£1250 a month, what to do?

Debtfree1014

Hello all.

So as things stand, I've managed to get myself into a position where I have 0 debts (Except my mortgage). After all my bills and outgoings every month, I'm left with £1250.00.

My problem is, no matter what I seem to do every month I end up having £0.00 left, and very little to show for it. I go out with the OH, friends, meals, takeaways, the odd sports bet at the weekend and other things but I feel like I could do all this on a tighter budget.

What I'd love to do is use my money in a smart way, or in a way that I can see I'm doing good things with it.

Any advice or ideas would be great, thanks in advance.

A_T

Don't bet on sports. Don't go out as much. Don't have so many takeaways.

Debtfree1014

Hey.

Yeah that was my point/question, what should I be doing with the disposable income I have. Which is around £1250 a month?

Thanks.

Alistair31

Putting it in your pension ?

rathernot

Debtfree1014 wrote: »

Hey.

Yeah that was my point/question, what should I be doing with the disposable income I have. Which is around £1250 a month?

Thanks.

Save it if you need to be sure you can get at it.

Invest some/all of it if you can afford to take a long term view.

Robin9

Do go out with the OH, friends, meals, takeaways, the odd sports bet at the weekend and other things but be disciplined - limit this to £250. Then its pension (and your wifes pension), over pay mortgage, emergency fund

Zorillo

Practice with a regular saver. Once you've managed to put £250 a month away regularly, open another one.

Westie983

Hi,

My suggestion would be to transfer some of your money at the beginning of the month into another account, and then spent whats left as your "fun" money then if you need more you can transfer it back, but you may find you don't, and then you have saved that month and then repeat.

Out of £1250 I would start with £750 - £1000, then you can change according to what you are doing each month.

You may have a month where there are lots of birthdays so you only transfer the lower amount, and anything left at the end of the month goes in the account too.

Westie983

rathernot

I would definitely move it to a different account.

Even with the easy of instant (ish) transfers I think psychologically just not seeing it there to spend counts for a lot.

djhworld

Do you have any savings already?

If not then your first priority is to build up an emergency fund. If your washing machine broke tomorrow would you have enough money to cover buying a new one/do repairs?

If you lost your job next week would you have enough money to tide you over for important expenses like mortgage, bills, food etc, until you found a new one?

Ideally you should have 3-6 months of expenditure saved that can be accessed easily.

A_T

Debtfree1014 wrote: »

Hey.

Yeah that was my point/question, what should I be doing with the disposable income I have. Which is around £1250 a month?

Thanks.

Put it in a SIPP then you can't get at it until you're 55 (or 57) - at which time you'll be very glad you did.