Can I afford my own place?

Kurshu

21 y/o having to become dependent for the first time in his life. I currently earn roughly £1450 after tax/student loan/NI and would prefer to rent my own place rather than move into a house share. I have found a flat at £595 a month but would like to check that I have every expense accounted for before I sign a contact that may drive me into debt.

Rent - £595
Council tax - £70 (after discount)
Electric/gas/water - £100
Phone Contract - £41
Tv license - £20
Internet and phone - £20
Contents insurance - £10
Gym - £25

Total - £881 (£569 left for food and luxuries)

I also want to get a car in January which will set me back an additional £100 for the insurance alone.

Will I struggle? Anything I have missed?

ACG

£100 for car insurance? Do you have no claims already?
TV license is £13 i think - an extra £7 there :-) a couple more pints.

Everything else sounds about right though.

lvm

Pension contributions
Holidays
Cars usually end up much more expensive than just insurance

Will you be saving for your own place (to buy) in the future?

Don't regard the full £569 as being free for food and luxuries...it may be a bit boring now but saving for the future should start early.

Good luck!

Kurshu

ACG wrote: »

£100 for car insurance? Do you have no claims already?
TV license is £13 i think - an extra £7 there :-) a couple more pints.

Everything else sounds about right though.

No "No Claims" unfortunately as I have been lazy in getting my licence.

Pension contributions
Holidays
Cars usually end up much more expensive than just insurance

Will you be saving for your own place (to buy) in the future?

Don't regard the full £569 as being free for food and luxuries...it may be a bit boring now but saving for the future should start early.

Good luck!

I am not really a holidaying sort of person so I will not take that into account, I also forgot to mention that I am on the NHS pension scheme so the 1450 is after that also. I am planning on saving to eventually put down a deposit on a place and there is absolutely no way that I would be able to burn my way through all of the "excess" with my social shenanigans.

NinaSwiss

Have you really looked up insurance prices?
My brother's insurance after he got his licence a few years ago (London) was almost £3000 (Honda civi 1.4l) a year. He was 22 at the time.

Going by what my friends pay your other figures look about right except for TV license whi should be less.

I realise you'd rather not share but Its worth considering ( you can always upgrade to an apartment if its not for you) it certainly adds variety to life experiences. Going by your figures, an all inclusive house-share in my area (at £400-425 in SE London) will leave you with £950-974 left to spend on food, save or whatever else takes your fancy.

BigAunty

So, before you buy the car, you will have around £130 a week left to cover things like food, social expenses, haircuts, dentist, clothes, gifts and so forth.

And after you buy the car, perhaps £60 to £80 per week for all those expenses by the time you've made deductions for petrol, repairs, tax, insurance and so on? I take it you've got the funds now to buy the car in cash?

Not much wiggle room, is there? How were you planning to save for a deposit to buy your own place when your actual remaining disposable income after the car barely covers your groceries and leaves you with no social life?

ACG

Re think your insurance costs.

I have 2 years no claims and im paying not far off £100 a month. Im also 28, so its going to be cheaper for me anyway.

Greenqueen_2

INCOME: Think very carefully about the security of your job. Becoming unemployed would spoil the plan. OUTGOINGS: I run a family home on less than those figures so you should manage ok.

NinaSwiss

OP,
following on from Greenqueen post, consider a budget that would allow you to save quickly towards an emergency fund (that could cover your rent and other expenses for at least 3-6 months in the event of a job loss)

artbaron

TV license £12.

Your contents might be a bit low depending on your location. Contents for flats seems to be much higher than for houses in my experience.

Don't underestimate what it costs to run a car. Even a basic, reliable car is very expensive with respect to a budget like yours. £100 for insurance, if you can get it for that which is seriously doubtful if you're 21 with 0 NCB, will be dwarfed by petrol, tax, servicing, parking, tyres, etc. So my advice is bank on not having a car, move to rented, do detailed calculations and then buy a car if you're sure you can afford it.

J_i_m

NHS jobs are relatively safe, partly because the redundancy package is actually quite generous and hence it costs less to simply redeploy staff to other jobs. The NHS waste an awful lot of money... Just not on the front line staff.

You've got a similar income to me, so I assume you're somewhere between bands 2-5?

Your estimates look fairly accurate.. However a word of warning I rented a place at £650 a month, council tax £117 a month. And thanks to a couple of other relatively modest debts at the time I had very little money (if any) left each month. I hardly ever socialise and my grocery budget was actually really rather small.

Having no money most of the time sucks. I ended up moving back to my parents so I could pay off my debts and save up for a mortgage deposit.

Staying at your parents for a couple more years could give you the opportunity to buy instead of rent.