Thoughts on my budget

buzzyzoe

Hi all,

I'm hoping to buy a house (currently living at home), and have worked out a budget for what I'd need to spend each month.

Mortgage - £450
Council tax - £150
Bills - £150
Home insurance - £20
Travelcard - £140
Mobile Phone - £30
Landline - £14.50
Broadband - £7.50
TV license - £12
Sky - £31.75
Total - £1005


I would also need to add on any service charge and ground rent for any property bought, but I don't have a specific property in mind at the moment, so can't really factor these in yet. The figures for home insurance, council tax etc are based on research I have done into how much these things are likely to cost, but I'd appreciate hearing if any of them seem wildly out. There may also be other things that I've missed from this list. I have savings to cover house repairs, emergencies, Christmas, holidays etc so am not factoring these in at the moment.



My take home pay is around £1300 per month, so this would leave me with £295pm to cover all food, clothes, toiletries, socialising and any other 'non essentials'. This seems quite low to me, but I'm aware that my lifestyle at the moment is not particularly frugal.



I was wondering if anyone could give me any encouragement and tell me that I will be fine living on that amount, and that owning a home will be worth having less disposable income. Or if anyone thinks this is horribly unlikly, or that I've forgotten some major costs, I'd appreciate hearing that as well!

grumbler

My last building&content insurance cost me £95ish before £70 TCB cashback.
For a small house bills can be lower than £150.

Also, you must save some money.

buzzyzoe

What I'm hoping is the amounts I've budgeted for here should be the maximum, so I probably would save some money on bills each month for example.

Actually hadn't really considered that I don't have any money for savings in this budget at the moment, as I already have quite considerable savings. You're right though, money does need to come from somewhere for savings. It probably won't be much though..

grumbler

I guess all your current savings will go to the deposit and to settling in the new house and then you'll have to recover them at least partly.

buzzyzoe

After the house deposit, all legal/moving fees and furnishings, I'm still hoping to have around £5000 'emergency' money - I'm aware this won't necessarily last me that long though. I'm also hoping to get a pay rise at some point in the next year or so, so that would make saving slightly easier as well.

saterkey

Mortgage - £450
Council tax - £150
Bills - £150
Home insurance - £20
Travelcard - £140
Mobile Phone - £30
Landline - £14.50
Broadband - £7.50
TV license - £12
Sky - £31.75
Total - £1005


Spending Money each week
Dentists, prescriptions, opticians eye checks
savings
Should the interest rates go up allow yourself leeway spare cash for mortgage.
Presents, xmas
Furniture and essentials

buzzyzoe

Spending money and any dentists/opticians etc will come out of the £300 left over each month after paying the £1005.

Will be on a fixed mortgage I think so not too worried about that.

Birthday presents will come out of the £300. Xmas will come out of savings.

Furniture is included in my house buying budget, but appreciate I will need to replace this at some point. Hopefully by then, I will be earning more.

If I could budget even £100 per month towards savings, that should be enough to keep my emergency fund topped up. However, then my disposable income would only be £200 per month, which doesn't sound a lot. I don't drink or smoke, so really the majority would go on food and entertainment. I'm sure it's doable, but I think it will be very different to the position I'm in now, where my outgoings are much lower.

lippy1923

Are you going to be living on your own?

If so, IMO I think you are stretching yourself too far. With less that £300, after buying food, clothes, toiletries, socialising (you need some form of life) prescriptions etc you are not going to have much at all for saving.
As previously stated, you will need to replenish any emergency fund you spend, on birthdays, xmas and the inevitable "emergency"

Are you going to have any insurance to protect your mortgage payments if you're out of work? Any critical illness/ sickness insurance?
What do you need a landline for, if you have a mobile? Use Skype for any overseas contacts.

Tirian

I'd ditch Sky for the moment, tbh. Appreciate that this is a personal lifestyle choice, so you are free to disagree - but with your estimated disposable income (after bills/food/household essentials), it seems like you would be spending 20%+ of your free money on Sky.

Definitely worth asking yourself whether you really get that much value out of what Sky will offer you over, say, Freeview/Freesat and a digital recording box of some sort.

Tirian

For the record though, living on £300 a month is totally achievable, if you are committed to it. But you genuinely will have to work hard at it and will have to do your food/household shopping at the very cheap end of the budget, and be prepared to be quite miserly about your socialising.

It's definitely possible to do, plenty of free entertainment to be had for example - but if your friends & family like to socialise in ways that involve even moderate spending you're probably going to have to muster the resolve to say "Sorry, I can't do that" quite a lot. Or "No, I'm only having the one tonight".

Delree

You should be able to half your mobile phone bill.