weekly spend

S

sarahhurray

Guest
apart from food, petrol, etc. what do folks spend a week on socialising, having a coffee, buying a paper, etc? The reason I'm asking is cause I went to mabs yesterday and the guy estimated €40 a week and my reaction was what planet are you living on. That was wasn't even a cutting back amount.
 
Right now I'd say I'm living on about €40 to €50 a week, or less if I can.
I'm not going out much mind you. If I do that usually turns into €140 - €150!!
 
Not being smart but...

Were you at MABS for a personal consultation - e.g. in order to go through your personal budget and get your finances under control? If you were did you not challenge him on his €40 p.w. figure since not to do so would presumably render the exercise meaningless if this figure is not realistic for you. It doesn't really matter what others might spend (particuarly without details of their income, lifestyle etc.) but what's imporatnt is what YOU spend and if/how savings can be made if necessary.
 
hi there, you're not being smart at all, I told him it was more like double that at least but he didn't change it. We have to do up our own anyway so we'll be putting a more realistic figure down and then see where to cut back. I'm just wondering if we are unusual in finding that a tiny sum.
So Piggy how many weeks are you good and how many do you go out?
 
Eh...it really depends. I'm only doing this in a bid to save the maximum amount of money I can over the next few months. This time of the year there's always lots of bbq's to go to anyway.

Maybe once or twice I go out every two weeks now. Once every three to four weeks in town (which is always so expensive!!).
 
expenses

I think I spend about €20 a week on expenses. Why spend all my money on stuff I don't need? However, it's a very personal choice.
 
Whats wrong with St.Bernard hair shampoo?

Sarahhurray. Well what do you spend your money on every week?. I mean are you a big drinker and smoker. Would the thoughts of staying in and watching a video cause problems. Can you cut down on drinking/smoking and eating out? Do you get taxis home or the NiteLink? Do you spend huge amounts of money on mobile phone calls/texting? Do you go to the hairdresser every week, spend money on DVD's etc Do you buy packaged foods/ready made meals?
 
Re: Whats wrong with St.Bernard hair shampoo?

Nothing is wrong with St. Bernard shampoo so long as you don't buy too much of it and use it too liberally because you think you're getting good value. Cut your hair so you need less of it.

I budget discretionary spending of about €10 per day and splurge about €200 per month on luxuries like clothes, newspapers, books & magazines. The €10 a day includes lunches as making a packed lunch is a lifestyle compromise too far in my book. Usually I come in under those limits. About every 6 months I'll get sick of saving and feel the need to "live a little" and splurge on something like a holiday, furniture or a reasonably priced electronic gizmo.
 
Re: Whats wrong with St.Bernard hair shampoo?

I don't live lavishly at all, buy own brands, cheap clothes occaisionally, haven't had a hair cut in a year, don't smoke, don't go out for more than a few pints. I guess I spend little bits here and there and they add up. Twenty quid on a bit for the house and half my budget would be gone. €40 a week for me still seems extremely tight, I guess living in the city centre puts more temptation in the way too. Bringing in my lunch helps keep me off the streets!
I'm amazed someone can live on twenty euro a week, you must buy absolutely nothing, do you buy clothes or go out on that?
 
Re: Whats wrong with St.Bernard hair shampoo?

> I'm amazed someone can live on twenty euro a week, you must buy absolutely nothing, do you buy clothes or go out on that?

I presumed that this discussion was not about living expenses per se but socialising and other discretionary spending expenses which would presumably range from €0 to the sky (in the form of one's income and sources of credit) is the limit...?
 
living expenses

On the rare occasion i have a few bob to spare for a few pints i don't consider it an "expense" as such. After i pay my bills and get my groceries if theres a decent bit left for the rest of the month i'll go out, if not, I won't.

