How much do you need to survive each year?

throwaway4372 · Tuesday at 09:21

I'm after data points to compare with:

How much do you need to survive each year?
(estimate to the nearest 1k)

Including: council tax, home insurance, house maintenance, water, energy, broadband, phone, pc (essential!), groceries, clothes, other essentials.

Excluding: mortgage/rent (assume home is owned), car, holidays, non-essentials.

throwaway4372 · 2024-10-27T19:36:40+0000

some more data points would be helpful if anyone else wants to chime in

throwaway4372 · 2024-10-28T08:41:00+0000

d_brennen said:
Where do you draw the line? Anything from £15k to £100k joint

The minimum, this is about surviving, basic needs.

In the original post I tried to summarise include/exclude lists to make sure we're all including the same stuff:
Including: council tax, home insurance, house maintenance, water, energy, broadband, phone, pc (essential!), groceries, clothes, other essentials.
Excluding: mortgage/rent (assume home is owned), car, holidays, non-essentials.

btw what brought this on was for me I calculated about 11k, then I asked mum and she said 6k.
I am mainly interested in numbers for single people because that's my situation, but other numbers are welcome as long as people state their situation.

throwaway4372 · 2024-10-28T10:05:49+0000

Rai200 said:
I'm not sure why you would exclude rent, that's by far our largest outgoing.

Because I'm not paying it, so don't need to compare it to other people.
And I will be using the numbers for my own retirement planning, when most people aren't paying rent/mortgage anymore, and it helps to take age and regional variation out of the numbers so they're more comparable.

Goksly said:
Title says survive. Post says broadband / pc etc. So are you after "living comfortably" or are you on about surviving?

I would die without a pc.

I include it because I know I will always have a PC, so need people to include it, and that's probably true for everyone here.

throwaway4372 · 2024-10-28T11:50:25+0000

I get that it's confusing if you've not been following my other threads, that's ok though, you can pretend I didn't say "survive" and estimate the spend on the included items.

throwaway4372 · 2024-10-28T12:17:20+0000

200sols said:
For this PC, what's it for exactly, gaming? You'd also have to factor in a monthly upgrade budget so you're not hit with a huge bill every few years.

Hard to predict how much gaming I'd do in the future. It seems like I game less as I get older, but if I didn't have to work maybe I'd use gaming to fill some of the time. There's no way of knowing what level of hardware would be required or how frequently. I currently have £25/month in my budget spreadsheet to represent that, just so there's something vaguely realistic accounted for.

Edit: doesn't need to be a secret, here's what the sheet looks like:

throwaway4372 · 2024-10-28T12:42:43+0000

200sols said:
Some of those sums are low. Dental looks low as does clothes. Spotify at £12 a month? Likewise Amazon prime is hardly a necessity, you are retired you can wait 3 days for the free delivery option. Fuel looks low unless you dont plan on going anywhere, window cleaner is a waste of money when you have time on your hands, clean them yourself. Brown bin? Find space for a compost heap. Grocery cost low but everyone has different views on that.

ty, some stuff to think about there.
Spotify is my gym membership, headphones + walk.
Amazon prime is for tv more than delivery. (my only source of content, hence no tvl)
I do virtually no mileage ('16 plate car has just hit 20k miles, arguably not worth having it, but I do use it most days)