How much do you live on per year?

alec_eiffel

Winged_one wrote: »

I've probably jsut kicked myself out of the OS club really, haven't I ??!!

Not at all, you've just described a frugal lifestyle!

weezl74

£990 a month including normal monthly mortgage payments, all other income at the moment overpays mortgage.

2 adults, one 18 month old and one 6 month old. £11880 per year.

HTH xx

edit, sorry just spotted people are excluding council tax and mortgage, £695.55 for us minus those 2 things, £8340 per annum.

[Deleted User]

Around £1500 per year for food and another £2000 for utilities I have no mortgage which is good and around £900 for council tax so about £4.400 per annum .But I am a very good manager and save seperately for holidays Probably about £700 for petrol so all told just over £5k.which is just as well as I am a pensioner.
I have a motability car so I have no tax or insurance to pay as my higher allowance pays for it I think I manage quite well and by careful budgetting I have three weeks holiday a year ,two with my family and one with my oldest friend.I do save for a rainy day and still manage to go out and about fairly regularly .I don't smoke and never go to a pub I do like the odd g&t but only if I have visitors and on special occassions.I think that I spend a bit on books and on my uni course and my hobbies, but I like to keep occupied and busy

Primrose

Obviously our income dropped when we retired and stopped working, but long before then we'd had deliberately chosen to live a frugal lifestyle which had encompassed:
- growing our own fruit & vegetables, and freezing & processing the surplus for winter months,
- cooking meals from scratch rather than buying expensive ready cooked meals
- rarely eating out or having takeways
- self catering holidays in this country rather than expensive holidays abroad
- buying many of our clothes from charity shops in good areas where lots of bargains are available
- turning down the thermostat in winter and putting on extra layers of clothing
- paying off credit cards every month & never buying stuff unless we could afford to pay cash.

We could economise more if we had to. We buy wine now more regularly than making our own because of the time it takes and enjoy the luxury of a daily newspaper. Maybe these are economies we may yet have to make if times get tougher, but at least we know how to live contentedly without spending lots of money.

Hermia

artichoke wrote: »

I used to work in London earning £38 K and spent most of it on "consumables", going out, cinema, eating out, travel, foreign holidays, etc i would NOT go back to that way of life for anything.

That's interesting as I have found the opposite. I used to live in London, now live in the country, but am intending to go back to London asap. Apart from rent I found life so much cheaper in London. Firstly you can walk almost everywhere whereas I can't get anywhere without a car where I live now. I am so limited with where I can buy food here, whereas in London there are so many cheap options (ethnic stores, markets etc). And of course there is soooo much free/cheap entertainment in London. Where I live now you even have to drive to find somewhere to go for a walk as so much of the land is private.

It just shows how you really cannot compare lifestyles because every area and person is different.

artichoke

Hermia wrote: »

That's interesting as I have found the opposite. I used to live in London, now live in the country, but am intending to go back to London asap. Apart from rent I found life so much cheaper in London. Firstly you can walk almost everywhere whereas I can't get anywhere without a car where I live now. I am so limited with where I can buy food here, whereas in London there are so many cheap options (ethnic stores, markets etc). And of course there is soooo much free/cheap entertainment in London. Where I live now you even have to drive to find somewhere to go for a walk as so much of the land is private.

It just shows how you really cannot compare lifestyles because every area and person is different.

Hi

In London i walked locally but had to buy an expensive 1-6 tube/ bus zone card to get to work. Now in a rural area i still walk locally, and dont go many other places! I tend to live within the resources of my village (which has no shop at all) and the nearest market town which is 2 miles walk down hill (and i get the bus back up the hill). I just dont go shopping anymore as there are no shops!

I am citied out and have been living in the countryside for over 10 years with no desire to even go into big towns. I buy food staples - flour, cereals, pulses online from one of the big supermarkets and have access to free local veg and meat. I do miss having asian supermarkets to browse around but stock up on my once a year trip to london to see relations.

As i have 2 small kids we dont have time for entertainment for the adults anymore, our spare time is spent with the kids on bike rides, or swimming, and in the evening at weekends we invite friends round for meals etc. We did go to see Toy Story 3 on Tuesday using the 40% voucher from MSE:j It was a rare trip into our nearest city and the first time the kids had ever been to the cinema:D and my first cinema visit in over 12 years. We have told the kids they can go to the cinema again next year maybe.

We live surrounded by farmland and behind that the moors with hundreds of footpaths, the kids play in the field behind our garden building dams in the stream, building dens and generally getting muddy - but all of which is free entertainment for them.

When i was in the city i was single and did love it at the time but now with young children and a OH who works from home (when work was coming in!) we are quite happy with our rural life.

art

tanith

I am retired now with OH still working , we spend about £1000 per month thats for everything except we each pay for the upkeep of our own cars on top of that...
We still have a mortgage and live in outer London.. I do grow a little veg and make meals from scratch including baking . Our mortgage and bills come to £800 and we spend around £200 on food . But when OH retires in 5yrs we will have to cut back although we will no longer have the mortgage by then but his income will be less than half what it is now..

Lindy_-_Loo

Theres me, a SAHM, OH who works full time in a low paid job and 3 and 5 year old boys.

Income approx £1770 including wTC, CTC and CB.

Outgoings, approx £1500 including, rent and council tax and loans - in three and five years time we should hopefully have no loan payments!

This month have managed to drop shopping by approx £50. Save all year for xmas and summer holiday (in this country). If we didnt get tax credits it would be tougher than it is. We both worked full time before the boys, i was a store manager and cant imagine what we spent cash on as we didnt save any!

seafarers_wife

Hmmm, not to sure what to put here. do i include rent & house bills and play money etc, think i will do a couple of breakdowns.

our main expenditure - after everything paid for each month, all house bills, rent, food costs, debt repayments, fun money and car budgeting is £2146 a month or £25572 a year - gees thats a heck of a lot.

not including debt repayment - £1846 a month or £22152 a year - thats still a lot!

house & food expenditure - £1596 a month or £19152 a year!

i dont want to break it down further to exclude council tax and rent etc as i dont think it would be a true representation of our expenditure. all the above is for 2 adults - one who is away half the year and a cat.

we live a very comfortable lifestyle and dont want for anything, well i do want a range rover but i know im not going to get one anytime soon we could probably cut back in a number of areas, mainly food, diesel and play money spending a month if we had to cut right back, but even with paying out a heck of a lot compared to most people on this thread we still manage to save a chunk as well and will be debt free by jan 2012 and then will be going for a mortgage.

the only thing that will change when we buy our own place is how much we would be saving, we plan to split the savings figure between mortgage overpayment and general savings. we have already decided that whilst we do want a family we are only planning to have 1 child unless twins/triplets happens so that we can still have the quality of life that we are used to and also so that we can give the kid the same quality of life that we had when growing up.

pink_numbers

£1300 pcm for everything, 2 adults.

I spend £370pcm for my share in everything. The rest is paid by OH since the extra cost on him are things like mortgage (I've already paid my half) and loan repayments.

Yesterday, we discussed that we could cut this further to about £800pcm if we had to. That would be the bare minimum (no overpayment on mortgage, lower food budget, etc), and I will be slowly working my way towards that (but not the overpayment because we want the darn thing paid off!).