Where does your income go?

[romeogolf]

mcg_ said:

wouldn't it be better to see you mates and have a few beers than smoke weed? Ive seen the results of people who bin off nights out and smoke weed instead.

£60 doesn't buy an awful lot of beer, let's be honest. And I've seen the results of people who get drunk.

[Testaburger]

romeogolf said:

£60 doesn't buy an awful lot of beer, let's be honest. And I've seen the results of people who get drunk.

I’ve also seen the results of people who’ve sacrificed their social lives to stay in and smoke weed.

That result manifests itself when sober, too.

[Mr Roper]

£150 covers every Friday and Sat night drinking with the lads per month? And you want to reduce that to £75?



You my friend have some serious restraint.

[Mr Roper]

I've had a quick tot up...

Lose the car and the bike...Buy a modest motor outright.

Put a couple hundred £ into a pension pot per month and a few hundred into savings. You'll feel better, you'll get used to it and it will make a big difference later on. Enjoy your social life.

Chances are you will earn more money and all the above will increase..Some areas more than others.


Keep enjoying yourself. Life is too short.

[gazza5]

had a look at mine.

So net pay £1850

£1000 gets transferred into joint account to pay house (my share of expenses already split 50%) etc, SO mortgage jointly is £775.

Mortgage £387.50
Co Tax £115
Life Ins £9
Isa - Child £10
Bed £28
Water £29
Gas / Elec £37
Virgin Media £36
TV Licence £6
Food £100

Kitty for holidays / after school club etc £242.5

So my income £850 to do what I want

car (lease Golf R) £257
Mobile £22
Isa £150
Pension £25
Cash Isa £25
Regular saver £250

Leaves £121 a month - out of this comes Car Ins, petrol etc. Average fuel cost according to my app is £80 a month. Cash Isa money gets used when needed, regular saver is with HSBC £250 a month thing.

about a three years ago I finally finished repaying approx £20k in debt - mainly done by buying clothes, vinyl, going out - I got my first flat at 20 and was pretty crap with money - I had £1k coming in and going out at least £1.3k in house costs and going to the pub etc. Few holidays moving debt around on 0% cards. Don't regret all of it - going to ibiza etc, but do regret going to the pub every friday, sat.

Annoyingly never spent the money on any cars I wanted. Past few years have been heavy in childcare costs - shes started school now so only after school club which feels cheap compared to nursery!

Still a lot of work for me to do - managed to build up savings of £8k in stocks and share isa, £3.5k cash. Thats taken me 3 years - so hoping to continue that for the next 20 years at least so I could retire!

[oyster]

This thread confirms one thing for sure - that a large section of PH'ers earnings are well into the top 1% or even top 0.5% of the UK.
So OP, don't worry too much.






(apart from paying 3 times as much as anyone else for your TV Licence)

[Craikeybaby]

Take home is £2,000

£1,000 to a joint account for mortgage, bills food etc. 1/4 of that goes into savings for holidays/doing up the house. The wife matches this.
£100 petrol
£25 mobile
£125 S&S ISA
£250 savings for new car
£250 into a slush fund
£250 for any other expenditure

[romeogolf]

Testaburger said:

romeogolf said:

£60 doesn't buy an awful lot of beer, let's be honest. And I've seen the results of people who get drunk.

I’ve also seen the results of people who’ve sacrificed their social lives to stay in and smoke weed.

That result manifests itself when sober, too.

The original post says nothing about being alone while smoking and there is no reason to assume such.

oyster said:

This thread confirms one thing for sure - that a large section of PH'ers earnings are well into the top 1% or even top 0.5% of the UK.
So OP, don't worry too much.

And they're interestingly the ones who seem to provide the scantest breakdown of expenditure. Although this is likely related to reaching a point where each penny no longer really counts!

[okgo]

romeogolf said:

And they're interestingly the ones who seem to provide the scantest breakdown of expenditure. Although this is likely related to reaching a point where each penny no longer really counts!

Not everyone is very worried about where it goes as long as they're enjoying themselves and they're not in the red. I know people who earn good 6 figure salaries that have spreadsheets of every pound, I tried doing it for a while with Monzo etc, but it just got boring, and as I wasn't particularly worried about spending money on eating out/drinking etc it seemed a bit silly to use a special card to confirm what I knew.

[The Selfish Gene]

don't worry about going into the red even.............it depends on how you're structured.

