Budgeting and setting myself realistic goals?

nicetomeetyou

Do you think this is a realistic goal I'm setting myself?

I get £550.00 personal allowance every 4 weeks. This is paid to me from social services as I got sectioned and they said I haven't got capacity to manage my own money. All my bills are paid direct by them so £550.00 every 4 weeks is disposable income for me.

My only real outgoing out of that is £50.00 a month for my mobile phone bill.

I want to start spending £30 a week on my food shopping from Aldi for one person, Is this doable?. The other £10 a week I will use for going out for coffees with my support staff,.

I want to save £300.00 a month.

The other £30 a month left over I will use for meals out as a treat end of month.

Social services pay for a cinema pass which gets me and support staff/friend in cinema for no cost. I also have a bus pass for free travel.

Do you think its doable to live off £40 a week just for food and going out for coffee once or twice a week? I don't drink alcohol or smoke.

LobsterMemory

Yes, I reckon it is, if you're careful

But if you also have to pay for cleaning materials and toiletries, then that would be more difficult

CKhalvashi

First of all, good luck with the future and welcome to the forum.

To answer your question, it probably is possible. I've just done a shop in Tesco for someone which came to around £60 with a bottle of whisky (£16) and some toiletries (around £5), so that's around £40 without being overly careful and buying some things in bulk as offers finish this week.

As a rough guide (we both drink, but not heavily), we spend around £100 a week on our own shopping, so if you divide that by 3 people, it's £33.33 a week. Squeezing £3 a person out of this won't be hard if we tried.

When shopping, one of the most important things is to ensure that if something is on an offer, you can stock up on it (toilet rolls, washing stuff, deodorants etc), which ensures that you have it when it's there and it's done in the cheapest way.

There's nothing wrong with spending for example £50 on one week and around £25 on the other three, as long as you have enough money to cover yourself at the end of the month and are sure you can budget for it.

If you have a freezer, it's also worth buying things when they're reduced (usually 'best before' that day) and freezing it. I've managed to get some fish products this morning that are usually £4-ish for £1.80-ish each, they're in the freezer now I'm home and will be used over the next few weeks with some chips (buying potatoes and cutting yourself is cheaper than buying chips, and IMO much nicer with a little pepper on top before cooking, but that's another story for another thread). Doing things in this way can again help to reduce the cost, and you are likely to find some bargain 'treats' when doing so, especially if you can find out what time the person with the price reducing machine goes around the store.

I hope this helps

dan958

£30 a week for 1 person is very doable Websites like BudgetBytes and /r/eatcheapandhealthy are resources that I use for making cheap and healthy food. Not smoking and drinking is great, as they are the real killers when it comes to spending!

oligopoly

£50 a month for a phone bill is astronomical! Pick up a cheapy second hand phone and pay no more than £10 a month on a PAYG deal.

enthusiasticsaver

Yes it is possible to live off £30 a week for food. It involves being careful and meal planning so no food waste or expensive branded food though.

Your mobile phone bill is high

northwalesd

OP started a similar thread ~4 weeks later

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6090363/how-to-live-off-50-a-week

In that thread explains that phone contract lasts another 20 months.

Katiehound

and what happened to the £13 per month of Nationwide banking charges? (Which was providing travel insurance & phone insurance)