How much do you have left a month?

[ArfurW8]

Missis and I put in equal amounts to a joint account that pays mortgage and bills. Most months the bills come to around £650, and that includes £200 for the cleaner.

Do you pay a cleaner £200 a month?
£450 for the rest of your bills is not very much.

 

[arkan]

Before i quit my job i was left after rent/bills etc etc with about £500 to spend.
However my rent is VERY cheap for the area i live in; £980 split between two other people and our landlord pays for the leccy bill (i dont know why it is cheap as it is because its a nice place right in the middle of town). If i lived basically anywhere else i wouldnt possibly be able to live as comfortable as i do/did. I wasnt exactly getting paid loads either.
I dont really go out as much as i used to. I rarely drink, ive given up cigarettes, rarely smoke weed much anymore so i could just save. Obviously need to find a new job though to keep my bank balance looking okay.

I am not deluded enough to think i will be able to afford my own place. I know im never going to be earning a large wedge, but aslong as i am happy im fine.
Just wish the g/f who still lives with her parents would see it the same way. Shes refusing to move in with me when my tenancy ends because she wants to save up to buy a place. She only earns £17,000 a year and has her eyes set on some cutesy cottage like you find in a naff hollywood film. She'll be lucky to afford a friggin shed in Surrey even if she stay at home for the next 10 years.

 

[Grombleton]

At the moment, very little.

My part-time job and Mrs Grombleton's job covers the mortgage/tax/bills etc. Anything else i managed to get in through my (albeit fledgling) business is a bonus. I'm hoping to turn it around but it means things are tight at the moment. We do enough to cover the bills etc (just) but we don't have any spare income for the time being.

Hoping it changes soon, it's a stress i'm not happy with.

 

[Butch Willykins]

I also am saving for a deposit, the only way I've been able to make any headway is by giving myself a very strict budget and sticking to it. On pay day I pay landlords mortgage (sorry......I mean rent) and all other bills, I then give myself £100 a week to live on (and thats really only for food and the odd night out) and absolutely every other penny I earn goes into my savings.

It can be tough, and sometimes it feels more like an existance than a life, but once your savings start to grow it gets strangely addictive. By living like a monk I'm putting over £1,000 a month into savings so hopefully within another 24-36 months I should be in a strong postion to buy. It sounds like a long time but it will pass soon enough.

My only other option was to bump my parents off to inherit their place.

 

[Max Paper]

I don't have any left as it stands but I'm in a similar position to you, ie. I want to buy a house but don't have any deposit unless I save.

Me and the missus could afford to buy a house but we don't have the capital up front. We rent a flat, so our bills are the same as a home owner as in rent, electric, water, gas, council tax, sky/broadband, the car running costs and various insurances etc. our monthly outgoings average about £1400.

I'm now 35 and have resigned myself to never buying my own house now as much as I would love to. And now We have a baby on the way due in July so we will have even less cash available. But we have tried to enjoy life as much as we can by going to the pub midweek to break the monotony of the week up. Having a take away at the weekend, buying a new pair of shoes or a new shirt for me every 3 months or whatever.

But on the other hand I have no savings to speak of, I've only just started putting into a private pension this month now my work has started the government compulsory pension plan early.

The trouble is that I desperately want a stable environment to bring up my baby, and that to me, means having my own house to provide said stability. Renting is a horrible thing to do, I realise mortgages are variable and can rise with interest rates etc so it can become too much. But the longer you have a mortgage, eventually it will get cheaper the older you get if you don't remortgage. Rents on the other hand are always going to increase. Now I've started a pension late I'm going to have to figure out how I can pay my rent when I'm 75 (if I live that long) on a small pension and the state pension (if that will even exist in 35 years).

It's really hard to deal with for me personally knowing I probably won't own my own place. I'm quite an intelligent chap who can normally figure out how to deal with a situation one way or another with a decent attainable answer but this question has me stumped and is depressing now being able to figure it out.

