#93

Guess that depends on total take home pay though, right?

#94

I picked my older niece up from her nursery the other day. It smelled funny and looked like a baby prison, but it’s £megabucks a day because it’s across the road from the station.

Not really sure why I’m posting this, except to emphasise that it smelled really funny.

#95

Jesus that’s gonna be like £2.2k a month. Obvs depends on salary though but that is high. We’re gonna go no higher than £1,500 pcm I think (which is about what rent you’d pay on a decent 2 bed anyway these days). Max out on overpayments over a 5 year fix so that when rates are inevitably higher we get less shafted upon renewal. That’s the plan anyway. The problem isn’t necessarily having a big mortgage, it’s more having a mortgage you’re starting to get tight with at a time of interest rates that are only going to go in one direction in the next few years (upwards).

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#96

I don’t follow.

#97

they tend to smell a bit like care homes- lots of bleach/ poo/ canteen whiffs.

#98

Yeah absolutely. I think it’s even more imperative with a mortgage because you’re at the mercy of interest rates. If a landlord jams the rent up at least you can move. If you got your mortgage at, say 4% and you can’t afford it at 8% that’s a real problem.

#99

It was kind of like… off porridge.

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#101

Easier to deal with spending 2000 on a mortgage out of 4000 total take home pay than 500 out of 1000

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#102

Probably was off porridge. Kids love it because it’s easy to eat, but kids will throw it round the place. Maybe they weren’t doing enough cleaning.

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#103

I think my take home (largely thanks to tax changes - my gross is actually less) is about £80 higher per month than it was twelve years ago. Part of that is retraining, but it’s also just austerity devaluing what I do. Great stuff.

I don’t really spend a lot on myself, mainly cos I spend a lot travelling to Edinburgh. In terms of economising tho. I guess my main tips would be just to find a way to track not just how much you spend but also what you spend it on?

Like, I obsessively track everything I spend through a spreadsheet. Started with my monthly take home pay, minus rent, multipled by twelve and divided by 52 to get a weekly figure. Put that into a week-by-week spreadsheet, and log every day what I spend. Really puts the amount you waste on inconsequential stuff (like lunches or takeaway coffee) into a bit of perspective. It’s so easy to do that, especially now that contactless is the norm. Gives me more cash to spend on actual useful stuff.

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#104

Budgeters:

I find Monzo really useful. Basically put a set amount on that every month as my “spending money”, then have a shared account for rent/bills/big shop, and then a couple of personal bills (phone etc) out of my personal account

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#106

Oh right. Yes. Many of the other essential costs don’t have the variance (is that the right word? Elasticity?) of rent/mortgage as well.

So someone on £1000 a month will be spending about the same on water bills as someone on £4000 a month.

#109

I use Monzo for precisely the same thing, and also have a series of pots set up on my account so I can squirrel little bits of money away for things here and there. Love it.

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#110

Fixed and variable costs, i’d say.

#111

Own brand fruit n fibre was 79c in tesco but the kellogs version was 4.99

Wtf???

Who is buying that??

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#112

Pretty terrible with money. It’s the downside of being very very sexy.

Flipside of that :-1:

#113

A lot of people think that “own brand” stuff is inferior. It’s a clever trick by the big brands - I’m sure that there an advertising campaign for something back in the 80s which said “we don’t make our produce for anyone else”.

There must have been a time when the margins between own brand and non were pretty small, but there’s been supermarket price wars for years. Maybe Fruit & Fibre is one of the supermarket loss leaders.

#114

Hopefully getting the visa/marriage stuff sorted in the new year so that will see my bank account revert back to something like normal.

She was just over here on a work trip for 2 weeks and I spent so much. She hasn’t been for a while so catching up with people, going to events / exhibitions, eating out a few times and hitting the daily Oyster card cap a few times made me all queasy.

#115

I don’t think that’s right. Fixed refers to things that don’t vary with output, and variable refers to costs that do.

It’s not really variance or elasticity either. I dunno.

#116

Now I’m in my thirties I need to stop spending like I’m going to be dead by thirty. That’s all I’ve got.

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