Rachel keeps a close eye on our cash flows and there are a few surprising things coming up. This is mostly the cost of food and petrol but thankfully we are okay with this; but definitely not complacent.
Petrol
At around £1.30/litre petrol may have increased in price a little in the last year, though I’m not really sure as I don’t pay much attention to the cost of each litre. When the petrol gauge goes down to a about a quarter, I fill up to the brim.
A couple of things have thrown me. Firstly I had anticipated we would drop down to one car as I retired and we haven’t done this. Instead we changed a car (albeit the new one is 12 years old!). It turns out my car is clocking up about 20,000 miles a year – this is more than when I was working! Rachel’s car is less, perhaps 6 to 8,000 miles as her car is used for relatively local journeys.
Naturally this all comes at a cost. Petrol, servicing, wear and tear, plus the cost of having two cars with two lots of MOT tests, insurance and licence.
Food
It looks like we are spending, on average, about £400 a month on food. This strikes me as being quite a lot for just the two of us.
However, it does include:
- a little more entertaining. We love having friends around for a meal.
- our two girls come back for their holidays and we always buy more food. Hannah has a really big appetite through being such an active, sporty person.
- some of the costs include buying things for my Mother-in-law.
- the cost includes all of our supermarket shopping, so things like cleaning materials are included.
- we eat out much more these days. It might be a coffee somewhere, or perhaps a meal. We never used to do that!
- the cost of some food may have increased over the years.
However, the striking thing is, we used to spend £300 a month some twenty years ago. So that doesn’t seem too bad now.
Where do we compare with others?
I am really curious about this. How much do others spend on food?
One of my friends who has recently stepped back from work says he has a special bank card for coffee and eating out. That’s not a bad idea. I can’t remember how much he said but I do remember thinking it was quite generous.
We live quite well and we have two freezers which alternate between being just 50% full to being absolutely stuffed full. Likewise our fridge and cupboards fluctuate a bit.
Myself in particular like to buy nice coffee and decent quality food; we often have the Aldi-v-Sainsbury’s debate and generally settle for a bit of both. Even cheap “value” bread flour just doesn’t seem to work, so that’s one example where we don’t want to compromise.
So where do we go with this?
For now, we think we just have to budget for it. We can’t easily trim back on other things.
In the medium term we might need to access my occupational pension a little earlier but we have never had a fixed date in mind. The main thing is not to allow our reserves to run down too much and not to be frivolous or unduly extravagant. We can carry on earning little bits of money here and there (we both quite enjoy doing little bits of freelance work).
Most of all, we need to be mindful of how God has blessed us with this money and we must live with thankfulness, using money wisely.
Stop feeding the children…
Doug
You are spending more money on cars than you are on food! Combined that is probably £9000 a year! You might need to consider bike/ train/ bus and only 1 car.
Yes, we tend to buy good quality organic produce and pay more for it, and whilst we grow some of our own I’m not convinced there are any savings there, we just know what we are eating and that it really is fresh. However, a direct consequence of embracing natural cleaning products and rejecting single use plastic (so far as possible) is that we are spending less there, using vinegar ( bought in 20 litre quantities) and bars of soap. Without our daily commutes, our car mileage has reduced dramatically too. Living in the countryside though, and with separate interests and commitments, the idea of limiting ourselves to one vehicle is still anathema to us; I may be retired but I still value independence.
Thank you Anthony – what can I say, how could you!!!!
Barry, thank you as well. I think we will revisit the two car question many more times over the years but it is proving very useful having a car each, particularly with Rachel’s mum in mind. I know, we can always call a taxi etc.
Caree Risover and thank you too. You have reminded me of some of the things we do in being thrifty, so I might have to blog about some of these. I’m intrigued about buying 20 litres of vinegar in one go – I haven’t seen that in your blog yet!