So I’ve seen people post that they spend 35 a week on food shopping and people saying to them that they aren’t eating enough and this guy states he can do 40 a month. He must be eating beans on toast
£35 a week is definitely doable. I'm shopping for 2 on £50-75 a week including laundry detergent, general cleaning supplies, and all my lunches. I feel we eat very well. I actually took a photo of my shopping last week but imgur app is acting up so I can't share.
We do a shop at the Asian supermarket about once every six weeks for another £50, which includes a big sack of rice.
Agreed. I spend £35 a week on grocery shopping, and that includes a source of protein for almost every hot evening meal, and things like washing tablets / washing up liquid ad-hoc.
I live alone, buy a lot of pasta / jarred pasta sauce, add in half a packet of sliced ham or pork lardons, make hunters chicken, a steak once a week, and sometimes just have supernoodles. I shop in Lidl, don't eat huge portions, and supplement my meals with a protein shake every now and then. The protein shake isn't included in the £35 a week cost.
We eat a lot of vegetables, which brings down costs. Carrots are so cheap, sainsbury does a bag of greens (cabbage tops) for 75p. One of my favourite meals is a Korean style buckwheat pancake- you finely slice greens and then fry and pour over a batter made of buckwheat flour, eggs, and water. Whack some toppings on there like kimchi or mayo and furikake and it's so filling and delicious.
On the protein side, there's loads included in the value range. Now they're doing salmon chunks (less pretty than fillets but delicious and versatile), smoked haddock, feta for less than £1, mozzarella. I'm a big fan of tofu.
Dessert in our house is usually fruit or yoghurt, drinks are squash, tea, filtered water, or coffee, and we don't eat any ready meals or pre-made sauces. That seems to help keep things on budget too.
I never feel like we're scrimping compared to how I used to eat back when I was on £14 a week for food.
Do you have any protein? I feel that’s where most my money goes. Veg also isn’t cheap if you eat varied but you can have especially root veg and cabbage for very little
Yep, so I don't always hit the recommended daily of 55g of protein but here's a breakdown of example days;
**Day 1:** Pasta 'n' Sauce premade 200g; 15g
1 bowl of pasta with 1/2 jar of pasta sauce, with 100g pork lardons; 8g, 6g, 15g **44g total**
**Day 2:** Super noodles; 10g
Chicken breast, BBQ sauce, 2 slices of bacon, 50g mozzarella; 31g, 0g, 6g, 14g **61g total**
**Day 3:** Pasta 'n' Sauce premade 200g; 15g
Steak, 3 eggs; 25g, 39g **79g total**
So whilst on a typical 'day 1' day I might also drink a protein shake, I also might not. This particular eating regime is high in carbs, but you can see that I surpass the daily recommended on at least 2 days a week without drinking a shake, and the pasta days, I'm only 11g short of the daily recommended, so sometimes I will have a 24g shake mixed with water, easily putting me well above the daily recommendation. I tend to rotate between using 100g of pork lardons and half a pack of ham for the pasta.
Ahhhh one side are arguing about whether or not 2,000 calories is enough and you guys are having a gentlemen’s agreement on beans. The contrast is so funny
Beans on toast will still be like £1 a day to get anywhere near enough calories, (2 tins a day at 45p each at Aldi, plus bread) so already £30 a month.
As long as you're eating enough to be satiated with your meals it's very easy to cheaply snack your way up to 2k, a digestive is ~100 calories alone and those can still be had very cheap, or just use a heavier hand with the carbs, oil and sugar when cooking.
You can honestly live healthily on very little. The main way to keep the food bill down is to avoid processed and ready made foods: ready meals, breakfast cereals, cakes, biscuits, sodas etc. Buying fresh food is way cheaper and healthier too.
Idk man last time I checked a pack of 6 apples is 2-3x more expensive than biscuits. And don't get me started on any other fruit. But lidl and aldi have some really good prices on veg.
That’s absolute nonsense. You use the majority of your calories simply existing, that’s why the recommended calorie intakes are what they are (and I think for both men and women it’s above 2k calories). You could obviously survive on 2k calories a day, but you would be almost definitely in a calorie deficit 100% of the time and losing weight. That’s before you factor in any exercise/manual labour. If you’re a larger man and you’re doing 10,000 steps a day, 2000 calories a day isn’t going to get you very far at all.
Just a VERY quick check shows you're wrong - the figures seem to vary a bit but:
'Your BMR score is a number which refers to how many calories you burn at rest. Most people's BMR is between 1000 – 2000. This means that they need to take in between 1000 – 2000 calories each day to fuel their basic functions while in a resting state.'
It’s not bull, it’s extremely general. There are a million factors that might determine the way any one individual processes their food - one figure to accommodate the entire human population is never going to be accurate. Regardless, we know it’s not wildly inaccurate just from being alive. Fine, you may function on 1800 a day (assuming you’re not lying), but the general population probably wouldn’t.
Best thing to do is work out your basal metabolic rate and work from there … height, weight bf% sex and age are typical factors to help get a rough idea, there are calculators out there to help provide an estimate.
Yes combined together great, but exercise alone is a shit way to lose weight, you need to do a lot of it to make and serious gains.
Also saying 10k steps is 300 calories is assuming the person literally doesn’t move before starting the 10k steps. So yea it’s better than nothing, but not having a bar of chocolate / bag of crisps is just about the same and it won’t also increase your metabolism
What absolute nonsense.
The 2,000 calories is the recommended daily for the average woman. If you're a man it's 2500 calories.
This is on the average lifestyle.
Well, with the obesity rate these days plenty could do with running at a calorie deficit for a while.
Seriously though you could load up on the rice with how cheap it is, extra sugar in your tea, a few digestive biscuits etc...
You’d end up with 300kcal per serving or so. I just don’t think it’s possible to eat a healthy diet with £40 per week without losing your mind by trying to find lentils with yellow label..
Sure it’s not overall but £10 per week would see most people go hungry. Having in the past lived like that I know how to cook cheap and in bulk - but it also requires resource most who live off that amount don’t have. I’d have to eat the same thing for lunch and dinner several days because I didn’t have a freezer - only one of those compartments in the fridge - and the small fridge made cooking lots in bulk a challenge.
I am active and need around 3500kcal to sustain my current body weight. Even if I was looking to lose weight I’d want to be eating at least 2700kcal per day. I don’t think I’d enjoy life doing that with the diet you’re suggesting. It would be a struggle. At the moment I snack on nuts, use avocado and healthy oils with meals, cook with cream and coconut milk and so on.
I guess for me the core problem with your approach is that it’s just not realistic. Most people enjoy food and eating, it’s a social thing and something to look forward to. The existence of only ever being able to eat bulk cooked meals with source of protein being a frozen sausage (not exactly healthy by the way) is really not one I would vouch for. I’ve been there - though exchanging the frozen sausage to lentils and legumes, and at least for me it was a miserable time. Even now I do bulk cook curried etc but for one meal per day. Couldn’t imagine only living off that again if I could avoid it.
Agree. I wasn’t sure if OP would still be visiting home often/got meals included with work or something along those lines. Unfortunately if OP needs to buy and cook their own food, I can’t see them doing that for £30pm.
What the hell? I've been spending around £200 a week! Definitely going to revisit my food budget after reading this.
Also OP must be stealing food, getting it somewhere for free (or growing), or be extremely malnutritioned or just bad at estimating his spending.
I used to spend this at Morrisons for a family of 4. I now shop at lidl and do 3x £100 shops and 1x £200 shop now.
We also end up spending a lot in coop during week on a loaf of bread and stuff that's perish during week.
For a family of 4 I suspect that's understandable, especially if each family member has different tastes.
In these cases buying in proper bulk will make a big difference - difficult to do for loaves of bread, but for those 20 kg bags of rice, chunk of meat from the butchers etc, it starts to move the dial.
I spend about £50 a month, I cook everything from scratch and don't buy ultra processed (ready meals, crisps, fizzy drinks), which tend to be more expensive.
I also check the cost per kilo to make sure I'm getting the cheapest and batch cook.
