While developing ‘our way’ and learning about financial independence, we found reviewing other people’s spending really helpful. We can all learn something from each other because there’s so many ways of doing things!
To this end, we aim to regularly summarise our spending for comparison. It will also act as an accountability test for us, meaning we have to justify every purchase!
We will break our main expenses down into categories, starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else falls broadly into the entertainment/miscellaneous category, with any large inclusions explained in detail.
So here it is – our March 2019 spending!
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | £961 | See below |
| Food | £287 | See below |
| Transport | £301 | See below |
| Entertainment/misc | £395 | See below |
| Total | £1,944 |
For this first post in the series we will break each category down into even more detail below.
Housing
The housing category consists of our mortgage payment, overpayments, bills, insurance, DIY costs etc. These are broken down below.
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mortgage | £467 | |
| Overpayment | £283 | We pay £750 total per month and have done since buying the house |
| Gas & Electricity | £66 | Direct Debit amount, actually more as winter but evens out to about this amount |
| Council Tax | £98 | |
| Internet | £11 | |
| DIY | £36 | Fixings and screwdriver for fitting new shelves! |
| Total | £961 |
Our mortgage payment is fairly low in comparison to our peers. We live in the north of England where housing is fairly cheap. We also chose to live in a sensible location rather than going ‘up market’ and stretching our finances, like many of our peers. This meant our house cost us £135,000 when peers from work etc regularly spend £300,000+!
Mr Way’s office is within walking distance of our house and we are in a good location for all of Miss Way’s workplaces – these are scattered throughout the area. We are next door to a park and near lots of shops.
Our house is a 3 bedroom terrace. We feel like this is more than enough space for our needs and actually somewhat extravagant! We even have a whole room dedicated to exercise! Most of our peers fell into the trap of buying much larger properties in more ‘affluent’ areas. This is a prime example of lifestyle inflation, as large mortgage payments can really hamper your ability to save.
Food
Within the last month, we have been on a drive to reduce our food budget while keeping the same quality and variety of diet – we love our food! Up until recently we had a weekly shopping budget of £80 (between 2 people) which was close to our average spend.
Going back a few years before we started this journey, we would regularly spend over £100! We have since managed to reduce this to £50 with a few minor changes. Again, we intend to post about this separately so will spare the detail for now.
It is worth pointing out that this category includes everything we buy from the supermarket. This includes toiletries, cleaning products, birthday cards etc.
Because of where the weekends fell this month we ended up doing 5 weekly shops within March so other months we hope to reduce the total in this category.
Transport
Miss Way owns a car. Mr Way does not and walks to work / most places. Recently, Miss Way has increasingly used her bike (second hand!) to commute to work rather than drive, when possible. This journey also involves a train journey hence the tickets itemised below.
While this is probably cost neutral compared to driving, it has had a significant impact on mental health. Combining exercise into your daily routine is a double whammy and we would strongly advise it!
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MOT | £55 | Annual expense, usually needs some minor work doing too! |
| Diesel | £153 | Mainly Miss Way’s work |
| Train Fares | £85 | Part of Miss Way’s bike + train + bike commute |
| Fuel Cleaner | £8 | |
| Total | £301 |
We were pleasantly surprised when the car passed its annual MOT without any work needed! The car is now 12 years old and has 155,000 miles on the clock. When we bought it 4 years ago the first garage we went to told us to scrap it (haha!!). We haven’t been back to that garage since and the car has done fine thank you very much!
Entertainment/Miscellaneous
This is the category for everything else! In our annual budgets we allow £1,000 for holidays, but this year we have totally blown that as mentioned in A FIRE Trial Run. This was a big decision for us but we feel it’s worthwhile and will help us BE PRESENT! We’re due to pay most of the cost of this trip over the next few months so this budget category will take a real battering!
We also allow £40 per week for our ‘weekend budget’. This includes going out with friends, journeys away etc. These allowances are a guide for us. We try to keep within these amounts on average, but they obviously fluctuate massively.