Between us, after bills, we have about £400 to play with so to speak, so if we just go to work, come home, eat and then go to bed, stay in on weekends and repeat that cycle we could save £4800 per year. So 3-4 years of being hermits and not seeing friends or socialising or going out. (That includes giving up my season ticket) I haven't looked recently at deposits but unfortunately neither of our credit ratings are particularly good so we could need circa 20k to even be considered and then it would have to be a bad credit mortgage with higher interest rates and a higher deposit , even then it's no guarantee of acceptance.

Or we could live up north where we could afford a house, but I can't earn the same money in the same engineering sector as I can down here and that would mean a complete move away from all family and friends.

I realise this has been a bit of a thread hijack but it's nice to know that at least other people are or could be in the same boat.

Buddy I am in exactly the same boat as you. I too am 35 and have accepted it's just never going to happen for me. Married, 3 kids, just enough left over to get through the month if we stay in all week and don't have an annual holiday. Saving? Forget it. If I saved £100pm I might have a chance if a deposit by the time I'm dead. Moved from Brighton to Shoreham, then to Lancing and now to Worthing as rental prices are sky high. It can be pretty depressing.

 

[topbanana36]

I had 24 quid left spare, hence the fact I could hardly go to watch the Albion, I have been fortunate in the last 3 years and have been able to save about 1000 a month. I am coming back next month, and expect to be in the same position as when I left SKINT. I don't now how people afford to go to football every week and I will be earning 30k.

 

[Albion_Dave]

The way my Mrs spends. Not a lot!!!

 

[dougdeep]

" Another day older and deeper in debt!"

 

[Bozza]

Moving from Somerset back to Sussex has meant three things...

- Current rent is double our old mortgage
- Mrs Bozza is no longer working
- Commuting expenses for me

...all of which means my household is now running at quite a significant deficit every month.

The best thing I did for my own personal money management was smoothing out those bumps of expenditure that can happen such as car repairs and Christmas. I calculated how much those things cost over a year, divided by 12 and, essentially, direct debit that money to another account on every pay day. That means I never have a "I could have done without the car needing new tyres this month" moments because I'm regularly putting money away for such eventualities.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Around £3k to live off after all the direct debits

Just think, it would be £3004 if you did not have to pay for the Albion travel each month.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I had 24 quid left spare, hence the fact I could hardly go to watch the Albion, I have been fortunate in the last 3 years and have been able to save about 1000 a month. I am coming back next month, and expect to be in the same position as when I left SKINT. I don't now how people afford to go to football every week and I will be earning 30k.

Why are you going back to the UK?

 

[Beach Hut]

Just think, it would be £3004 if you did not have to pay for the Albion travel each month.

Gosh, how funny you are and wrong

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Gosh, how funny you are and wrong

Come on, cheer up Mr Grumpo.

 

[Beach Hut]

Come on, cheer up Mr Grumpo.

Not really Grumpo just getting a tad scary really that people cannot move on.

 

[OzMike]

Even though I have no mortgage now, what with the cost of living here it's just as well, as I still have very little left and that usually goes on taxman on July 1st every year!

 

[nwgull]

Do you pay a cleaner £200 a month?
£450 for the rest of your bills is not very much.

Yes.

£450 seems to cover it in a normal month.

 

[OzMike]

Missis and I put in equal amounts to a joint account that pays mortgage and bills. Most months the bills come to around £650, and that includes £200 for the cleaner.

200 quid to a cleaner, if almost a third of my monthly out goings were for this, I think I would do it myself.

 

[topbanana36]

Why are you going back to the UK?

Family little baby is sick.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Family little baby is sick.

I'm sorry to hear this. I hope the little 'un gets well.

 

[nwgull]

200 quid to a cleaner, if almost a third of my monthly out goings were for this, I think I would do it myself.

It isn't a third of my monthly outgoings though.