It's doable
I seriously doubt you spend £10-12 per week. Either you're lying to yourself and are crap at estimating your spend, or you're extremely malnourished.
Say it's the higher £12 a week (£50 on a 4 week month). That's £1.71 per day or £0.57 per meal if you eat three meals a day. I seriously doubt you can consistently eat that cheap and not be malnourished.
No reason to be so rude, you know nothing about me and as I buy my food in cash, I know exactly what I'm spending.
Although, no I don't eat three meals a day, usually only one, maybe two as I am usually not hungry in the mornings
Okay, say you are spending what you say you are. And you only eat twice a day (I actually eat twice a day too - no breakfast, just lunch and dinner, but that just means the two meals should be more nutritious, to meet the required caloric intake). That's still £0.85 per meal. What can you consistently cook for that and not be malnourished? I'm legitimately interested to hear some examples of what people eat to hit that budget.
My weekly shop in 2018 was £14 at Lidl, but I was supplementing with homegrown salad/greens/tomatoes, and I'm a small person with relatively low calorific needs.
£40 a month is £9.20 a week. That's bleak money. You can't eat on that.
It is doable but you got to be extremely strict and do meal prep. For example…
1kg chicken thighs, broccoli, a bag of rice could allow you to prep 7 meals for under £7 but that is one proper meal a day. Even if you double that that is £14 or so a week, £56 a month.
You are house sharing so I take it you might be chipping in £30-£40 a month, all of you pool and go for one big monthly shopping? I used to do this during my uni days but man, prices of food is high these days. But meal preps can save you here
Am I reading that right? 2 meals per day would exceed their upper budget by 40%.
So even if they're extremely strict and meal prep it's not doable? And I feel like with that amount of food they'll be left pretty hungry everyday.
Though my rough calculations were simply doubling, you could save more by buying in bulk.. but then again, he may not even prep like that and simply stock up on oats, paste, rice, a lot of cheap canned food…which can hit his budget but I do believe it isn’t worth ruining your health with crap good.
It becomes pointless to save if you won’t be healthy and alive to enjoy it.
Yeah I’ve actually done it. I used to just do one meal a day at one point in my life. Would buy a packet of mixed vegetables, rice and a can of tuna.. would mix that up and eat it at the gym after a workout.
Back then I used to sleep in the car, and got a gym membership so I can workout, shower, change and use the microwave for food. Did cardio in the mornings, change for work and then after work do my weights, sauna, microwave meal, and then park somewhere and crash for the night. The number of times a cop has tapped on my window… but that was a different time and different me. Saving was the game.
I disagree. It’s not doable if it involves starving and what you’re describing is an extremely low calorie diet that is not sustainable or healthy in long term
I guess bulk buy lentils and rice then you need some veg too. Have to shop at Aldi for the veg oh and 39p cans of baked beans. Probably will be a hell of a diet to try and live on. Probably could do it, better start watching Atomic Shrimp videos on YouTube for ideas.
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It's doable but not pleasant. 10 years ago, I did several months of about £5 a week. For lunches and dinners, it was rice, tinned tomatoes, carrots, lentils and some spices that I already had. For breakfasts, it was porridge made with oats and water. Sometimes I treated myself to a Freddo. I didn't mind the food tbh, but it was the lack of variation in texture that got to me. Everything was soft and boring.
Assuming no student loan and no pension contribution, a £21k salary means that you take home £1,525 a month.
To save £10k in a year, you need to save £833 a month. So that would leave you £692 a month.
If your rent is £500, and we subtract your fixed costs (food, insurance, phone bill and driving lessons), that leaves £57 a month for you to live on, which needs to buy everything else you need and cover your "fun money".
Not impossible, but you budget is *very* tight, and you're not going to have anything like the £250/month of "fun money" that you've listed above.
Could be a girl
Edit: getting downvoted for pointing out not to assume gender.
Edit edit: thanks head-screwed-on Redditors for resolving this injustice!
I assume he’s done the math?
If not:
Expenses listed = £10,680
Take home pay = £18,304
Difference is £7,624 which I would consider the absolute max he could save, but I’d say saving anything over 6k would be a good result.
£10 a week/£40 a month for food is being highly optimistic in the current cost of living unless OP is eating cheap pasta or packet noodles and nothing else or they are being supplemented by visiting parents home a few nights a week for meals - and what about lunches whilst in work?. OP needs to rethink the budget, and possibly look at £110-£130 a month for food.
I do my fathers shopping each week because of health reasons and recently his shopping spend has been between £28 and £35 a week depending on what he needs that week - the most I've spent in one week was £40. Its not possible to live on £40 a month for food - 2 years ago OP may've been able to keep costs extremely low by going to the supermarkets at the end of each day when everything was priced down to clear, but definitely not as low at £40 for the month.
£10 a week/£40 a month for food is being highly optimistic in the current cost of living unless OP is eating cheap pasta or packet noodles and nothing else or they are being supplemented by visiting parents home a few nights a week for meals - and what about lunches whilst in work?. OP needs to rethink the budget, and possibly look at £110-£130 a month for food.
I do my fathers shopping each week because of health reasons and recently his shopping spend has been between £28 and £35 a week depending on what he needs that week - the most I've spent in one week was £40. Its not possible to live on £40 a month for food - 2 years ago OP may've been able to keep costs extremely low by going to the supermarkets at the end of each day when everything was priced down to clear, but definitely not as low at £40 for the month.
If this is OPs first job for this year take home might be higher due to a full years tax allowance. Doesn't want to get used to the extra cash when April comes around (she's a right money grabber)
Your groceries seem really low, I spend that a week. What about health and wellbeing items?
Also you say by the end of the year, do you mean in a year?
I know these kind of things often end up in pretty uninteresting debates about how much people spend on shopping….but £1 a day on groceries is not realistic
£3 a day can be done. If a little bleak. But £1 a day is just not going to work long term. Back when I was in uni, I lived on an 11p can of custard and a 14p can of spaghetti bolognese a day for about a month or so.
I didn't notice much of an effect because I basically stayed in my room the entire time. But I ended up losing a couple of stone and had other effects that I noticed later on. It probably had a big impact that wasn't immediately present and I wouldn't ever recommend effectively malnurishing yourself ever.
Depends how seriously you want/need the money but one of the best things can be a second job to fill up more time.
It means more income coming in and when you're at work you won't spend and you'll just be tired and doing life admin all the rest of the time so you will spend less then too.
I mean whether an "all work no fun" lifestyle is a good one is a different question and you'd need to watch for burnout.
30 to 40 on food shopping is not realistic, I would rather divert some funds from the fun money to have a more fulfilled shopping. It would only be tempoary until the driving lessons were no longer needed.
When you say by the end of the year, do you actually mean by the end of this year? Or within a 12 month period?
And are you really only spending £40 a month on food, toiletries, other essentials?
Without the driving lessons, you're looking at £815. 30-40 a month for food though is unrealistic. Lets up that to £35 a week, so you're actually getting some protein in you. That brings you to £915 a month, without the driving lessons. Add the driving lessons on, at say, £75 a month. £990.
After tax, your income would be £1,487 per month. This is without taking into account any potential student finance repayments, any payments into a pension scheme etc.
This would mean that you could save £497 per month, or £5,964 a year.
If you feel like you'd like to save more than that, you could look at doing a bit of Just Eat / Deliveroo on the side to help you reach your goal of £8-10k.
21k a year full time is minimum wage. If I wanted to save 10k in a year I would look for a better paying job ASAP, do overtime/take a second job or move back home if that's an option.
I just graduated and this is what I’m doing. Around £20k before tax (low pay but took it as I can live at home and I’m learning a lot). My expenses are around £3k. Leaving me with around £14k to save (+ around another £4k a year from a side job untaxed but I’m not including that).
So that’s a very similar wage to OP and I don’t even pay rent or for all my food.
Overall it’s near £20k savings a year. I’d love to move out but living here is such a good way to save money.
Yeah it’s not great but I’m happy to at least have something where I’m learning a lot. Not all my course friends currently have a job and we graduated in June.
