Should I sell or can I budget?

I would cut down on the christmas and birthday presents.

You must be doing a huge mileage in the car too. Is it all necessary?

"After monthly direct debits, I have £1781 left "


Oh my GOD we live on the coast and are both on national minimum wage cos the only thing available is menial and / or seasonal. We could absolutely live like K I N G S on that. Haven't had a holiday in 12 years, rob peter to pay paul and I am going for interview for SECOND job on Wed.

With that sort of income it would be like a lottery win ......... sigh


"Please be as blunt as you like - I'm so stressed I've lost all sense of perspective"

Try living on £5.05 an hour!!!!! Sorry no sympathy here mate :-) :-) :-)

careless wrote:

Vindalooloo - I KNOW!!! It's crazy. I'm really not asking for sympathy. I think we SHOULD be able to live like kings on it. This is why I don't get why we're not and so need advice.

Alleycat - the £250 is what we want to put away because we haven't had a holiday for years. I priced a week in Greece and it eats most of that annual budget up in one go as we are 5 and have to go in school holidays. Yes the Christmas thing will need to be reduced. We have put that down to £100.

I will look for the DFW thread too.
We would look to downsize rather than rent as our mortgage costs (look away now, Vindalooloo!!!)£1350 a month.

I went to Greece last year, 2 adults + 1 chld. We got a bargain deal for about £200ish. The whole thing cost little more than £1000 for a week, including food, drinks, etc. while we were there.

£3k is a bit much for Greece really. You can always miss part of school - my parents always took me on holiday in September, and it didn't do me any harm, or book well in advance.

Even though I have quite a bit of cash I'd be really shocked to spend that much.... Brochure price no thanks. Best find some cheap flights and hotels, I reckon you could do it for a *lot* less.

£1800 is a lot to be spending on Christmas presents too.... I'm sure you could spend 1/3 of that quite happily.

Don't really see the problem: pick an area, cut down.

I probably spend more than that on food, but I spend less than half of my monthly income every month, but if I was short of cash, it's not hard, I'd stop buying champagne and trappist ales, stick to cheap bottled lager, stop buying fine sirloin steaks and duck breasts, and buy cheaper stuff: mince, whole chickens (much cheaper than breasts, and you can cut the breasts off and use the bones for stock).

Sounds like you're living beyond your means. You need to cut your cloth to suit.

I quite like Microsoft Money, I used to enter all my purchases in there and get a monthly report on what I'd spent my cash on, and whether I'd spent more or less than my income in any given month.

FWIW, I spent £850 in rent and used to spend about another £850 on top of that, with one child, and probably one exotic long-haul holiday every 18 months and a short break to Europe as well. This was living a fairly reasonable middle class lifestyle at the time, but I was very strict - no, we weren't going to spend £10 on an M&S ready meal or buy a fancy dinner service when we could get one for a few pounds from Ikea.

Now I earn a lot more, but I still resent blowing my money, and there's no way I'm spending £60 on a FCUK t-shirt or the like, and my shoes are always the half-price ones in the sale, and while we just bought a nice Royal Doulton china set, I hadn't bought it previously despite having admired it, because I thought £140 for 4 people was too much, but at half price I snapped it up. My wife still only shops at H&M or Debenhams on half-price.

I hope you are setting something aside for tomorrow.

I can't believe you think you need to downsize when you are spending £2k on christmas, and have what is frankly a small mortgage relative to your income. The house is paying off an asset, the rest of the money is going on useless stuff that will be gone tomorrow (i.e. Christmas presents, etc.).

careless wrote:

Whambamboo - I completely agree with you about taking the children out of school during term time. Unfortunately, I'm a teacher so they'd have to go without me:rotfl:

I will do what I can about that brochure price, though. The £3,000 yearly budget is supposed to include a short break too. We've never taken the children to London and we know they'd love to do the museums.

We've taken the Christmas budget down and intend to tell all the many rellies that they're having token gifts this year. We're really lucky that our kids aren't the 'see it-want it' sort but you really can't get much for £200 apiece when they're past the kiddy toy stage. That's £600 before we start on anything else. They are given a tiny fraction of the stuff their friends have, they never moan and they are expected to do real jobs for their pocket money so Christmas is their 'stock up' time.

I have used Microsoft Money since 1998 and was basing my calculations on a big reduction in what we have been spending in the past. The Christmas total (now £1200) includes ALL spending on Christmas, down to the last children's class party chocolate Swiss roll.

We buy very little meat (1 or 2 meals a week - often none) as we only eat free range but I think the food bill is the obvious target for cutting down. We don't drink but I have a weakness for Bertorelli pasta sauces and decent Parmesan!! That's the nearest I ever get to a ready meal as I think they're tasteless (BTW my definition of being seriously wealthy is someone who does the weekly food shop in M&S!)

Clothes etc - I tend to buy something and wear it till it falls off my body!

Do you really think the mortgage is small? Sometimes it feels like an albatross. I do agree that I'd rather not be spending so much on Christmas but the holidays are worth it because of the new experiences they give us and the children. I don't think anyone lies on their deathbed and wishes they'd lived in a nice house. But not to see the world - that would be a real regret as we are only here the once.

Thank you for the time and thought you put in to your post. It's great to have a fresh perspective.:T

I still don't think £200 is a small amount of money for one child. WHat are you buying with that? Are your children at private school? If not I'm surprised that with the amount you're spending they aren't keeping up. I guess you don't need to cut down that much, but I think you can get some nice stuff for £100/each.

Yes the mortgage is small, it's only about 1/3 of your net pay I believe? That's quite low these days. I spent about half my net pay on rent for quite a few years.

I'm pretty good at finding cheap holidays, spend the time to find the cheap flights, e.g, you can get Easy Jet to Marrakech for only a few pounds, or five people to Bangkok would be about £2k, and once you get there a nice hotel is £30/night, so for about £3,000 all-in for something a lot more exciting than Greece could be done I think.