I would consider weekly spend to be the little bits and pieces that all add up.
So far this week I'm doing ok
Monday: magazine & packet of crisps €1.60
renewed library membership €5
today: cream bun from bakery €1
(will prob pick up milk on the way home but thats more of an essential than discretionary)
most days i bring my lunch to work. sometimes get a pub lunch on a wed or thursday and always get fish & chips on a friday but every other day its sambos. I think it would be madness for me to buy my lunch because i have bread at home anyway and would end up throwing most of it away because it would go stale before i'd get to use it up. Also i used to go down to the shop for a roll or sandwich and would end up with lunch, drink, paper/magazine, bar of chocolate, packet of crisps and spend the guts of €10 a day
 
O/T question for Sinead

"renewed library membership €5"

I'm puzzled, do some CoCos charge for library membership every year or is it another sort of library ?


eDog
 
O/T question for Sinead

Yeah - libraries run by some councils charge annual membership fees:
 
I tried to remember that when I was a student I was only earning 40 pounds a week and yet I still had plenty of money to buy books, music, go out to cinema (no drinking. very strict parents.), save for holidays, buy monthly bus ticket and pay for most of my books for college as well. It basically comes down to what's available. If you know you only have €40 available, you make it last. So now in the last couple of months where I've finally started getting myself out of my hole it's because I've done a strict budget and am just trying to ignore the fact that it's so easy for me to access more than I've allocated for myself. Because the money I could be accessing isn't "my" money and will end up costing me a lot.

Anyway, my weekly spend after paying for regular expenses is €50 euro. That's for food, groceries, going out, magazines/books etc. But if I forget to get organised to bring lunch to work with me it's takes quite a chunk out of that! If the girls want to go out for a meal during the week I have to be really careful to have enough money left for it. And so on.

The regular weekly expenses are:
€7 for weight watchers
€7.50 for bus tickets (walk home most days so I only have to pay for one journey per day.
€6 for lotto (can't resist. It could happen one day)
€15 for petrol (necessary for my other job, recently started doing Tupperware to earn extra cash)
€5 for phone credit
€20 towards house bills (gas, esb, cable, phone, waste charges, tv licence)
€70 counselling (which is helping me deal with root causes of problems so in the longterm should be worth it)
€50 reiki twice a month (to complement the counselling, gets cancelled if anything unexpected comes up that I need money for)

The reiki and counselling may be seen as luxuries but for years I told myself that I would go for counselling to sort out various issues as soon as I'd paid off loans/credit cards etc. But because of the various issues I'd end up spending money I didn't really have to try and make myself feel better. Vicious circle which is now broken and will, hopefully, stay that way.

The bottom line, I think, is that you'll manage on whatever money is available and just need to retrain your mind to accept that credit cards/overdraft are not available money.
 
Re: O/T question for Sinead

Uh !

So thats why Mr Carnegie turns in his grave
 
carnegie....who???

carnegie...who is he??

library charges €5 per annum for borrowing old books.

to carry on my spend i also have
€7 weight watchers
€10 pub lunch
€6 fish & chips
€6 lotto
€5 magazine newsagent reserves for me every week
€1.80 local newspaper
€3.50 sunday papers

€40 already and still counting...
 
Re: carnegie....who???

Mr.....ANDREW.......Carnegie

http://www.btinternet.com/~h.kendall/lhlbp7.htm (www.btinternet.com/~h.kendall/lhlbp7.htm)
 
Re: carnegie....who???

This is a very interesting exercise!

Outside of my grocery bill (which includes toileteries, cleaning stuff, and a couple of cans or bottle of wine), my weekly spend is around 40. I eat my lunches in except for maybe once a week.

I don't go out on big nights out (with taxis, niteclub entrance) so usually my nights out (about once a fortnight) work out cheap enough. Four drinks can still be done for 20 quid - thankfully no FatFrog drinkers among my friends!

Night out: &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 10 p.w.
Odd Cup of coffee/tea&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 5 p.w.
Lunch/Breakfast out&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp 10 p.w.
The other 15 euro goes on incidentals like a bottle of coke here or a CDWOW CD there, new plant for the garden, bit of paint, that kinda thing. If I buy clothes (and I'm not a fashion junkie) then I don't go out or eat out.

I give myself this 40 euro each week and I'm "not allowed" to take more money out unless I've had a big think about how I can juggle things around again. This sounds very frugal but then I remembered all my annualised stuff:

I tend to bulk-buy my books and that normally works out around 500 a year, or 10 euro a week over the course of a year. Thankfully my CD spending has settled since last year when CD Wow was nearly the death of me. My gym/pool membership is annual but would work out at about 12 euro a week but I really knock the value out of that. I'm also studying (for pleasure, not work) and that costs me around 25 euro a week.

So all in all, I probably spend about 90 euro per week amusing myself. Great life really :)

Rebecca
 
carnegie

no literature on carnegie in my library, would explain why i've never heard of him!
 
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