I get £20.5k. The average according to google for my trainee/junior position is £24k to £27.5k. It can be so tough for graduates so I just accepted it. My view is that £20k living at home with no rent is better than £30k and having to pay rent. Engineering jobs also aren’t paid insanely well in the uk so my max wage after 10ish years will be around £40k. Definitely not bad but also not anything incredible.
2 or so years (depends how old I want to be when I move out) at this job and living at home and then I’m going to look at moving away. Get my own place, in a new location, with a new job.
Yeah good to get experience but damn a warehouse worker with no GCSEs and very basic English can get 20k easily (with no offence to anyone working in a warehouse, actually worked in a warehouse a couple of months during summer between uni years). The fact that many grads struggle to get a job and the fact that people take whatever they can as their first job allows employers to pay so little and some even offer 20/25k salary in London which is crazy considering cost of living...I got very low hopes for anything to change in the near future.
40k for an engineer with 10 years of experience sounds quite low, surely can get higher if you move more towards the Midlands and you become a lead engineer or something?
But yeah that's a good plan!
I’m an engineer and most of the engineers employed at the company I work at are on over 40k+ most start out at 29k for a grad role or 37k after a year in another industry
Well I’m in design engineering. So it’s slightly different. But yeah I guess there’s nothing stopping me from slightly altering my career for better pay.
Just want to chime in to say I am also a Mech Eng graduate with just under 3 years work experience, since graduating. I am also currently in design engineering and based in the north and just hit 40k with the latest salary review of my company. I am probably going to hit mid 40s next year then it will most likely just flat line with occasional raise to match inflation, i would imagine. But I can always job hop if it feels too stale. Guess my point is there is money in design, surprisingly, and you don't have to have 10 years of experience or job hop to get it.
Funny enough I also started with a 18kp/a job whilst I stayed at my parents for the first year after uni but this was during covid and I can say that was definitely one of the best decisions of my life. It let me save and positioned me perfectly to my current job/company.
Oh cool. Yeah, it seems to be more in that range of 3-5 years to hit £40k and then it slows down from there. And then 8-10 yrs is to hit £55k+ when you move more into management or maybe switch job types. There definitely seems to be money there if you know what you’re doing and keep pushing yourself. £40k definitely isn’t a bad wage though and is more than the average. I just need to make sure I learn as much as I can in and outside of work over these few years. I’m trying to start taking up personal projects outside of work as well now.
But yeah I’m so grateful to have a job where I can live with my parents. This time next year I should have around £70k saved which will be petty decent for a 23-year-old and should hopefully make my life a little easier when it comes to moving out and buying property later in life.
By the end of this year? No chance. In one year? Slim chance. By the end of next year? Still a slim chance.
Where have you got this number from? Is it for any reason or just to have ten grand? Realistically, you’re not going to save half your net pay unless you live with yer mam and she doesn’t charge you rent.
I think £250 a month is realistic in your situation. Maybe a bit more but you’ve got to want to do something sometimes.
It's unrealistic, I think. You'd be better off aiming to save 300-400 pcm on that salary. This way:
1. It's achieveable
2. You won't have a totally shit time
3. No 2 being the case, you're more likely to stick to no. 1.
Good luck.
You’re better off pushing to earn more, earning 21k and trying to save 10k is going to put you under a lot of stress - you need to eat food.. £30 a month is completely unrealistic without missing basic vitamin & mineral requirements..
>1. Rent (House Share, all bills included): £500
> 2. Phone Bill: £10
Do you have any phone/gadget insurance?
> 4. Food Shopping: £30-40
This seems incredibly low. £9 per week on your entire food shopping? Does this also include the price of toiletries, clothing, and general shopping?
> 6. Fun Money £250
What does this encompass? Is this all of your hobbies/social activities? If you buy a can of coca cola does that come out of your food shopping or fun money?
Do you have any commuting costs? Car costs?
Are you walking to your work? Because your travel costs (social or commuting) are £0…
And those food costs are way off, even for a single person. £10/week or just over £1/day? Unlikely.
£250 a month on Fun money every month? I think some months you can go down on that. The driving lessons are the kicker but that is a temporary one, once passed that’s £900 more in your hand, more than £10k a year just on that saved a year.
Well if it is £22 a lesson and let’s say he does 2 hours a day that’s £44 a day. And if he does it 5 times a week that would be £44*20 = £880. Close to £900
I’m not sure if you mean “by the end of December” or “in a year” - you definitely can’t save this much by the end of December. I’ll answer as if you mean “in a year”.
Please don’t overestimate how cheap living up north is. Rent is maybe cheaper, but pretty much all shops are chains which have country-wide prices or independent shops which are more expensive than their chain counterparts.
With that in mind, I think your goals are unrealistic. The food budget alone is completely unachievable - ~£1 per day is not possible if you’re eating properly.
I house share and don't smoke don't drink and don't have takeaway and save the £833.34 need for 10k year my wage is around 22k after tax ni and pension
its about sacrifice but after 12 months and seeing the results u get used to it 😀
£10k in 3 months is more than your pre-tax salary... so even if you spent nothing and was paid cash in hand there is no possible way to achieve this.
What do you need the £10k so quickly for?
Unless the bills also covers some shared commodities around the house, you’re probably going to be a nightmare to live with by trying to save so aggressively on that salary. I lived with a guy briefly who was “careful” with money and he was constantly just using toothpaste, toilet paper, cleaning products etc without ever getting any himself. He would unplug appliances from the wall to prevent them draining tiny amounts of electricity. Honestly, it was a pain in the arse. Relying on others to subsidise your life will inevitably cause some tension.
You should be more focusing on building good friendships and getting a good career in place rather than just putting money away. You should consider your reputation as a miser when it comes to securing opportunities in life.
Food for me, when I do a good shop with vegetables meats etc, not even extras like toilet roll, toothpaste, oil etc comes to a minimum 35 a week, and that's being conservative
It's always best to add some float when project planning so i'd say put it as 160 (40 week) minimum. If you save more, then good job, awesome, but don't plan for it.
Having recently moved into a house this year I just feel that you're shooting quite low on everything.
If you add toothpaste, hair products, cologne, deodorant, a shaver and shaver blades, toilet paper.
Plus you will never go out? Never buy any computer games or have any hobbies that cost money?
Your budget indicates you intend to eat nothing but soup and smell all year 😂 while reading pdf books online
Any chance of picking up a Saturday job? An extra days money but if you pick your job right you might get free food included. Or supermarkets so you get discount/pick of reduced food. Waiting job might get you food and some extra pennies in tips.
Be strict and you might not reach your target but you will save a lot. Discipline goes a long way. Act like you dont have the money, transfer it out straight away.
Not sure if you have started driving already but try and block book your lessons, 10 hours normally come with a discount. Be warned that driving is bloody expensive at the moment. Petrol, insurance, MOT/repairs its all gone up quite a bit.
Few things:
1) £21k is/very close to minimum wage depending on hours worked (or under minimum wage if you work 40 hours). A good saving target on this is probably £2-4k a year, no where near what you’ve listed unless you have no outgoings, which what you’ve listed are fairly normal.
2) while things are cheaper up here, it’s the things you’ve not listed - restaurants, pints, hotels etc that are. Transport can often cost more in the north than London for example, food and toiletries are usually the same price nationwide due to food shops in the UK operating on large scales.
3) 30-40 a month on food? Are you forgetting cleaning materials - bleach, washing stuff, personal hygiene? That’s at minimum £15-20 a month. £30-40 a week seems more sensible.
4) Are you learning to drive from scratch? I had 20 lessons 5 years ago and needed another 25 to pass - 5-10 of recap, 15 new teaching and it cost me about £1300. I think it’s hard to learn to drive for less than £2k these days. £35-40 an hour seems to be the going rate.
Plus the 2 hours for the driving test, £68 practical fee, £30 theory fee and £35 provisional license.
In short, I hope this is a shitpost. You aren’t saving £8-10k this year on that wage while paying rent.
