How much do you spend/save?

deefadog

Thanks deemy2004,

Yes, the last year or so i have been following those rules, starting small of course as with a young family it's hard to save, but cleared my credit card through, selling on ebay and taking advantage of the cash back sites such as rpoints etc.

My main aim now is to save enough, so that the interest covers our dd per month £650

Once that is accomplished then i can really start to save.

When you say "Develop several income streams on top of your job, start small and over the years they will grow."

could you elaborate a bit more on this?

Thanks

lipidicman

Those are pretty good suggestions Deemy. I follow most of them myself. Still, you must have some pretty reasonable accomodation costs etc to live off of your savings interest (eg no mortgage?) Do you have parents/a partner who supports you? No kids I assume. Having asked that, I hear it is pretty expensive being a single man these days with the expectations of the dating world......

Anyway, make the most of it while it lasts........it wont.....

deemy2004

Married with 2 kids and ......... livign with parents...
Though it is a big house ! Yeh no rent but half the house bills - I am approx £12k a year better off than if I owned my own house i.e. bills / loss of interest. So looking at the sums involved it is difficult to even want to move...

The wife is a non worker - so can shuv about £90k in her name to capitalise on her tax allowance. Now eyeing the 10% band... which would allow me to accomodate a further £40k though a lot more work.

Other incoem streams....
So many...

I do websites for self and people on the side - earns about £2k per year.

Started playing poker recently and after an initial losing month am now on approx £50 per week This 'MAY' become a big money maker - see how it goes.

Network support - When people ask me to fix their network I charge them £20 per hour, most people run a mile, but some say okay this nets me maybe £300 a year.

Been trading futures - stock indexes for some 20 years and currencies for last three years. With stock indices its position tradign with currencies day trading - on an upward trend on the currencies with a return of about 10% per year. The stock indices are more buy and hold and last position opened at 4845 and now well into a 200+ point profit @ £10 per point so got soem £2.5k open in little over 2 months.

And then theres the interest and capital gain cos the stock market continues to soar ahead ! The way its going these are liekely to exceed my employment income in the not too distant future.

Now off to open 4 halifax 10% accounts, and the coventry child benefit accounts ......cya...

lipidicman

No rent or mortgage and halved bills......thats your secret.

I'm not knocking it. If my parents had a nice big house that was convenient for work and I could get some privacy then I would go for it. Its nice to have the family close by I think (though maybe not so close). I know that my parents would be charging rent though!

hobbesandco

Hello,

My partner & I take home about £4000 per month and we save about £1750 per month, max out our ISA's and will be contributing to our company pensions next January. We do watch our budget, try not to make any compulsive purchases, look for the best deal, buy really used cars from a trustworthy dealer we know, buy food from the market as opposed to expensive supermarkets, grow our own vegetables, buy second hand clothes. The only big expense we have is the mortgage at £750 because we bought last year but we're still doing ok. From only 4k savings after said house purchase we have now saved £23k in the last year which is not bad going. What I would like to know is how walletwatch manages to spend only £350 per month on top of rent. Even with council tax and utility bills paid what about silly little things like food, insurance, clothes, car, fuel, etc? Much respect to you for only spending £350 a month! What's your secret?

Prudent

Thank you for this thread. I had been wondering if I was a bit too prudent with my money so its good to know that other people save as much as they can.

I have always been a saver and really appreciated the value of that when my marriage broke down three years ago. I was doing casual work and could have found myself in a hard place financially until I got a secure job. My savings allowed me to put a deposit on a house and build up my finances again.

I am a single parent with one teen daughter.I have a net monthly income of around £2400 (varies very slightly). This is made up mainly of my salary. Also get child tax credit, child benefit (is it still called that?) and some maintainence. I have kept a track of my spending for a year now (after discovering this site I became more interested in how I was spending).
My average spend over this time has been £850 per month. I also have have found over several cars that the depreciation on my car works out at around £100 per month. So total average spend £950. Average Saving £1450.This is roughly an improvement of £300 per month on the period before I started using this site!


