Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 03:20:15 PM

Login with username, password and session length

How much does one need, to actually live on?

Started by Fr.Bigley, May 05, 2021, 02:21:47 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Fr.Bigley

Like actually, a standard that isn't considered poor? Thoughts...


gib

Depends on accommodation costs and things like do you need to run a car for work or whatever.


imitationleather

One full intercourse with a lady per month minimum.

Retinend

I lived on a 800 Euros a month for about 9 months, with no savings behind it. I was a teaching assistant in a French Lycée (high school): Accomodation cost about 250 euros a month, all things included. I spent the rest on food and drink and the occasional train to Paris or elsewhere. My stay included accommodation alongside immigrant families in a public housing block that made up one of a complex of buildings which was mostly comprised of the school I taught in, a college for "le bac" (A levels) and the "GRETA" college for adult training courses. Where I lived, there were always kids hanging out, and I had a housemate who went to the college studying for his "bac". It was nice, in a way, to get by on so little and to have to correspondingly work so little. I was on the books for 12 hours a week but most of the English teachers were lazy and most of the time they would let me off my supposedly weekly appearance in their class. Several, I never even met. My person in charge of me, my "résponsable", a nice man called Renaud, said that a lot of French teachers feel like a native English speaker in the classroom undermines them. Oh, and they have a lot of holidays and bank holidays in France, which were all paid.

dissolute ocelot

UK median income is £585 per week gross which is apparently £468 net; median rent for a 1-bed flat is £625 per month (equals £144 per week). But obviously not in London. Power bills £61 pm = £15 pw for a small flat; plus broadband, phone etc.

I'd say with no dependents £200-£300 per week after income tax and rent and bills and commuting is probably do-able, depending on whether you like buying stuff or going on holiday or anything. Fuck knows how much children cost though, they're always breaking shit and killing pets and falling out of windows.

Icehaven

Very much depends on where you live and what your expectations are, the style to which you've become accustomed etc. In my first job after Uni (this was 2003) I was earning about £900 a month, my rent was £250, utility bills and transport, interest on loans etc. was about another £150-200 so I had about £450 left to eat and play with, which had usually run out a good week before payday. I certainly didn't think I was profligate by any means, largely because I felt perpetually skint, but having over £100 a week just for food, clothes and going out seems like loads, although it only takes a strategically placed birthday, wedding or work doo to decimate you in those circumstances. I probably made the common mistake of front loading too, going mad the first fortnight or so then having fuck all left for the rest of the month.

I earn a lot more now but I still don't have much left at the end of the month, although in my defence my bills are also a lot more now too and I'm trying to save so a chunk goes into a savings account at the start of each month. I've always been a fritterer as well, which is something lockdown did me a massive favour with, made me realise just how much I must casually spend while I'm going about my day, because I've paid off my overdraft and saved over a grand since last March. But then I don't have any kids, or a car, or a mortgage, and even in normal times I don't travel much. If I wanted to do any of those things I'd have to sell a kidney. 

druss

You're getting ripped off, I'll sort it for a tenner mate.

Icehaven

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on May 05, 2021, 03:43:44 PM
median rent for a 1-bed flat is £625 per month (equals £144 per week).


I'm renting a 2 bedroom semi detached house with a garden for that. It's in the depths of the Black Country but it's a perfectly OK area, there's canals and everything. Previously I've lived in many 1 and 2 bedroom flats and the most they've been is £500 a month, even just a few years ago. I know things have gone up quite a bit in recent years but I'm sure there's still a lot of 1 bed flats out there that are considerably less than £625 a month.

cptwhite

Gutter shit dweller = £800 per month
Makes underwear from microfibre cloths = £1000 per month
Shops at charity stores / aldi = £1200 per month
Shops at primark / asda = £1400 per month
Buys branded biscuits = £1500 per month
Birdseye wanker = £1600 per month
Tesco twat / car driver = £1800 per month
Holidays in the UK / Eastern Europe and buys Heinz = £1900 per month
Lives in a semi-detatched = £2000 per month
Goes for meals out = £2200 per month
Owns a car less than 5 years old = £2400 per month
Shops at M&S food hall = £3000 per month

Zetetic

Quote from: bgmnts on May 05, 2021, 02:28:08 PM
I'd say a few grand a month, minimum.
Assuming you've got no dependants and - like bgmnts and myself - live in the former-East-Germany of Britain, then I reckon £2000 (post-tax, pre-housing costs) is enough to be free of worrying.

Zetetic

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on May 05, 2021, 03:43:44 PM
But obviously not in London.
You can get a first-class rail ticket from Paddington to Cardiff for under £80 - a worthwhile investment.

Buelligan

Quote from: cptwhite on May 05, 2021, 03:54:30 PM
Gutter shit dweller = £800 per month

A little over 800€ pcm, I live in paradise.

mothman

737  thousand dollars, according to a figure Walt jotted  down  in Breaking Bad. Of course that was  over  a decade ago and was based on the cost of living in  Albuquerque.

kittens

after rent & bills i have £700 a month just for me, so about £175 a week. thankfully i work full time for this money so i do not have much time that needs filling with expensive things like entertainment and food.

imitationleather

I have done the numbers and worked out that if I migrated over to posting exclusively on Substack and made every member on here pay £8/month to read them then this would be a lot of money.

bakabaka

For a couple with a newborn baby - £10 per week according to the DSS, but thankfully that was only for 3 months.

After that, for a couple with 2 kids and no rent or car - £500-£600 a month.

Since lockdown, for a couple with one resident adult offspring, £1200 a month. Never had this much disposable income before, roll on Covid 22!

canadagoose

I reckon I'd do pretty well on £25k per year before tax. Even less if I worked from home, probably.

mothman

It really has to depend on why your outgoings are. What's the benchmark or baseline? Shared occupation of a rental property, no car, that sort of thing?