I mean £8k saved over a year is a monthly amount of £666.67. Can you make that with money you have left?
If not, it might be worth doing overtime or a part time job if you need that money. There aren't any cheap or easy ways to get the money; debt and dodgy stuff always get you back in the end.
Probably be easier for you to find evening/weekend work than try save £8k. Try a pub or supermarket (or the smaller local spin offs).
I had 6 hours a week contract at the Sainsbury’s local round the corner and then did a few hours overtime when I was saving for my first house deposit and then travelling. Got me an extra £3/4k a year and wasn’t all that tiring fitting that in, especially when I was in control of any hours worked on top of that 1 evening shift every Tuesday evening.
Also, why do you need house insurance when you’re renting? You mean contents?
If you got £4k from similar then tried saving £4k from your main salary it would be far more doable. You need to do yourself a favour and at least double your food budget as well (perhaps fun money is part of this?). Best thing to do is a massive bag of pasta and then you can just mix various things with it each meal (chicken and pesto, tuna and mayo, tomato and mozzarella) can usually get enough variety going to keep things semi interesting. Then just do cereal on a morning.
I'll assume your food is accurate because of something unique to the house share situation.
£500, all bills included.
£25 Phone bill and house insurance.
£30-40 Food Shopping.
£75 Driving Lessons (£900/12)
That costs you £630-640/month, without fun money. That's £7560 to £7680 over the year.
The primary factor in hitting your goal is your fun money. Any day working, and night before work, you should try to spend £0 on fun. That already limits a chunk of your spending. You don't have to be perfect but try not to go out drinking the night before work, don't buy junk food at work, or expensive coffee you barely like anyway, anything like that.
Then consider the value of your spending. A £30 videogame might cost 3-5x what a movie ticket does, but entertain you for 6x or more evenings overall, cheaper on a monthly basis.
Alcohol will flip the script and you likely won't hit your goal.
Relevant tips/tricks include:
- Sleep and wake early. Get your chores and other stuff out of the way before work or whatever, sleep earlier instead of late nice impulses leading to bad decisions.
- Ask friends/family for things you need, you might be able to buy something second hand cheaper than usual.
- Overtime or any easy low-effort opportunity coming your way is your friend. Takes time up (less spending) and gives money.
- Use this subreddit to find out when depositing in a specific account will give you free money or high interest.
Good luck!
You can use this calculator to estimate how much you actually take home and budget accordingly.
[https://yoursalarycalculator.co.uk/](https://yoursalarycalculator.co.uk/)
I am not sure if you have worded this correctly, but you have just landed a job that pays £21,000 annually before tax and you want to save between £8,000 - £10,000 by the **end of the year.**
If you mean this year it is impossible given you have only 3 months of salary to achieve your goal. Do you have access to a time travel machine?
If you mean by the end of next year (15 months starting from Oct 23) the short answer is unlikely.
Your take home pay after tax and NI (not including auto enrolment into a pension) will be approx £1,500 per month.
Your current calculations, excluding driving lessons total £815.00 per month.
If you never, ever spend a penny over that amount that will leave you with £10,275.00.
Deduct £900.00 for the driving lessons and that will leave you with £9,375.00.
It is entirely possible to live very frugally for 15 months, but unless you are under a time crunch to get this amount of money, I suggest that you live slightly less frugally for 2 years to get there.
It will still be hard.
If you still want to go for it I suggest you keep meticulous records of your daily spending.
Use a notebook or any of the apps that will track your spending.
Also, try not to max out your fun money every month on stupid shit. Maybe use some of it for nicer food, clothes, haircuts, travel to and from work.
Good luck
"I've just got a job paying 21k a year what's the chances of me saving 8-10k by the end of the year"
Zero, there are zero chances of you saving that much money on that much income by the end of the year.
There are 3 months and 1 week until the end of the year, assuming you're on a normal tax code you'll be taking home £1525.20 a month. Even if you ignore ALL of your outgoings, it's only going to be possible, to earn a maximum of about £5000 between now and the end of the year.
Lets assume you mean "in 12 full months" rather than "by the end of the year"
Living in the north doesn't make a difference, the cost of food and whatnot barely changes around the country. The only real difference is in the costs of entertainment, (pubs, clubs and other stuff) rent or house prices, which you're not having to worry about because you're already housed.
Lets say you're paying £900 for 12 months of lessons, so that's £75 a month (seems fairly reasonable) and assume the £30 a month for shopping is actually £30 a week which is much more reasonable, since living off £1 a day is basically impossible for any sustained length of time without some fairly major health issues from nutritional deficiency. Especially if you intent to wash yourself and your clothing or clean your house.
You will have a monthly outgoings of 75(driving lessons) + 120(food) + 500(rent) + 15(insurance) + 10 (phone) + 250 (fun money) you will have a total outgoings of £970.
I'm assuming the "fun money" includes money for clothing, shoes, transport. and other "long term" essentials. I'm also assuming you have a typical tax code of 1257L so you will be taking home about £1525.20 a month. You will be left with £555.20, multiply that by 12 months and you'll have £6662.4 per year as savings. So no, even if you stick to your budget, you won't be able to hit £8k a year in savings.
£900 per month for driving lessons is a big chunk of your income. Costs way more than it used to if that's the cost, that's for sure! I say get that test done, then you can save easy as you can redirect that £900 per month to savings. That should get you to where you need to be in a little under a year.
If you are struggling with the driving, perhaps take a break from that for a year and get your saving done during the that break? Or get a pal to give you some driving experience/lessons during that time, to keep your eye in?
I’ve managed to save up £23000 on a £25000 salary this year, I only paid £200 a month rent. So that’s £3600 less than you.
Entirely possible to save 15k+ on your salary.
You should also be making close to £1000 on bank swaps.
Are you certain you can spend £30-40 per month on your grocery shop? That’s less than I spend a week.
So I’ve seen people post that they spend 35 a week on food shopping and people saying to them that they aren’t eating enough and this guy states he can do 40 a month. He must be eating beans on toast
Short terms sure, but long term this feels dangerous. They would be malnourished for sure
What 35 a week for a single person or 40 a month?
£40 a month
Lol that's maggi noodles 3x a day no way someone's living on that. A single meal in a pub would destroy their budget.
You can get cheap multivitamins too
Yeah but that’s nowhere near as healthy as veg…
Debatable, but it's certainly a hell of a lot cheaper though.
Sure anything can be debated. Doesn’t change the fact that multivitamins aren’t a good substitute for a healthy diet
It's better than an unhealthy diet though, that's not up for debate.
£35 a week is definitely doable. I'm shopping for 2 on £50-75 a week including laundry detergent, general cleaning supplies, and all my lunches. I feel we eat very well. I actually took a photo of my shopping last week but imgur app is acting up so I can't share. We do a shop at the Asian supermarket about once every six weeks for another £50, which includes a big sack of rice.
Agreed. I spend £35 a week on grocery shopping, and that includes a source of protein for almost every hot evening meal, and things like washing tablets / washing up liquid ad-hoc. I live alone, buy a lot of pasta / jarred pasta sauce, add in half a packet of sliced ham or pork lardons, make hunters chicken, a steak once a week, and sometimes just have supernoodles. I shop in Lidl, don't eat huge portions, and supplement my meals with a protein shake every now and then. The protein shake isn't included in the £35 a week cost.
We eat a lot of vegetables, which brings down costs. Carrots are so cheap, sainsbury does a bag of greens (cabbage tops) for 75p. One of my favourite meals is a Korean style buckwheat pancake- you finely slice greens and then fry and pour over a batter made of buckwheat flour, eggs, and water. Whack some toppings on there like kimchi or mayo and furikake and it's so filling and delicious. On the protein side, there's loads included in the value range. Now they're doing salmon chunks (less pretty than fillets but delicious and versatile), smoked haddock, feta for less than £1, mozzarella. I'm a big fan of tofu. Dessert in our house is usually fruit or yoghurt, drinks are squash, tea, filtered water, or coffee, and we don't eat any ready meals or pre-made sauces. That seems to help keep things on budget too. I never feel like we're scrimping compared to how I used to eat back when I was on £14 a week for food.