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| TV License | £12 | |
| Lottery | £10 | A bit of fun but we also like the charitable side of this, particularly the grants for sports venues which we have benefited from first hand |
| Sport Club Membership (Annual) | £156 | Mr Way’s membership renewal for the year. |
| Stag Do Spending | £90 | Doesn’t include the actual hotel and activities amounts as they were paid ages ago! |
| Sun Cream and Mosquito Repellent for Africa trip | £22 | * See note below |
| Mother’s Day | £16 | |
| Family Birthdays | £20 | |
| Seeing Friends | £13 | Salsa class & coffee! |
| Sports Team Costs | £10 | Match fees and floodlights |
| Professional Fees | £23 | |
| Hair Cut | £8 | |
| Total | £395 |
* Note – this spending was part of an offer on Quidco. If you spent £20 with any retailer Quidco were offering a bonus £20 cashback ON TOP of the cashback already offered by the retailer. So we spent £22, we get £20 back from Quidco and we get £1.38 from Amazon. So a total spend of 62p!!! Logging as the full price for now as the cashback is still pending. If you join Quidco via this link and get £5 cashback, you’ll get a bonus £10 and so will we! Winners all round 🙂
Let us know if you find this helpful or if you want any more information on particular areas. How do we compare to your spending? Have you got any tips on how we could improve?
I love to see people’s actual figures. Thank you so much for sharing. I am jealous that your council tax is so low. Living in South Wales and in a largish house ours is over £200 per month. You have done well on your food bill and I think we spend around the same. I now have a Tesco credit card and pay for most things on it, so that gives me points which gets money off the shopping bill each month. Unfortunately my job means I need a car, but I do get an allowance from my employer as well as mileage payments on top of that. Mine is nine years old and done nearly 100,000 miles – I hope it keeps going as long as yours!
Hi Sam!
We found other people’s spending really interesting, so felt obliged to share! Really glad you appreciate it. It also means we have a target to try and improve each month which adds a bit of fun!
The Tesco card is a good idea we’ll definitely look into that.
Sounds like you get a fairly good deal on the car, fingers crossed it has a lot more miles left in it!
Well done on getting the blog started.
I’m really impressed that you managed to resist the herd and not buy a bigger house. It’s so tempting and by doing what you’ve done, you’ve saved a considerable amount of time to get to FI.
Are you planning on sharing the income side of the equation as well? Unless I’ve missed the post somewhere on your blog, I can’t help but feel without the income there isn’t the context. I’m not saying you should reveal it to us. It’s a very personal choice. I’m just itching for more that’s all.
Keep doing what you’re doing and before long, you’re get to where you want to be.
CFC
Thanks CFC 🙂
The income side of things is an interesting one – we’ve discussed this a lot recently between us. We’re still a bit uncomfortable sharing this, mainly because if someone who knows us reads this site, it’s obvious it’s us from various things we say! We aren’t sure we’re comfortable with them knowing our incomes, especially if colleagues find this site.
The other side of it is that Miss Way is mostly self employed and works for a lot of different employers, so the income gets pretty complex to track accurately. I guess I (Mr Way) could report my savings rate as an alternative – we’re still trying to decide the best way forward here though. Thanks for the input and watch this space!
Hi A Way to Less,
Another option could be to remove the numbers that you have in this article, and turn them into a percentage of your salary / combined income or however you want to specify it.
I don’t generally post anything about numbers in my blog, and try to keep percentages as much as possible. I know that its then harder for people to relate, however, providing a percentage can possibly be more relevant to a readers situation. Either way, be happy in what you show!
Matt
Thanks for the ideas Matt.
We really wanted to share our spending because we found that really useful when reading other blogs. I think we’ll probably end up reporting all spending and then giving a general idea of our overall savings rate at the end of the year. That way it’s fairly transparent but without directly sharing salaries.
Anyway, we’ll work it out as we go 🙂