In the early 00s when I was unemployed and MrsMoth was in a £30k job, so around 2k per month take home, we had an interest only mortgage (~350pcm) and residual payments on one car (~225) meaning about 400pw (for insurance, rates, food etc.) and that was a struggle.

Jump forward a decade and we're both in work, about 25k each tops. That's a take home of just over 1500pcm each, maybe. But now we had two kids, repayment mortgage of 750pcm, car 300 and - worst of all - childcare that topped 700pcm sometimes. We had about 300pw for everything else and that was a REAL struggle.

Zetetic


Zetetic

Nigh-simultaneously if you're prepared to put some effort in.

kittens

i am the best at being poor on cab. absolutely the very best at being poor here and no exceptions. sure some people may be more poor, but i am better at being poor than they are. try me. the very best.

GoblinAhFuckScary

#23
i've never earned enough to even be taxed. honestly the thought of earning even 18k seems a promise of paradise and i don't understand how people that earn more than me seem to have such enormous expenses

Non Stop Dancer

To live well but not decadently and never worry about bills or small luxuries, retain a nice buffer for a rainy day, and set aside a decent amount for retirement, I reckon about £75k for a couple is about right, although regional differences will of course apply.

katzenjammer

We are a family of two adults and two teenagers and I did the math last month. For our mortgage, bills, taxes, supermarket food, car, transport, netflix etc and the kids activities and allowances we spend €2660. I was trying to find ways of reducing it and didn't come up with much. We could get rid of the car which would save a couple of hundred I guess.

Like icehaven said, where you live is key I think. Moving to a cheap area could drastically reduce your living expenses without negatively affecting your quality of life. I was chatting to one of my MIL's neighbours in rural france a couple of years back and as a retired couple they live very well on €20K per year, that is without paying a mortgage but houses there are extremely cheap compared to the UK. My only hope of retiring one day would be to do something similar.

mothman

Quote from: Zetetic on May 05, 2021, 05:00:38 PM
You can get rid of a car or a child.

Nearly did, wouldn't recommend, the long term PTSD and resultant enforced career break just lowered the take-home as a result.

Quote from: GoblinAhFuckScary on May 05, 2021, 05:08:07 PM
i've never earned enough to even be taxed. honestly the thought of earning even 18k seems a promise of paradise and i don't understand how people that earn more than me seem to have such enormous expenses. decadent wankers

That's one I can answer. By and large, whatever you earn (and I've been all over the shop) you spend accordingly. You think you're going to live frugally and just save so much money... but you don't. In neither scenario I mentioned above did we live extravagantly. A takeaway was a luxury. Holidays unachievable (we did have them, but usually because my mum would give us some money for it). I'd get money for my birthday - and spend it on food. A John Lewis voucher from my gran? Spent in Waitrose on food. Or one from M&S? Off to the food hall.

GoblinAhFuckScary

Quote from: mothman on May 05, 2021, 05:21:37 PM
That's one I can answer. By and large, whatever you earn (and I've been all over the shop) you spend accordingly. You think you're going to live frugally and just save so much money... but you don't. In neither scenario I mentioned above did we live extravagantly. A takeaway was a luxury. Holidays unachievable (we did have them, but usually because my mum would give us some money for it). I'd get money for my birthday - and spend it on food. A John Lewis voucher from my gran? Spent in Waitrose on food. Or one from M&S? Off to the food hall.

i get that. i scrubbed off my wankers comment because i realise that attitude is just pissy and short sighted. all too easy to paint the middle class as parasites when they're not really our true enemies

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: mothman on May 05, 2021, 05:21:37 PM
That's one I can answer. By and large, whatever you earn (and I've been all over the shop) you spend accordingly. You think you're going to live frugally and just save so much money... but you don't. In neither scenario I mentioned above did we live extravagantly. A takeaway was a luxury. Holidays unachievable (we did have them, but usually because my mum would give us some money for it). I'd get money for my birthday - and spend it on food. A John Lewis voucher from my gran? Spent in Waitrose on food. Or one from M&S? Off to the food hall.

It's certainly quite easy to have wages grow quite a bit on paper and not have anything really noticeable to show for it. Especially if you don't find money burns a hole in your pocket and you're just about comfortable in a way that you don't have to account for every penny but can reasonably accurately guess your bank balance I reckon - allows some things to grow but it'd take a lot of tedious admin to figure out why.

the science eel

Quote from: Retinend on May 05, 2021, 03:27:12 PM
I lived on a 800 Euros a month for about 9 months, with no savings behind it. I was a teaching assistant in a French Lycée (high school): Accomodation cost about 250 euros a month, all things included. I spent the rest on food and drink and the occasional train to Paris or elsewhere. My stay included accommodation alongside immigrant families in a public housing block that made up one of a complex of buildings which was mostly comprised of the school I taught in, a college for "le bac" (A levels) and the "GRETA" college for adult training courses. Where I lived, there were always kids hanging out, and I had a housemate who went to the college studying for his "bac". It was nice, in a way, to get by on so little and to have to correspondingly work so little. I was on the books for 12 hours a week but most of the English teachers were lazy and most of the time they would let me off my supposedly weekly appearance in their class. Several, I never even met. My person in charge of me, my "résponsable", a nice man called Renaud, said that a lot of French teachers feel like a native English speaker in the classroom undermines them. Oh, and they have a lot of holidays and bank holidays in France, which were all paid.

I lived in several different European cities (none of them particularly expensive, I have to say) between 2000 and 2017 and it averaged out around 800 euros/month for everything too. I still find it a wee bit surprising when folk in the UK say things like 'you need a couple of thousand a month at least'.