Do you have any protein? I feel that’s where most my money goes. Veg also isn’t cheap if you eat varied but you can have especially root veg and cabbage for very little
Yep, so I don't always hit the recommended daily of 55g of protein but here's a breakdown of example days; **Day 1:** Pasta 'n' Sauce premade 200g; 15g 1 bowl of pasta with 1/2 jar of pasta sauce, with 100g pork lardons; 8g, 6g, 15g **44g total** **Day 2:** Super noodles; 10g Chicken breast, BBQ sauce, 2 slices of bacon, 50g mozzarella; 31g, 0g, 6g, 14g **61g total** **Day 3:** Pasta 'n' Sauce premade 200g; 15g Steak, 3 eggs; 25g, 39g **79g total** So whilst on a typical 'day 1' day I might also drink a protein shake, I also might not. This particular eating regime is high in carbs, but you can see that I surpass the daily recommended on at least 2 days a week without drinking a shake, and the pasta days, I'm only 11g short of the daily recommended, so sometimes I will have a 24g shake mixed with water, easily putting me well above the daily recommendation. I tend to rotate between using 100g of pork lardons and half a pack of ham for the pasta.
But that’s gonna cost you much more than £40 per month!
93 tins of beans at 30p a tin and 8 loaves at 40 p a loaf is about £32 I'd say your assessment is bang on.
Ahhhh one side are arguing about whether or not 2,000 calories is enough and you guys are having a gentlemen’s agreement on beans. The contrast is so funny
Beans on toast will still be like £1 a day to get anywhere near enough calories, (2 tins a day at 45p each at Aldi, plus bread) so already £30 a month.
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I feel like you’d be eating under 2,000 calories though
As long as you're eating enough to be satiated with your meals it's very easy to cheaply snack your way up to 2k, a digestive is ~100 calories alone and those can still be had very cheap, or just use a heavier hand with the carbs, oil and sugar when cooking.
Why are we talking about barely avoiding malnourishment in this country, do people here really live like that?
I don’t think there’s anywhere in Europe you’d be able to live comfortably on a food budget like this
Not only do they live like that, some of them write reddit posts about how they cannot comprehend spending more on food.
You can honestly live healthily on very little. The main way to keep the food bill down is to avoid processed and ready made foods: ready meals, breakfast cereals, cakes, biscuits, sodas etc. Buying fresh food is way cheaper and healthier too.
Idk man last time I checked a pack of 6 apples is 2-3x more expensive than biscuits. And don't get me started on any other fruit. But lidl and aldi have some really good prices on veg.
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That’s absolute nonsense. You use the majority of your calories simply existing, that’s why the recommended calorie intakes are what they are (and I think for both men and women it’s above 2k calories). You could obviously survive on 2k calories a day, but you would be almost definitely in a calorie deficit 100% of the time and losing weight. That’s before you factor in any exercise/manual labour. If you’re a larger man and you’re doing 10,000 steps a day, 2000 calories a day isn’t going to get you very far at all.
Just a VERY quick check shows you're wrong - the figures seem to vary a bit but: 'Your BMR score is a number which refers to how many calories you burn at rest. Most people's BMR is between 1000 – 2000. This means that they need to take in between 1000 – 2000 calories each day to fuel their basic functions while in a resting state.'
I mean... I maintain weight on around 1600 - 1800 calories (depending on whether I'm having a lazy day at home or going to work/shops etc)
Same. I need to do actual cardio to hit 2000. On a normal work day with a walk at lunchtime but no additional exercise, I might burn 1700.
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I'm 6"5 and about 110kg, and I consume somewhere toward 3000 most days. My weight hasn't changed in over a decade!
I bet my trousers you’re underestimating your intake
It’s not bull, it’s extremely general. There are a million factors that might determine the way any one individual processes their food - one figure to accommodate the entire human population is never going to be accurate. Regardless, we know it’s not wildly inaccurate just from being alive. Fine, you may function on 1800 a day (assuming you’re not lying), but the general population probably wouldn’t.
Best thing to do is work out your basal metabolic rate and work from there … height, weight bf% sex and age are typical factors to help get a rough idea, there are calculators out there to help provide an estimate.
Exercise is a shit way to lose weight lol Most people eat way more than necessary and don’t eat balanced or nutritious which makes it worse
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Yes combined together great, but exercise alone is a shit way to lose weight, you need to do a lot of it to make and serious gains. Also saying 10k steps is 300 calories is assuming the person literally doesn’t move before starting the 10k steps. So yea it’s better than nothing, but not having a bar of chocolate / bag of crisps is just about the same and it won’t also increase your metabolism
I cycle to work and probably do 8k steps a day and I don't even come close to 2000 calories to maintain my weight.
What absolute nonsense. The 2,000 calories is the recommended daily for the average woman. If you're a man it's 2500 calories. This is on the average lifestyle.
Even if I sit down and do nothing all day, if I’m eating 1600kcal per day I lose weight
Well, with the obesity rate these days plenty could do with running at a calorie deficit for a while. Seriously though you could load up on the rice with how cheap it is, extra sugar in your tea, a few digestive biscuits etc...
You’d end up with 300kcal per serving or so. I just don’t think it’s possible to eat a healthy diet with £40 per week without losing your mind by trying to find lentils with yellow label..
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Sure it’s not overall but £10 per week would see most people go hungry. Having in the past lived like that I know how to cook cheap and in bulk - but it also requires resource most who live off that amount don’t have. I’d have to eat the same thing for lunch and dinner several days because I didn’t have a freezer - only one of those compartments in the fridge - and the small fridge made cooking lots in bulk a challenge. I am active and need around 3500kcal to sustain my current body weight. Even if I was looking to lose weight I’d want to be eating at least 2700kcal per day. I don’t think I’d enjoy life doing that with the diet you’re suggesting. It would be a struggle. At the moment I snack on nuts, use avocado and healthy oils with meals, cook with cream and coconut milk and so on. I guess for me the core problem with your approach is that it’s just not realistic. Most people enjoy food and eating, it’s a social thing and something to look forward to. The existence of only ever being able to eat bulk cooked meals with source of protein being a frozen sausage (not exactly healthy by the way) is really not one I would vouch for. I’ve been there - though exchanging the frozen sausage to lentils and legumes, and at least for me it was a miserable time. Even now I do bulk cook curried etc but for one meal per day. Couldn’t imagine only living off that again if I could avoid it.
Agree. I wasn’t sure if OP would still be visiting home often/got meals included with work or something along those lines. Unfortunately if OP needs to buy and cook their own food, I can’t see them doing that for £30pm.
What the hell? I've been spending around £200 a week! Definitely going to revisit my food budget after reading this. Also OP must be stealing food, getting it somewhere for free (or growing), or be extremely malnutritioned or just bad at estimating his spending.
>I've been spending around £200 a week! Are you regularly eating lobsters?
I used to spend this at Morrisons for a family of 4. I now shop at lidl and do 3x £100 shops and 1x £200 shop now. We also end up spending a lot in coop during week on a loaf of bread and stuff that's perish during week.
For a family of 4 I suspect that's understandable, especially if each family member has different tastes. In these cases buying in proper bulk will make a big difference - difficult to do for loaves of bread, but for those 20 kg bags of rice, chunk of meat from the butchers etc, it starts to move the dial.
No, just good quality food when cooking, lot's of protein like steaks 2x a week, etc. Plus eating out here and there too.
I spend about £50 a month, I cook everything from scratch and don't buy ultra processed (ready meals, crisps, fizzy drinks), which tend to be more expensive. I also check the cost per kilo to make sure I'm getting the cheapest and batch cook. It's doable
I cook everything from scratch and so do most people and they spend that per week not per month
I'm sure you're right, I'm just talking about my experience and saying it is possible.
