Bad news re what I spend

p00hsticks

justme111 wrote: »

Easy.
Food - organic when I can and not stopping myself from buying something I would like because it costs money. Rarely ready made, rarely takeaway , rarely eating out - just plain expenses on raw products. Practically no alcohol.
Car - ferrying child here and there, going to work etc with no regard to whether it costs money or not. Old car(20years) , only repairs are about £500/year if not more. Leisure membership- used frequently. Appearance - some cosmetic stuff every now and again, not often but a few hundreds £ at a time. Private health insurance. Medical bills for what it does not cover.:(
House - all the time it's either bathroom change or garage insulation or whatever else - endless.
It could be that however I tried to separate the expenses that arise because I live with 2 dependants (dad and daughter) there is still part of what I incur because of them in my number.

justme111 wrote: »

My main discovery is that I use more money than I thought I did for a lifestyle I have. I do not have loads of expenses that most other people have- I forgotten when I last bought make up , I do not do all the usual nails/ tans/facials/waxing( and my depilator is 20 yo!) etc, I use sofa which I bought 7 years ago second hand, my car is 20 years old bought for 1.5 k 10 years ago, about half of my clothes are hands down from friends , I practically don't drink - and what I drink is not paid by me, holidays are covered by my partner from the fund in which he pays money that he would have otherwise have paid as rent, I rarely by coffees or eat out or have ready made food - and I still spend that amount of money..

I can't see (unless you have really expensive medical insurance or medical expenses) how you are managing to spend around £75 a day on average when you are living as frugally as this. Organic ingredients are expensive, but not that expensive !

If you haven't already, it might be worth breaking down the monthly expenditure figure a bit further to work out the areas of highest expense

justme111

That is what I am getting at - if one does not spend on 200 typical spending items one is sure to find another 200 ones and spend on them .
February -
Bills £565,
house £523 - (carpenter £420 As finally done broken doors of wardrobes and other small bits - dishwasher repair and protect - it broken and to repair it would cost the same as to take a plan with compulsory 1 year, window cleaning £14, microwave £50, printer cartridges ,some other minor expenses topping it to £523)
Frivolties - £296 ( presents for friends that I have not seen for 17 years and going to see soon- £172 , one meal out, one take away , one coffee out and a few other minor ones)
Food -£479
Petrol - £125
Unknown ( cash not trackabke) -£160? Not sure as my accounts quite complicated so what went where is difficult to say always .
Keeping in mind I have 2 dependants so bills and food should be lower when I don't have them living with me anymore I calculated about £1800 equivalent in retirement
Other months were :(all expenses present in retirement)
September £1600
October £3000
November £3481
December £2500
January £1650

GunJack

justme111 wrote: »

That is what I am getting at - if one does not spend on 200 typical spending items one is sure to find another 200 ones and spend on them .
February -
Bills £565,
house £523 - (carpenter £420 As finally done broken doors of wardrobes and other small bits - dishwasher repair and protect - it broken and to repair it would cost the same as to take a plan with compulsory 1 year, window cleaning £14, microwave £50, printer cartridges ,some other minor expenses topping it to £523)
Frivolties - £296 ( presents for friends that I have not seen for 17 years and going to see soon- £172 , one meal out, one take away , one coffee out and a few other minor ones)
Food -£479
Petrol - £125
Unknown ( cash not trackabke) -£160? Not sure as my accounts quite complicated so what went where is difficult to say always .
Keeping in mind I have 2 dependants so bills and food should be lower when I don't have them living with me anymore I calculated about £1800 equivalent in retirement
Other months were :(all expenses present in retirement)
September £1600
October £3000
November £3481
December £2500
January £1650

At a glance, you're not going to be doing carpentry/buying microwave/dishwasher(!!! what's wrong with a sink and hot soapy water?? Will also use more water so more expensive)/presents for someone you ain't seen for 17 yrs EVERY month!!!

You claim frugality but spend like a lottery winner...think you really need to get a grip of your spending and then your "number" should reduce substantially.

