After all expenses and bills I’m left with about £1000 to live off.
Not a full Mozo user just yet though - still using my B&M Bank for my main account.
The wife is the same.
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Onedox is great! I’ve been using it a couple of years now too. It’s so nice to know these big bills are coming up before you get a nasty surprise!
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My wife and I have a combined income of just over 5k a month after tax with committed spending of about 2k including bills, mortgage, petrol, childcare etc. After food and general expenses come out, we have about 2.5k left over of which 1-2k is put into a savings account for holidays / car purchases and so on. What is left we live on - we very much share the money and neither of us have a personal account we use so difficult to pin down how much each of us spends individually.
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My take home is around £2600 but fluxates a little. I’m single (
) with no kids so that keeps my costs down a fair bit.
I usually try and save around £1k minimum but it’s all eventually going to go on a house deposit.
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Ours is very similar but only I would and our allowance is £100 each.
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Have to say I am finding this thread really useful! I am divorced with 5 (!) kids and struggle to make ends meet every month, this month will be particularly tight. However looking at what people are managing to live on has given me hope that I might be able to tighten my belt further and I am not doing too bad!
This month, after bills, diesel, reverse 1p saving, and ferreting a couple of quid into pots each day have £220 left. This has to cover birthdays, food, entertaining the children, living etc. It’s less than usual due to a number of bills late last month, but hopefully I will get there. I have the fallback that I do not lock away my 1p challenge savings so I can get to them, but I periodically use the funds to knock a few pounds off my credit card bills, however this month I will keep it in the pot until the end of the month just in case!
Not sure why I felt the need to outline everything, but hopefully it will be of interest to someone 
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Hope you are ploughing it into a ISA. That 25% bonus is very good.
Keep it up! You’re doing great. 
Sounds like you are on top of things for the most part, can’t be easy but good on you for squirrelling away a little here and there, half the battle!!
OK. I’m still getting to grips with my money after many many years of neglect so, roughly speaking, I’ve got about £1k a month in debt (credit cards, loan), about £700 a month in bills (rent, etc), which leaves me about £600 a month for food, travel, living etc.
Currently looking at how I can cutback how much I spend on ‘meals’ (lunches, dinners etc) as it’d be an easy way to claw back quite a bit (to put towards reducing my debt faster). All part of my 3 year plan to be debt free (which looks like it might actually hold!).
Monzo pots have been very useful, especially the locked ones! Trip to New York soon so money aside for that is building.
Sounds like you’re on the right track.
For cutting back on meals, I tend to prep my food for the week. I will do a food shop on a Sunday, bulk buy my ingredients and cook it all on Sunday afternoon so then I lunches and dinners for the week and it only meant using up a few hours of my day.
I tend to make things that can be microwaved so in the week I literally lose minutes of my day heating up my food. I know this isn’t for everyone but it sure saves me money and time.
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After my Rent and Bills I typically have about £350-400 a month to live on to include food, travel, savings and personal spends.
I try to put £200 away at the start of the month and then work from what I have left.
In terms of scrimping during the week, if I have a pasta or rice meal for dinner, i’ll cook double and take the leftovers in with me the next day for lunch. I bought a coffee machine a few months back and so save £2 odd a day on a morning coffee.
I’m trying to get a good level of emergency funds, whilst also ploughing enough into a S&S LISA to get a good house deposit - some months i’ll split it equally, others ill put it all into one vehicle.
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Yeah planning meals is something I’ve been bad at, but it’s on the list next. And I’m with you on microwaving later on, why not!
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For me, this came hand in hand with joining Slimming World - I’ve been able to save money, lose weight and just become overall more healthy.
Bulk cooking is such a good way to go.
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Can I make a suggestion which I am trying to do?
For each of your 5 kids, set up a birthday pot and put some away each month.
I’ve set a limit of £200 for each child (spoilt I know) and at the moment I’m putting money into the eldest as her birthday is first. But eventually I plan on putting a little in each month to both once my finances are straight so that when it comes to the birthday I don’t have to stress over finding additional money that I’ve forgot to budget for.
I’m also trying to do this for Xmas.
On the back of what @Tunny said. I do something similar and it has helped my family save money on food shop. However for lunches I tend to ensure I cook enough of a dinner at home so that I can box it and take it to work to reheat the next day.
I literally list all the dinners we are to eat from Saturday to Friday. Then I organise my shopping list into 4 categories;
Meat
Dairy
Fruit/Veg
Misc
Then I look at each meal and add the ingredients that I need into the appropriate column. Then after the meals I will look at lunches for the kids, then ask wife what she needs then go onto toiletries then look at the Alexa list to see what’s been added throughout the week by various family members (Lactose free Jay-z was an interesting one)
The reason I do it in columns is so that when I go to Aldi and I’m at the fruit and veg section, I don’t have to run through the list several times to ensure I’ve got everything, literally just check the appropriate column. If Aldi don’t have it, I mark it and pick it up from Morrisons.
That little bit of extra organisation prior to the shop makes the actual food shop quicker and less painful.
Next time on shopping trip tips…how to stack your trolley so that you can bag and go at an Aldi checkout 
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Also word of advice to add to this great shopping organisation.
…Don’t go food shopping hungry - you will buy WAAYY too many things that you will not eat or will feel guilty eating 
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This is possibly the best piece of advice ever!
It’s really interesting to see people’s strategies For how they manage their day to day spending! Meal planning and prep definitely seems to be high on the list of best ways to save quite a bit and easily.
@LifeofRiley I’m looking forward to your series on shopping trip tips 
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I’ve fallen foul to hunger food shopping too many times - hard learnt lessons
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