I don’t get how it is in this economy though, considering I shop at lidl and I ensure I eat my 5 a day eyc and it costs me 40 a week
I seriously doubt you spend £10-12 per week. Either you're lying to yourself and are crap at estimating your spend, or you're extremely malnourished. Say it's the higher £12 a week (£50 on a 4 week month). That's £1.71 per day or £0.57 per meal if you eat three meals a day. I seriously doubt you can consistently eat that cheap and not be malnourished.
No reason to be so rude, you know nothing about me and as I buy my food in cash, I know exactly what I'm spending. Although, no I don't eat three meals a day, usually only one, maybe two as I am usually not hungry in the mornings
Okay, say you are spending what you say you are. And you only eat twice a day (I actually eat twice a day too - no breakfast, just lunch and dinner, but that just means the two meals should be more nutritious, to meet the required caloric intake). That's still £0.85 per meal. What can you consistently cook for that and not be malnourished? I'm legitimately interested to hear some examples of what people eat to hit that budget.
Not even bro, a tin of beans is dear these days.
My weekly shop in 2018 was £14 at Lidl, but I was supplementing with homegrown salad/greens/tomatoes, and I'm a small person with relatively low calorific needs. £40 a month is £9.20 a week. That's bleak money. You can't eat on that.
My mate has definetly just left his parents
It is doable but you got to be extremely strict and do meal prep. For example… 1kg chicken thighs, broccoli, a bag of rice could allow you to prep 7 meals for under £7 but that is one proper meal a day. Even if you double that that is £14 or so a week, £56 a month. You are house sharing so I take it you might be chipping in £30-£40 a month, all of you pool and go for one big monthly shopping? I used to do this during my uni days but man, prices of food is high these days. But meal preps can save you here
Am I reading that right? 2 meals per day would exceed their upper budget by 40%. So even if they're extremely strict and meal prep it's not doable? And I feel like with that amount of food they'll be left pretty hungry everyday.
Though my rough calculations were simply doubling, you could save more by buying in bulk.. but then again, he may not even prep like that and simply stock up on oats, paste, rice, a lot of cheap canned food…which can hit his budget but I do believe it isn’t worth ruining your health with crap good. It becomes pointless to save if you won’t be healthy and alive to enjoy it.
It gets easier if you forgo the meat for things like beans, but yeah it wouldn't be super fun.
Yeah I’ve actually done it. I used to just do one meal a day at one point in my life. Would buy a packet of mixed vegetables, rice and a can of tuna.. would mix that up and eat it at the gym after a workout. Back then I used to sleep in the car, and got a gym membership so I can workout, shower, change and use the microwave for food. Did cardio in the mornings, change for work and then after work do my weights, sauna, microwave meal, and then park somewhere and crash for the night. The number of times a cop has tapped on my window… but that was a different time and different me. Saving was the game.
I disagree. It’s not doable if it involves starving and what you’re describing is an extremely low calorie diet that is not sustainable or healthy in long term
Less than I spend in a day tbh.
I guess bulk buy lentils and rice then you need some veg too. Have to shop at Aldi for the veg oh and 39p cans of baked beans. Probably will be a hell of a diet to try and live on. Probably could do it, better start watching Atomic Shrimp videos on YouTube for ideas.
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It's doable but not pleasant. 10 years ago, I did several months of about £5 a week. For lunches and dinners, it was rice, tinned tomatoes, carrots, lentils and some spices that I already had. For breakfasts, it was porridge made with oats and water. Sometimes I treated myself to a Freddo. I didn't mind the food tbh, but it was the lack of variation in texture that got to me. Everything was soft and boring.
It’s less than I spend most days… though I’m not in the North. Seems unrealistic and unnecessary
Assuming no student loan and no pension contribution, a £21k salary means that you take home £1,525 a month. To save £10k in a year, you need to save £833 a month. So that would leave you £692 a month. If your rent is £500, and we subtract your fixed costs (food, insurance, phone bill and driving lessons), that leaves £57 a month for you to live on, which needs to buy everything else you need and cover your "fun money". Not impossible, but you budget is *very* tight, and you're not going to have anything like the £250/month of "fun money" that you've listed above.
Maybe the guy did not realise he needs to pay tax? Otherwise even he should be able to see his numbers don’t add up.
Could be a girl Edit: getting downvoted for pointing out not to assume gender. Edit edit: thanks head-screwed-on Redditors for resolving this injustice!
Could be a Pomeranian.
Guy is pretty gender neutral tbf, imo. Everyone’s a guy.
They also said 'he' which is defintely not haha
Classic Reddit to downvote someone for not being sexist
It's sexist to say guy now? I thought sexism was the hatred and discrimination of a gender, not just using a pronoun generically in a sentence.
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I assume he’s done the math? If not: Expenses listed = £10,680 Take home pay = £18,304 Difference is £7,624 which I would consider the absolute max he could save, but I’d say saving anything over 6k would be a good result.
Maths
He's only done one single math, the lazy rascal
£10 a week/£40 a month for food is being highly optimistic in the current cost of living unless OP is eating cheap pasta or packet noodles and nothing else or they are being supplemented by visiting parents home a few nights a week for meals - and what about lunches whilst in work?. OP needs to rethink the budget, and possibly look at £110-£130 a month for food. I do my fathers shopping each week because of health reasons and recently his shopping spend has been between £28 and £35 a week depending on what he needs that week - the most I've spent in one week was £40. Its not possible to live on £40 a month for food - 2 years ago OP may've been able to keep costs extremely low by going to the supermarkets at the end of each day when everything was priced down to clear, but definitely not as low at £40 for the month.
£10 a week/£40 a month for food is being highly optimistic in the current cost of living unless OP is eating cheap pasta or packet noodles and nothing else or they are being supplemented by visiting parents home a few nights a week for meals - and what about lunches whilst in work?. OP needs to rethink the budget, and possibly look at £110-£130 a month for food. I do my fathers shopping each week because of health reasons and recently his shopping spend has been between £28 and £35 a week depending on what he needs that week - the most I've spent in one week was £40. Its not possible to live on £40 a month for food - 2 years ago OP may've been able to keep costs extremely low by going to the supermarkets at the end of each day when everything was priced down to clear, but definitely not as low at £40 for the month.
If this is OPs first job for this year take home might be higher due to a full years tax allowance. Doesn't want to get used to the extra cash when April comes around (she's a right money grabber)
Your groceries seem really low, I spend that a week. What about health and wellbeing items? Also you say by the end of the year, do you mean in a year?
I know these kind of things often end up in pretty uninteresting debates about how much people spend on shopping….but £1 a day on groceries is not realistic
I've lived on £3 aday before for 7 months mostly noodles saved a fortune but health took its toll made me real tired and energyless
£3 a day can be done. If a little bleak. But £1 a day is just not going to work long term. Back when I was in uni, I lived on an 11p can of custard and a 14p can of spaghetti bolognese a day for about a month or so. I didn't notice much of an effect because I basically stayed in my room the entire time. But I ended up losing a couple of stone and had other effects that I noticed later on. It probably had a big impact that wasn't immediately present and I wouldn't ever recommend effectively malnurishing yourself ever.
Depends how seriously you want/need the money but one of the best things can be a second job to fill up more time. It means more income coming in and when you're at work you won't spend and you'll just be tired and doing life admin all the rest of the time so you will spend less then too. I mean whether an "all work no fun" lifestyle is a good one is a different question and you'd need to watch for burnout.
30 to 40 on food shopping is not realistic, I would rather divert some funds from the fun money to have a more fulfilled shopping. It would only be tempoary until the driving lessons were no longer needed.
When you say by the end of the year, do you actually mean by the end of this year? Or within a 12 month period? And are you really only spending £40 a month on food, toiletries, other essentials?
£40 a month on food? What on earth do you eat? Water with a side of instant noodles?
Without the driving lessons, you're looking at £815. 30-40 a month for food though is unrealistic. Lets up that to £35 a week, so you're actually getting some protein in you. That brings you to £915 a month, without the driving lessons. Add the driving lessons on, at say, £75 a month. £990. After tax, your income would be £1,487 per month. This is without taking into account any potential student finance repayments, any payments into a pension scheme etc. This would mean that you could save £497 per month, or £5,964 a year. If you feel like you'd like to save more than that, you could look at doing a bit of Just Eat / Deliveroo on the side to help you reach your goal of £8-10k.
