Advice on budgeting for a FTB

pledgeX

Hello all.

First off apologies if this is the wrong sub-forum, couldn't really decide where to put this, but as everyone who buys a house will do this I thought here would be a good place!

I've been trying to do some budgeting as I'm looking to buy my first home so need to work out what I can afford. I'm living at home at the minute and don't pay for anything, so I can't look at my current outgoings to base this on, so it's very much from scratch. Here's what I came up with:

- Council tax - £148
- Gas, water and electricity - £150 (don't know how this would be split between the 3)
- TV License - £12
- Gym - £15
- Phone (line rental and calls) - £15
- Broadband - £15
- Buildings and contents insurance - £25
- Car insurance - £50
- Petrol - £65
- Car tax - £16
- Life insurance - £10
- Miscellaneous - £200
- Outgoings and presents - £150
- Groceries (including food, toiletries, cleaning products, cling film etc - the works)- £320
- TOTAL: £1190

This is based on 2 people sharing a 2 bed semi. The miscellaneous column is basically covering costs of anything that breaks, or any other costs I've forgotten. Obviously this excludes any form of savings and the actual mortgage payments. Some of the things such as car insurance/petrol will obviously depend on my personal circumstances, and the council tax depends on the area.

I was just wondering if anyone is/has been in a similar situation and can breakdown what their costs are so I've got something to compare to. I think I've been generous with my estimates so can hopefully save a fair bit more but we'll have to wait and see.

Thanks for any help.

wine_night

It looks like a reasonable assessment- how did you calculate that the mortgage payments would come out of your miscellaneous figure of £200? This looks very low, are you sharing the mortgage costs with another person?

G_M

Apart from wondering why you need to spend £30 on phone/Broadband (or a gym!), it looks a good first stab.

There mane many similar threads on this forum, and on the debt forum etc where people analyse their outgoings.

Or use Google. I just found this!

pledgeX

wine_night wrote: »

It looks like a reasonable assessment- how did you calculate that the mortgage payments would come out of your miscellaneous figure of £200? This looks very low, are you sharing the mortgage costs with another person?

I didn't. I haven't included any mortgage payments in the above list. This will all be dealt with separately. As said in OP, the misc is only to cover unexpected expenditure, i.e. things breaking, or something that I've forgotten in my list, or a particularly high bill for some reason.

G_M wrote: »

Apart from wondering why you need to spend £30 on phone/Broadband (or a gym!), it looks a good first stab.

As said, I'm hoping it will be cheaper than this. Although for anything over a 10GB limit I don't think it's going to be much cheaper. I will look at the package deals but I'll have to research the disadvnatages of moving off a bt phone line.

And what's wrong with £15 for a gym?! That's cheap as chips in gym terms!! Only way I could get cheaper is travelling 30 odd miles and joining the local uni gym!

Jowo_2

Is this just your budget, or the budget for 2? You need to split out some of the vague line items.

What does 'misc' cover - car and house repairs? A new boiler can cost 2 or 3k and what if you get a big car repair. It's good to have some contingency but you've collapsed a few things together and I think you need to be more specific.

What does 'outgoings' cover exactly? Do you really only spend £37 a week on social expenses a week and is this also supposed to cover hair cuts, clothes and shoes, too? Surely not for 2 people. Some people spend a few hundred pounds on presents at Xmas - are you really a modest socialiser who gives modest gifts to people occasionally. Have a proper tot up of all your easter, xmas, wedding, birthday, mothers/fathers day gifts.

Life insurance for 2 people for a tenner could be optimistic if its supposed to be for 2. So too might the insurance for the house if it's a high crime area or you have a lot of belongings to insure.

You don't have a mobile? You never take holidays? A decent holiday for 2 with spending money can cost £800 to £1500. A european mini break £400-600. Where is the budget for this or do you just go camping in the UK?!


Download the MSE budget planner.

pledgeX

Thank Jowo. To answer your questions:

- Budget is supposed to cover both of us

- Misc is indeed to cover house and car repairs of any sort. Yes a boiler would be 2k which obviously £200 doesn't cover. But if anything didn't break in a month (which I'd like to think will be more often than not!), then the 200 would roll over to the next month so the repairs pot would be 400 and so on. If anything broke that this fund couldn't cover, then we would have to dip into savings.

- Outgoings + gifts is pretty much that. That covers going out, i.e. drinking, cinema, meals out. And gifts is all the presents you mentioned averaged over the year, so obviously there will be a big hit at xmas, but we save up this fund during the year so it levels out.

-Life insurance - you're right there, that was supposed to be per person, so this in fact £20.

- Mobile is PAYG and will barely be used when we get a house phone.

- Holidays, obviously yes we would like holidays, but this will be paid for out of 'luxury savings' which is for big expenses such as this, and we've budgetted for this seperately as this is something we can do without. If we save a lot over the year then fine, we'll go on a nice holiday. If the boikler breaks and we have a rough year then either stay in the UK or don't go on holiday.

- You also mentioned clothes/shoes. This wil be paid for out of the seperate 'luxury savings' which I've not included, as again they are not essentials (obviously they are, but we've already got cupboards full of clothes). However they are more essential than holidays so perhaps should add maybe £50 p/m on top for that.



I've already looked at the MSE budget planner but the problem with that is that it is geared towards people that are already spending and can evaluate there spending patterns. As I've said, my outgoings currently are zero and I've not had to pay for the vast majority of the above items before so I'm having to estimate the cost of things which is proving to be the problem.

Thanks again.

pledgeX

Any other thoughts or sources I can look at to estimate these prices? Or is there a more appropriate sub-forum elsewhere on this forum?

Linton

I keep detailed records of my spending. Your figure is slightly higher than my costs for basic living, which mostly matches your list of items but excludes luxuries, presents etc, for 2 people in a 4 bedroom house and so looks like a good basis for planning.

I agree with Jowo that you need be more specific about some of the things you have bundled into misc and outgoings.

Perhaps a good way to handle these is to use your £200+£150 as regular savings to build up a fund held in a good instant access savings account.