Med costs - do you not qualify to use the NHS?

£500 a year on car is still much cheaper than buying a new one, be it on a loan or other finance..or buy a new car for £500 and start again...bangernomics can be done for hardly any money (see thread on Motoring board).

Don't want to come over as being harsh, but think you need to look at yourself and your spending habits much, much closer than you appear to have done...

shinytop

I think if I did this for myself I'd also find it very hard to track where it all goes. That's quite a variation in monthly spending though - lowest is less than half the highest. You do seem quite generous; that's a lot to spend on gifts (by my standards anyway!). As you point out, and having experienced it myself, having adult dependents living with you makes a huge difference to almost everything - food, bills, wear and tear, etc.

Apodemus

One of the best things I have ever done was to annualise all my costs and set up DDs to transfer the monthly equivalent for each category across to a “Bills” account. It means I know my monthly base-costs for retirement planning. After a while it also has had the happy additional benefits of easing cash-flow, building an emergency fund and completely removing the stress/angst around paying bills.

crv1963

justme111 wrote: »

That is what I am getting at - if one does not spend on 200 typical spending items one is sure to find another 200 ones and spend on them .
February -
Bills £565,
house £523 - (carpenter £420 As finally done broken doors of wardrobes and other small bits - dishwasher repair and protect - it broken and to repair it would cost the same as to take a plan with compulsory 1 year, window cleaning £14, microwave £50, printer cartridges ,some other minor expenses topping it to £523)
Frivolties - £296 ( presents for friends that I have not seen for 17 years and going to see soon- £172 , one meal out, one take away , one coffee out and a few other minor ones)
Food -£479
Petrol - £125
Unknown ( cash not trackabke) -£160? Not sure as my accounts quite complicated so what went where is difficult to say always .
Keeping in mind I have 2 dependants so bills and food should be lower when I don't have them living with me anymore I calculated about £1800 equivalent in retirement
Other months were :(all expenses present in retirement)
September £1600
October £3000
November £3481
December £2500
January £1650

I think it may help to break these down further. There is too much variation for them to be your definitive monthly spend. How we did it was-

1) Never ending bills- Council Tax, Utilities, TV Licence etc.
2) Food
3) Pets
4) Car(s)
5) Presents - Birthday, Christmas
6) Holiday(s)
7) Replacement items.

Then we examined where could we get the best value- so changed gas/ electric providers, insurance etc. Then food- we eat well but when we retire will look at using more locally produced items- difficult working shifts to always do this at present.

Cars- our downfall but in retirement at least one will be low cost runabout.

Presents- currently making the big ticket presents for others, letting them know have it now, once we retire we're cutting down to a lower level of expenditure.

Replacement items- this month we've replaced the last of the white goods, so everything is either new or couple of years old, now things will only be replaced when worn out. We're putting a sum away each month earmarked for this.

We don't live a particularly frugal life but we aren't going to get sucked into overspending in any one area. I think we're quite generous with family but we also have let them know we will be reducing spending.

If you can have a couple of months at around 1600, then is that not your true figure? Ours is around 1000pm for essentials, including 100pm medication for one of our dogs.

k6chris

crv1963 wrote: »

I think it may help to break these down further. There is too much variation for them to be your definitive monthly spend. How we did it was-

1) Never ending bills- Council Tax, Utilities, TV Licence etc.
2) Food
3) Pets
4) Car(s)
5) Presents - Birthday, Christmas
6) Holiday(s)
7) Replacement items.

As another example, here are the catagories that we track. We started off tracking these at the next level down too but ended up with these as 'high level' buckets. We have done this for 2 years now to come up with our 'number'. Obvious 'missing' pot would be mortgage or rental. Tracking these really helped see where money was leaking away. We also announced to family and friends that we would like to cut down the value of gifts and presents both ways, for birthdays and Christmas, which has worked brilliantly for all concerned, resulting in home made cakes and really well thought through charity shop books rather than some expensive tat that gets left in a drawer!