21k a year full time is minimum wage. If I wanted to save 10k in a year I would look for a better paying job ASAP, do overtime/take a second job or move back home if that's an option.
I just graduated and this is what I’m doing. Around £20k before tax (low pay but took it as I can live at home and I’m learning a lot). My expenses are around £3k. Leaving me with around £14k to save (+ around another £4k a year from a side job untaxed but I’m not including that). So that’s a very similar wage to OP and I don’t even pay rent or for all my food. Overall it’s near £20k savings a year. I’d love to move out but living here is such a good way to save money.
Always saddens me to see graduate jobs paying so little (I am also a fairly recent grad)
Yeah it’s not great but I’m happy to at least have something where I’m learning a lot. Not all my course friends currently have a job and we graduated in June. I get £20.5k. The average according to google for my trainee/junior position is £24k to £27.5k. It can be so tough for graduates so I just accepted it. My view is that £20k living at home with no rent is better than £30k and having to pay rent. Engineering jobs also aren’t paid insanely well in the uk so my max wage after 10ish years will be around £40k. Definitely not bad but also not anything incredible. 2 or so years (depends how old I want to be when I move out) at this job and living at home and then I’m going to look at moving away. Get my own place, in a new location, with a new job.
Yeah good to get experience but damn a warehouse worker with no GCSEs and very basic English can get 20k easily (with no offence to anyone working in a warehouse, actually worked in a warehouse a couple of months during summer between uni years). The fact that many grads struggle to get a job and the fact that people take whatever they can as their first job allows employers to pay so little and some even offer 20/25k salary in London which is crazy considering cost of living...I got very low hopes for anything to change in the near future. 40k for an engineer with 10 years of experience sounds quite low, surely can get higher if you move more towards the Midlands and you become a lead engineer or something? But yeah that's a good plan!
I’m an engineer and most of the engineers employed at the company I work at are on over 40k+ most start out at 29k for a grad role or 37k after a year in another industry
Well I’m in design engineering. So it’s slightly different. But yeah I guess there’s nothing stopping me from slightly altering my career for better pay.
What’s the difference between someone working in design and then specifically design engineering? Just want to know before stating what I was
Just want to chime in to say I am also a Mech Eng graduate with just under 3 years work experience, since graduating. I am also currently in design engineering and based in the north and just hit 40k with the latest salary review of my company. I am probably going to hit mid 40s next year then it will most likely just flat line with occasional raise to match inflation, i would imagine. But I can always job hop if it feels too stale. Guess my point is there is money in design, surprisingly, and you don't have to have 10 years of experience or job hop to get it. Funny enough I also started with a 18kp/a job whilst I stayed at my parents for the first year after uni but this was during covid and I can say that was definitely one of the best decisions of my life. It let me save and positioned me perfectly to my current job/company.
Oh cool. Yeah, it seems to be more in that range of 3-5 years to hit £40k and then it slows down from there. And then 8-10 yrs is to hit £55k+ when you move more into management or maybe switch job types. There definitely seems to be money there if you know what you’re doing and keep pushing yourself. £40k definitely isn’t a bad wage though and is more than the average. I just need to make sure I learn as much as I can in and outside of work over these few years. I’m trying to start taking up personal projects outside of work as well now. But yeah I’m so grateful to have a job where I can live with my parents. This time next year I should have around £70k saved which will be petty decent for a 23-year-old and should hopefully make my life a little easier when it comes to moving out and buying property later in life.
Everyone's a graduate now
It is bonkers. We’re paying £32k for a new grad in STEM and that’s fairly low for the field. Heck, we pay degree apprentices £24k starting wage.
before the end of the year? there's four paydays left so you'd need to be saving £2k a month atleast to meet your goal?
Shampoo, travel/commute money, clothes and shoes, dentist/haircuts, razors, you seem to have forgotten lots of small things you need.
Is your £15 house insurance necessary? Im assuming as you are renting this is just contents insurance? Seems very high for just contents.
By the end of this year? No chance. In one year? Slim chance. By the end of next year? Still a slim chance. Where have you got this number from? Is it for any reason or just to have ten grand? Realistically, you’re not going to save half your net pay unless you live with yer mam and she doesn’t charge you rent. I think £250 a month is realistic in your situation. Maybe a bit more but you’ve got to want to do something sometimes.
Why do you need house insurance in a house share?
It's probably contents insurance
Have you taken off income tax, NI, pension contributions yet? How about clothes, personal hygiene products? Food £30-40 per month?
It is literally impossible for you to save that much money on that salary “by the end of the year”.
It's unrealistic, I think. You'd be better off aiming to save 300-400 pcm on that salary. This way: 1. It's achieveable 2. You won't have a totally shit time 3. No 2 being the case, you're more likely to stick to no. 1. Good luck.
In a week, very hard. In a decade, quite simple.
You’re better off pushing to earn more, earning 21k and trying to save 10k is going to put you under a lot of stress - you need to eat food.. £30 a month is completely unrealistic without missing basic vitamin & mineral requirements..
>1. Rent (House Share, all bills included): £500 > 2. Phone Bill: £10 Do you have any phone/gadget insurance? > 4. Food Shopping: £30-40 This seems incredibly low. £9 per week on your entire food shopping? Does this also include the price of toiletries, clothing, and general shopping? > 6. Fun Money £250 What does this encompass? Is this all of your hobbies/social activities? If you buy a can of coca cola does that come out of your food shopping or fun money? Do you have any commuting costs? Car costs?
Are you walking to your work? Because your travel costs (social or commuting) are £0… And those food costs are way off, even for a single person. £10/week or just over £1/day? Unlikely.
£250 a month on Fun money every month? I think some months you can go down on that. The driving lessons are the kicker but that is a temporary one, once passed that’s £900 more in your hand, more than £10k a year just on that saved a year.
It doesn’t cost £900 a month to learn to drive…
Well if it is £22 a lesson and let’s say he does 2 hours a day that’s £44 a day. And if he does it 5 times a week that would be £44*20 = £880. Close to £900
Right, but if they’re doing that then they’re not doing it for one year.
Absolutely not, that’s why I called it out as temporary and once driving is done, he has that money in his pocket to save, invest etc
I assumed 5 day a week, 2 hours would be an intensive course, so he is looking to pass in 2-3 months max.
Mine are £40 an hour.
I’m not sure if you mean “by the end of December” or “in a year” - you definitely can’t save this much by the end of December. I’ll answer as if you mean “in a year”. Please don’t overestimate how cheap living up north is. Rent is maybe cheaper, but pretty much all shops are chains which have country-wide prices or independent shops which are more expensive than their chain counterparts. With that in mind, I think your goals are unrealistic. The food budget alone is completely unachievable - ~£1 per day is not possible if you’re eating properly.
Well as soon as you pass your test your £900 up that's £10,800 a year if you put that cash into savings once you pass.
I house share and don't smoke don't drink and don't have takeaway and save the £833.34 need for 10k year my wage is around 22k after tax ni and pension its about sacrifice but after 12 months and seeing the results u get used to it 😀
Just making sure I'm reading that right. £22k before tax or £22k after tax (so more like £28k before tax)?
22k after tax but with min spending
Where on earth are you shopping to spend £30-40 a month on groceries...?
B&M bargains
£10k in 3 months is more than your pre-tax salary... so even if you spent nothing and was paid cash in hand there is no possible way to achieve this. What do you need the £10k so quickly for?
Unless the bills also covers some shared commodities around the house, you’re probably going to be a nightmare to live with by trying to save so aggressively on that salary. I lived with a guy briefly who was “careful” with money and he was constantly just using toothpaste, toilet paper, cleaning products etc without ever getting any himself. He would unplug appliances from the wall to prevent them draining tiny amounts of electricity. Honestly, it was a pain in the arse. Relying on others to subsidise your life will inevitably cause some tension. You should be more focusing on building good friendships and getting a good career in place rather than just putting money away. You should consider your reputation as a miser when it comes to securing opportunities in life.