The £850 breaks down as £250 on household bills and around £100 on petrol. The rest is day to day spending, holidays, furniture, anything you can think of really. I thnk we enjoy a good standard of living and don't feel we deprive ourselves of things. I am fortunate that my teen daughter has my appreciation of charity shops as she loves getting clothes.

baldbloke_2

I just wanted to add a quick twopennyworth ...
Once you start saving seriously and begin to see considerable amounts of interest added to your savings or partly available as income you would never have had - then you start to realize just how wonderfully unbalanced the whole world is. Simply by having sensible savings and doing nothing else with the money you have magically acquired additional 'earnings'. What you do with this excess is of personal choice but interest saved begets further interest etc. etc... It's brilliant and mad at the same time. Money earns money and anyone ignoring that will always be watching every penny.
Apologies for stating the 'bleeding obvious'.

lex05

deemy2004 wrote:

Married with 2 kids and ......... livign with parents...
Though it is a big house ! Yeh no rent but half the house bills - I am approx £12k a year better off than if I owned my own house i.e. bills / loss of interest. So looking at the sums involved it is difficult to even want to move...

What about for self respect and pride? Privacy?

No grown Man wants to live off his parents - you don't pay rent! Christ! - especially when he has his own family to support. How must your wife feel living in this situation....

It is easy to save money when you live off mummy and daddy.

The rest of us live in the real world.

Walletwatch

hobbesandco wrote:

Hello,

What I would like to know is how walletwatch manages to spend only £350 per month on top of rent. Even with council tax and utility bills paid what about silly little things like food, insurance, clothes, car, fuel, etc? Much respect to you for only spending £350 a month! What's your secret?

Food is homecooked, more because I am not too much a fan of eating outside. Prefer homecooked food, and the wife is a dear to do this for me daily. (Not that I don't help out, but we are very clear that the non-skilled labor of cutting/chopping is mine, and the skilled labor is hers) ;-)

So the food supplies come to a max of £40 a week, and this also includes any alcohol that we need to buy. We shop at Asda, and I must say I've found them to be the cheapest of the lot.

I work at Canary Wharf and live a ten minute bus ride away, that takes care of the conveyance (plus conveyance is anyway paid on actuals by the orgn I work for) No need for a car and associated costs.

As for clothes, shoes and other shopping in general, we go back home once or twice a year to India, my hometown (again the trip is paid for ;-) and do the majority of our shopping in India - makes commercial sense, as you get much better quality stuff at cheaper prices. Even the branded stuff would be around one-fifth to one-tenth the price here. For example, I bought a pair of ultra-expensive shoes last year in India for INR 5000 (GBP 63 appx), and this was the most expensive pair out there !!! We do try and pick up bargains at the usual outlets - NEXT, GAP, etc during the Christmas sales, etc, but don't do too much of clothes shopping otherwise.

The only other outflow that i can think of is the once a week visit to the pub or bowling alleys, and the once a month slightly-extravagant weekend, which we believe we owe ourselves anyway.

Honestly, I don't really think it is too difficult to do. I have always maintained that the one trap I do not want to fall into is the assumption that one's lifestyle has to necessarily be upgraded with an increase in one's inflows. If you allow only inflation to dictate any increase in your average monthly inflows - and here, I don't refer to misleading inflation measures like the HCIP or RPIX, but the actual rate of increase of the cost of living, then there's no reason why you can't minimise your outflows.

But then, that is a matter of individual perception. We (my wife and I) have a pact with ourselves to enjoy life after 35, and that is what we are working towards. I respect the fact that others may have a different point of view, but the important thing is to know what one is working towards for the future.

hobbesandco

I agree with walletwatch. My partner & I are saving for the future as well and looking to become financially independent within several years. As for clothes I tend to go to Matalan which is fairly cheap but will endeavour to try out charity shops as well. With pay rises every year we just stash that into savings accounts or investments and endeavour to actually decrease our expenses every year by finding novel ways to save money. Last year before we bought our house we were saving £1900 per month but after we bought the house we were only saving about £1200 per month. This year we decided to work towards decreasing spontaneous purchases, look for discounts on-line and start haggling on price. We're back up to saving more before. While it's important to live within your means and appreciate the value of money, it's also important to treat yourself too and not be mean with others. I try to give to charity and spend money on friends and my partner to show him how much I appreciate him. It's important to enjoy life for the moment too. What does everyone else think?