Health & dental
Council tax
Electric
Gas
Pets
Water rates
TV & Media
Food
Household
Cash
Holidays
Entertainment
Cars
Garden
Gifts
Hobbies / discretionary

Spreadsheetman

k6chris wrote: »

As another example, here are the catagories that we track. We started off tracking these at the next level down too but ended up with these as 'high level' buckets. We have done this for 2 years now to come up with our 'number'. Obvious 'missing' pot would be mortgage or rental. Tracking these really helped see where money was leaking away. We also announced to family and friends that we would like to cut down the value of gifts and presents both ways, for birthdays and Christmas, which has worked brilliantly for all concerned, resulting in home made cakes and really well thought through charity shop books rather than some expensive tat that gets left in a drawer!

Health & dental
Council tax
Electric
Gas
Pets
Water rates
TV & Media
Food
Household
Cash
Holidays
Entertainment
Cars
Garden
Gifts
Hobbies / discretionary

That's a good set of categories - almost exactly what I do. I'd missed out on the garden one by lumping it into household maintenance, but there is a discretionary element so it doesn't really belong there.

crv1963

k6chris wrote: »

As another example, here are the catagories that we track. We started off tracking these at the next level down too but ended up with these as 'high level' buckets. We have done this for 2 years now to come up with our 'number'. Obvious 'missing' pot would be mortgage or rental. Tracking these really helped see where money was leaking away. We also announced to family and friends that we would like to cut down the value of gifts and presents both ways, for birthdays and Christmas, which has worked brilliantly for all concerned, resulting in home made cakes and really well thought through charity shop books rather than some expensive tat that gets left in a drawer!

Health & dental
Council tax
Electric
Gas
Pets
Water rates
TV & Media
Food
Household
Cash
Holidays
Entertainment
Cars
Garden
Gifts
Hobbies / discretionary

This reducing amount spent has also worked well for us. A mixture of charity shop finds as well as specific needed items such as tools are the order of the day now for us and family to us. Reduced spending, less tat and recycling to charity shops of unwanted gifts.

The gifts for birthdays seems to have migrated to a bottle of gin/ rum/ vodka depending on person, christmas for sons- last year a £500 car each, normally a bottle of spirits and £100 cash.

This years Christmas is already planned as all gifts are to be home made to each other- sewing/ knitting/ baking/ woodworking/ garden pots depending on the givers choice of hobby. Although I'm sure there will be an exchange of alcohol as well!

lisyloo

justme111 wrote: »

That is what I am getting at - if one does not spend on 200 typical spending items one is sure to find another 200 ones and spend on them .
February -
Bills £565,
house £523 - (carpenter £420 As finally done broken doors of wardrobes and other small bits - dishwasher repair and protect - it broken and to repair it would cost the same as to take a plan with compulsory 1 year, window cleaning £14, microwave £50, printer cartridges ,some other minor expenses topping it to £523)
Frivolties - £296 ( presents for friends that I have not seen for 17 years and going to see soon- £172 , one meal out, one take away , one coffee out and a few other minor ones)
Food -£479
Petrol - £125
Unknown ( cash not trackabke) -£160? Not sure as my accounts quite complicated so what went where is difficult to say always .
Keeping in mind I have 2 dependants so bills and food should be lower when I don't have them living with me anymore I calculated about £1800 equivalent in retirement
Other months were :(all expenses present in retirement)
September £1600
October £3000
November £3481
December £2500
January £1650

Bills sound high excluding food.
Have you shopped around for your utilities?
House - I think most people would look to get their house in shape pre-retirement and would reduce the discretionary spending.
Frivolities - £172 is a lot to spend on presents for friends. If you are on a fixed income you’ll look to reduce this and probably look to spend more time with people rather than money. For example if you like historical houses/gardens then you might buy an annual NT membership, or visit garden centres or cafes or go for walks. People cut their cloth to suit.
Untrackabke - if you are serious about it then find a way to track it better, there is a lot of technology available although paper and pen is also good sometimes. The only way to know where it’s going is to track it.

Annually can work out better as there is always a lot of monthly fluctuation.