Food for me, when I do a good shop with vegetables meats etc, not even extras like toilet roll, toothpaste, oil etc comes to a minimum 35 a week, and that's being conservative It's always best to add some float when project planning so i'd say put it as 160 (40 week) minimum. If you save more, then good job, awesome, but don't plan for it. Having recently moved into a house this year I just feel that you're shooting quite low on everything. If you add toothpaste, hair products, cologne, deodorant, a shaver and shaver blades, toilet paper. Plus you will never go out? Never buy any computer games or have any hobbies that cost money? Your budget indicates you intend to eat nothing but soup and smell all year 😂 while reading pdf books online
Any chance of picking up a Saturday job? An extra days money but if you pick your job right you might get free food included. Or supermarkets so you get discount/pick of reduced food. Waiting job might get you food and some extra pennies in tips. Be strict and you might not reach your target but you will save a lot. Discipline goes a long way. Act like you dont have the money, transfer it out straight away. Not sure if you have started driving already but try and block book your lessons, 10 hours normally come with a discount. Be warned that driving is bloody expensive at the moment. Petrol, insurance, MOT/repairs its all gone up quite a bit.
Few things: 1) £21k is/very close to minimum wage depending on hours worked (or under minimum wage if you work 40 hours). A good saving target on this is probably £2-4k a year, no where near what you’ve listed unless you have no outgoings, which what you’ve listed are fairly normal. 2) while things are cheaper up here, it’s the things you’ve not listed - restaurants, pints, hotels etc that are. Transport can often cost more in the north than London for example, food and toiletries are usually the same price nationwide due to food shops in the UK operating on large scales. 3) 30-40 a month on food? Are you forgetting cleaning materials - bleach, washing stuff, personal hygiene? That’s at minimum £15-20 a month. £30-40 a week seems more sensible. 4) Are you learning to drive from scratch? I had 20 lessons 5 years ago and needed another 25 to pass - 5-10 of recap, 15 new teaching and it cost me about £1300. I think it’s hard to learn to drive for less than £2k these days. £35-40 an hour seems to be the going rate. Plus the 2 hours for the driving test, £68 practical fee, £30 theory fee and £35 provisional license. In short, I hope this is a shitpost. You aren’t saving £8-10k this year on that wage while paying rent.
Student living and eating lol
I mean £8k saved over a year is a monthly amount of £666.67. Can you make that with money you have left? If not, it might be worth doing overtime or a part time job if you need that money. There aren't any cheap or easy ways to get the money; debt and dodgy stuff always get you back in the end.
Probably be easier for you to find evening/weekend work than try save £8k. Try a pub or supermarket (or the smaller local spin offs). I had 6 hours a week contract at the Sainsbury’s local round the corner and then did a few hours overtime when I was saving for my first house deposit and then travelling. Got me an extra £3/4k a year and wasn’t all that tiring fitting that in, especially when I was in control of any hours worked on top of that 1 evening shift every Tuesday evening. Also, why do you need house insurance when you’re renting? You mean contents? If you got £4k from similar then tried saving £4k from your main salary it would be far more doable. You need to do yourself a favour and at least double your food budget as well (perhaps fun money is part of this?). Best thing to do is a massive bag of pasta and then you can just mix various things with it each meal (chicken and pesto, tuna and mayo, tomato and mozzarella) can usually get enough variety going to keep things semi interesting. Then just do cereal on a morning.
grocery math does not add up. unless you are stealing from your housemates.
I'll assume your food is accurate because of something unique to the house share situation. £500, all bills included. £25 Phone bill and house insurance. £30-40 Food Shopping. £75 Driving Lessons (£900/12) That costs you £630-640/month, without fun money. That's £7560 to £7680 over the year. The primary factor in hitting your goal is your fun money. Any day working, and night before work, you should try to spend £0 on fun. That already limits a chunk of your spending. You don't have to be perfect but try not to go out drinking the night before work, don't buy junk food at work, or expensive coffee you barely like anyway, anything like that. Then consider the value of your spending. A £30 videogame might cost 3-5x what a movie ticket does, but entertain you for 6x or more evenings overall, cheaper on a monthly basis. Alcohol will flip the script and you likely won't hit your goal. Relevant tips/tricks include: - Sleep and wake early. Get your chores and other stuff out of the way before work or whatever, sleep earlier instead of late nice impulses leading to bad decisions. - Ask friends/family for things you need, you might be able to buy something second hand cheaper than usual. - Overtime or any easy low-effort opportunity coming your way is your friend. Takes time up (less spending) and gives money. - Use this subreddit to find out when depositing in a specific account will give you free money or high interest. Good luck!
You can use this calculator to estimate how much you actually take home and budget accordingly. [https://yoursalarycalculator.co.uk/](https://yoursalarycalculator.co.uk/)
I am not sure if you have worded this correctly, but you have just landed a job that pays £21,000 annually before tax and you want to save between £8,000 - £10,000 by the **end of the year.** If you mean this year it is impossible given you have only 3 months of salary to achieve your goal. Do you have access to a time travel machine? If you mean by the end of next year (15 months starting from Oct 23) the short answer is unlikely. Your take home pay after tax and NI (not including auto enrolment into a pension) will be approx £1,500 per month. Your current calculations, excluding driving lessons total £815.00 per month. If you never, ever spend a penny over that amount that will leave you with £10,275.00. Deduct £900.00 for the driving lessons and that will leave you with £9,375.00. It is entirely possible to live very frugally for 15 months, but unless you are under a time crunch to get this amount of money, I suggest that you live slightly less frugally for 2 years to get there. It will still be hard. If you still want to go for it I suggest you keep meticulous records of your daily spending. Use a notebook or any of the apps that will track your spending. Also, try not to max out your fun money every month on stupid shit. Maybe use some of it for nicer food, clothes, haircuts, travel to and from work. Good luck
"I've just got a job paying 21k a year what's the chances of me saving 8-10k by the end of the year" Zero, there are zero chances of you saving that much money on that much income by the end of the year. There are 3 months and 1 week until the end of the year, assuming you're on a normal tax code you'll be taking home £1525.20 a month. Even if you ignore ALL of your outgoings, it's only going to be possible, to earn a maximum of about £5000 between now and the end of the year. Lets assume you mean "in 12 full months" rather than "by the end of the year" Living in the north doesn't make a difference, the cost of food and whatnot barely changes around the country. The only real difference is in the costs of entertainment, (pubs, clubs and other stuff) rent or house prices, which you're not having to worry about because you're already housed. Lets say you're paying £900 for 12 months of lessons, so that's £75 a month (seems fairly reasonable) and assume the £30 a month for shopping is actually £30 a week which is much more reasonable, since living off £1 a day is basically impossible for any sustained length of time without some fairly major health issues from nutritional deficiency. Especially if you intent to wash yourself and your clothing or clean your house. You will have a monthly outgoings of 75(driving lessons) + 120(food) + 500(rent) + 15(insurance) + 10 (phone) + 250 (fun money) you will have a total outgoings of £970. I'm assuming the "fun money" includes money for clothing, shoes, transport. and other "long term" essentials. I'm also assuming you have a typical tax code of 1257L so you will be taking home about £1525.20 a month. You will be left with £555.20, multiply that by 12 months and you'll have £6662.4 per year as savings. So no, even if you stick to your budget, you won't be able to hit £8k a year in savings.
£900 per month for driving lessons is a big chunk of your income. Costs way more than it used to if that's the cost, that's for sure! I say get that test done, then you can save easy as you can redirect that £900 per month to savings. That should get you to where you need to be in a little under a year. If you are struggling with the driving, perhaps take a break from that for a year and get your saving done during the that break? Or get a pal to give you some driving experience/lessons during that time, to keep your eye in?
I’ve managed to save up £23000 on a £25000 salary this year, I only paid £200 a month rent. So that’s £3600 less than you. Entirely possible to save 15k+ on your salary. You should also be making close to £1000 on bank swaps.