Is £250 (4 weekly) month enough to live on for one person = £62.50 a week.

williewonder

I seriously need to budget. After all my outgoings I’ll have £62.50 a week for groceries (excluding cleaning products as the supported living home provide these) I’m not buying cigs or alcohol. I don’t need petrol as don’t run a car. I have a bus pass from the country council so don’t need transport costs. The £62.50 will be spend on food shopping and occasionally eating out.

Is it doable?

williewonder

My personal allowance from social services (appointee) is £610 every 4 weeks paid into my account.

my expenses

Save - £300 a month
mobile phone bill - £60 a month
spending money - £250 a month.

= £610

Appointee account that manage my finances…

Utilities, gas/electric/water - £110 a month
standing order for spotify - £7.50 a month
Costs to run appointee account - £50 a month
save - £522.50 a month in their accounts

TheAble

It sounds doable, though I suppose would depend on one's personal level of frugality.

Getting your mobile bill down would be an idea. Seems unbalanced to have a monthly mobile bill equivalent to one week of disposable income.

EssexHebridean

If just for food and entertainment then that ought to be plenty - I budget £175 a month for food for two of us - and could do it on a lot less, that is with meal planning in advance, shopping from a list and cooking from scratch almost all the time. 

Do you budget for other things from your personal allocasavings? Clothes, replacement phone when needed, any other tech you might use or want, that sort of thing? 

williewonder

My phone is on contact till next September. The £60 a month includes insurance. When my contact runs out I'll get another £60 a month contact for 3 years. iPhone 14 pro is likely.

I buy clothes from Jacamo. I send my appointee the bill and he sends me the money to cover the costs but I'm hoping to keep the clothes I've already got for awhile. I'm hoping to just stick to my budget of £250 4/weekly month.

theoretica

£62.50 a week is nearly £9 a day - very easy to live on this if you cook from scratch and basic/in season ingredients and don't waste food.  Hard to live on this if you eat out or takeaways most days.  Probably manageable, but tighter if you buy more prepared meals.  So I would say it can be done (last year I spent about £25 a week on food) but whether it can be done without changing your eating and cooking habits will depend on what they are at the moment.

EssexHebridean

williewonder said:

My phone is on contact till next September. The £60 a month includes insurance. When my contact runs out I'll get another £60 a month contact for 3 years. iPhone 14 pro is likely.

I buy clothes from Jacamo. I send my appointee the bill and he sends me the money to cover the costs but I'm hoping to keep the clothes I've already got for awhile. I'm hoping to just stick to my budget of £250 4/weekly month.

Will the phone actually need replacing? That’s a lot of money for a phone contract - if you were to instead shift onto a SIM only deal for a year when your contract finishes, you could potentially save £50 a month of even more to have a lump sum ready for a replacement phone subsequently when needed, which would then enable you to add to it and get a far more competitive deal without being tied to another long contract. My iPhoneSE cheerfully lasted over 4 years - it had a battery change in the middle but that was mostly because it was one of the phones affected by iOS updates destroying the battery life. My current 12 mini has had no perceptible drop in battery life yet at all, so that issue seems to be solved, hopefully! 

TheAble

Agreed, £60 is way too much to be spending, especially if your finances are in tough shape. It's these kind of costs which are often the source of people's problems.

kimwp

I'm not sure what you mean by those save lines? Does your appointee save some money for you? I'm not sure how £62.50 is produced from those numbers?

But yes, £62.50 is very do-able for a weekly food allowance - you would eat very well if you cooked from scratch and shopped at Lidl and have enough for two sensible or one very nice meals out.

williewonder

@kimwp - the save bit is the money I'm saving per month into my accounts, the £300 in my personal accounts and the £522.50 I'm saving in my appointee account.

Coffeekup

I budget £45 a week for myself and my 13 yr. This gets us food for the week, breakfast, lunch and dinner, school lunch, household cleaning mbits, toilet paper, deodorant and washing liquid/fab con. Cook from scratch, we eat well, and have enough left after 2 weeks for a fast food meal or a take away pizza.

That being said I don't buy certain things, any kind of wipes, kitchen roll, biscuits (unless it's for a treat), booze, and very little meat as for me it's expensive.