh, and how many of you there are. Our gas consumption through summer months for two of us (plus guests and visitors) looks like about £12 a month so still twice StM but we still manage over £50 a month through the coldest three months (and we have near passive house levels of insulation).
Electricity really doesn't change much though - when I worked it out the largest single element for most people is fridges and freezers - they can cost some 100's a year to run by themselves but we noticed ours was pretty much unchanged whether we were in a small flat or a large house. It's currently £55 a month. We've got a large fridge/freezer but all our appliances are energy efficient. We both work from home (K has 6 fluorescent tubes running all day every day) so there are some background costs but that probably only runs up £5 a month for extra lighting at the highest estimate. What DONT you have to get it to £26? (most of that must be standing charge?!_
And likewise, unless you have electric heating how the hell do you run up £238 a month in electricity unless you're growing dope under lights or mining bitcoin....
Everything in the house is electric - heating, lighting, cooking, etc. We have ground source heating in the main house ( 3 bed croft cottage) and air source in the flat. All fully insulated, new doors and windows 12 years ago.
Everything in the house is electric – heating, lighting, cooking, etc. We have ground source heating in the main house ( 3 bed croft cottage) and air source in the flat. All fully insulated, new doors and windows 12 years ago.
Ok - so you're comparing your electric to everyone else total energy. I'm guessing a croft cottage still has uninsulated walls and probably isn't especially airtight and is probably in a pretty cold and exposed location so it's not *so* bad.
I once knew a bloke who, for over 30-40 years, had enjoyed free electricity via a spliced cable from the mains supply, which somehow went underneath his house. It was only discovered when he died. Know of other folk who’ve run cables off lampposts etc, but 30-40 years of free electricity? Get in mate. 😀
How awesome. Stealing stuff so everyone else has to pay more. Get in mate.🙄
What dont i have to keep my electric so low?
Hot tub, swimming pool, lights that illuminate trees, ligjts that illumimate brick walls, 9 ligjts in the lounge when 2 suffice. TV on standby 18hrs a day then on for 6hrs ( it is a 50" hd tho). Digi box on quick start for a few hrs a day only.
Washing machine and dishwashers fed direct fron combi boiler hot feeds only.
Dogs. We have two standard poodles. In addition to the food and vet bills every dog gets they get groomed at £60 a time. One gets done every 5 weeks, the other every 7.5 weeks. Around £1000 a year to the groomer.
Add the vet and food bills and we must be around £2k a year on dogs.
Mrs IRC has an irrational impulse for a 3rd dog. Not happening. And when our elderly cat goes he won't be replaced either.
A) pension so I can stop having to work
B) housing costs - live somewhere relatively cheap
Hot tub, swimming pool, lights that illuminate trees, ligjts that illumimate brick walls, 9 ligjts in the lounge when 2 suffice. TV on standby 18hrs a day then on for 6hrs ( it is a 50″ hd tho).
None of that. Lighting make little difference if its LEDs. Standby on TV is less than 1 watt. I guess it does add up, 50x 1 watt devices on constantly would cost abotu £5 a month, but it's still a long way short of the difference between your bills and mine.
Washing machine and dishwashers fed direct fron combi boiler hot feeds only.
that might help a bit, though we only do about 2 loads a week, at 30 or 40C. I looked into hot feed but few machines are built for it now and since machines now use so little water unless your machine is very close to the boiler the hot water that sits and cools in the pipe to the machine offsets the saving of heating the water by gas rather than electric.
More:
- Eating out (well when we could in the good old days, pre-covid, pre-anxious dog)
- BBQ, meat, acceccories and decent UK sourced charcoal
- Coffee, hand grinder, manual press and single origin bean habit (I drink 2 at home every day though cos, WFH)
- Hifi/TV Sound, decent 5.1 system, currently a 3.1 system as the dog ate the cable for the rears
- Dog, rescue, got sick, ate all the insurance within her first 3 months with us, so it's all on me now
- Petrol, I still buy the 99rin stuff even though it probably makes bugger all difference
Less:
- Maintenance/adaptation of the house, bathroom last year was the first real money spent on the place in 12 years, no new kitchens, carpets or extensions for us (seems to be all a lot of my friends do)
- Pensions, both my wife and I should be loading these heavily at this point in our lives, I stand by the 'die before I can claim one' plan at this point, I realise this is not ideal
I probably spend more than is sensible on most items, but only buy items I really need so the total cost is lower if that makes sense.
Nice tools, kitchen things, that sort of thing. If I need a new tool for example I see which is the best, then where that can be had cheapest and get it. £100 for some workshop Allen keys, £70 chain tool, probably excisssive but they are really nice and should last for years. Oh, and far too much on maps, I have a lot!
.
My van is paid for, I spend bugger all on clothes and have no subscriptions to anything. I live pretty well, have my own (mortgaged) house and can treat myself to nice things while earning about 20% less than the average wage. Very few fripperies but what I do buy is good stuff.
Cottage totally renovated 12 yrs ago. Inside ripped out back to stone walls and dry lined and insulated. New double glazed windows and doors. Pretty draught free. Flat is new timber frame building. 4 kW PV panels.
Rural location meant alternative heating was LPG or oil which were looking expensive cf electricity.
I forgot vet Bills, one of our cats cost £4k a couple of years ago with an Intussusception.
This thread is not helpful for me.
My thoughts this morning went: I don't spend much on cars, so actually I will just blast £80 on a new saddle I like the look of on the off chance it's better than my current model.
Rear shocks... i'm terrified to add up where i am with these in the last 12 months !
a) Tools
b) Servicing/maintanance/contractors
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
~2Kg free range organic chicken** at Aldi doesn't cost that. I can get a whole Sunday lunch for five incl. a half decent bottle of wine for £16.
** No idea whether these terms are 'subjective' and M+S free range organic is somehow 'happier and more organiccy' than Aldi.
Lurpak.
**** knows where it goes!