It's cheaper for me to borrow money than use my own - at all times I have a number of things leveraged............

the trick is to always have more assets than debts.......so should things go pear shaped you can walk away easily.

just looked up top 1% = 267k a year

top 0.1% is nearly 1 million a year

[okgo]

BerlinChris said:

You were wrong to assume I will be smoking alone. I smoke with friends and £60 stretches over a lot of sessions and provides way better value for money imo than booze. Plus I dont have the rotten hangover in the morning.

You may end up like most smokers I know - a bit like a walking zombie?

[joestifff]

fourcandles said:

This reminded me of a spreadsheet I put together - mostly for retirement planning.

The personal grooming is no longer an issue: I do my own hair these days with clippers. Savings can be made if you are willing to sacrifice.

Jesus wept, £500 a month .... on clothes!!!!!!

[pavarotti1980]

joestifff said:

Jesus wept, £500 a month .... on clothes!!!!!!

I thought the same. I dont think i spent that much in a year on clothes

[The Selfish Gene]

pavarotti1980 said:

I thought the same. I dont think i spent that much in a year on clothes

how is that even possible :-)

ha - then I just looked at my XLS - and drinks.............erm......................................

[Shnozz]

The Selfish Gene said:

how is that even possible :-)

ha - then I just looked at my XLS - and drinks.............erm......................................

The drinking/socialising bit is where most of my frivolity sits. Some of the budgets quoted here don't include any monies at all for going out?!

I don't really adhere to any budget month to month but did tot up my socialising spends over a two month period and was pretty horrified to find it was about £1200 a month. That said, I am out 5-6 nights a week so per night it wasn't too crazy. Still adds up.

Clothes wise I would say I am pretty average and average about £200 a month. In many years on PH, and having attended enough PH events to know, I do think the demographic here is one that often eschews fashion and the most expensive clothing is a pair of Puma Speedcats and a car logo T-Shirt with "Spank it" or suchlike splashed across it. A straw poll across a wider audience makes me think a few hundred quid a month is a broad average among non-PH friends.

[lukefreeman]

Me and mrs Freeman bought a house at 22, £40k combined, house 3x value, and we were broke! Lol, over paying!

7 years down the line, it gets easier. Trust me.

[red_slr]

pavarotti1980 said:

joestifff said:

Jesus wept, £500 a month .... on clothes!!!!!!

I thought the same. I dont think i spent that much in a year on clothes

It just scales though. His monthly budget is £10k so 5% of budget on clothes is probably not that bad.

[roadsmash]

I have to admit, this thread has gone far better than expected. Considerably modest despite the open ended nature of the topic.

Definitely anticipated far more willy bashing and measuring.

[Shnozz]

fourcandles said:

It's not a matter of spending £500 every month - but over a year it mounts up. A couple of good pairs of shoes, a decent suit, trousers, a few shirts, and golf and ski stuff. It does add up to a fair bit without you being very aware of it.

I tend to shop for clothes very infrequently. Mostly done online these days - so I can see my past orders and it has been a bit surprising. It appears I spent £300 last year on gloves and about the same again on underwear. And £1500 on ski jackets and pants (out of season, in the sales). And around £2000 on golf clothes and shoes. Probably won't need to do that for quite a while.

You raise another often forgotten about area of expense to be fair. Sports clothing and, mores the point, equipment. I don't play much sport any more but back in the day when I cycled, golfed etc, its easy to spend a not inconsiderable amount. Despite not having the talent to properly utilise it, how many amateurs do you see with all the latest professional equipment that can cost a fortune. And skiing, in any shape or form, is a pricey hobby in every sense.

My £200 estimate is over a year. I can buy nothing for 3 or so months but then have a splurge. Last week I ordered 2 new pairs of jeans, 2 blazers, 4 causal shirts and the 5 for £120 TM Lewin office shirts. Total spend was about £600 but then I haven't bought any clothing that I can remember for the last 2 months or so and so it averages out. I probably spend less these days as I am no longer office based so the suit spend has reduced vastly. Previously it would be 3 sets of clothes a day; suit/shirt daytime, gym wear and then casual wear. You could then split the casual wear into slouchy comforts and then social attire so 4 distinct "sets" of clothing. That said, I have a friend who will happily spend £1500 on a leather jacket and has 4 - 5 of them. I could simply never drop that much money on a singular item, but we all have different priorities. In the same vein, he would never spend big money on a car.

[romeogolf]

okgo said:

BerlinChris said:

You were wrong to assume I will be smoking alone. I smoke with friends and £60 stretches over a lot of sessions and provides way better value for money imo than booze. Plus I dont have the rotten hangover in the morning.

You may end up like most smokers I know - a bit like a walking zombie?

Most people are a bit like a walking zombie after a night in the pub, too.