How much do you need to survive each year?

[throwaway4372]

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]

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

 

[throwaway4372]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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:

Spoiler

 

[throwaway4372]

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)

 

[throwaway4372]

edit i must be going senile (maybe i should retire now) or OP has updated the 1st post as i could have sworn the point was him working out if he could retire.
if it isnt then my post is somewhat pointless, if it is just a theoretical question of what is the absolute minimum you can survive on!.

The "would you retire or not" question is another thread. This one is just about outgoings. They are related of course, as you need to reliably know your outgoings to calculate the earliest it's possible to retire.

 

[throwaway4372]

Unfortunately I haven't been able to cut down on broadband because BT were given a guaranteed monopoly for 5 years in return for putting the FTTP infrastructure in. Been here over 10 years now and competition is only just starting to happen. So I've been paying about 50pcm for 10+ years due to lack of choice, at least it's really fast and reliable, but the arrangement really shafted residents so should never have been agreed to. I've got a year left on my contract then I can shop around.

 

[throwaway4372]

Couldn’t you make use of Amazon Prime Music if you’re paying for that already?
Or get rid of Amazon for TV and just watch 4oD, ITVx, etc for free?
In the save as much of possible theme I mean. How do you do virtually no mileage if you use the car almost every day? Replace it with a bike?

Yeah these are all choices. I used amazon music before and it shafted me by removing music I'd bought so I switched, it's a tenner a month for the proper service anyway, which they constantly hassle you to purchase.

 

[throwaway4372]

btw what brought this on was for me I calculated about 11k, then I asked mum and she said 6k.

Looked into my mum's estimate based on hers being the outlier rather than mine:
- She missed out a lot of stuff.
- She does a good job of keeping bills down, but not unusually so.
- She gets clothes from charity shops (10/month budgeted).
- She budgets 120/month for groceries. e.g. cheap food (heron frozen foods) and toiletries (pound shop). So if we're going to learn anything from her, it's probably that, but whether we want to is another question.

And taking on board some of your feedback I've adjusted my number from 11k to 12.5k (15k including car).
Very helpful thanks all.