How I budget my £50,000 a year salary + FREE Budget spreadsheet!

Now seeing as it’s just been payday for a lot of us I thought I’d share with you how I budget. Now, this might seem a little odd but I find it even odder that we’re not more open about money. I know it can come across as crass or a little vulgar to talk about money but following last week’s post, we really should all be talking about money. After all, we all have money in some shape or form. And the majority of us would like to have more of it. I know I certainly would. Which is why I’m keen to share with you all how I budget.

Now the only way I can really talk about money is to let you all know how much money I earn. And on average that’s £50,000 a year. Now the majority of this comes from the fact that I work full time. I work for a company managing their PR, Social Media and website. Outside of my full-time work, I also run a couple of blogs. But the main one is this one. Which I’ve run for the past seven years. Over that time I’ve managed to build the site up to a point where I can monetise some content and earn money through this blog. Whether it’s from sponsored content or affiliate links. The money earned through this blog helps to top up my income.

Now for some people £50,000 a year is a lot of money. To others that number could seem quite small. Personally, I want that number to be bigger and I aim to grow my blog to earn more by the end of the year. It might be greedy, but it’s more about knowing my worth and wanting to earn more than I currently do. I live alone. So it’s just my salary that pays for the mortgage, bills and Netflix subscription. I honestly think our earning potentials are only capped by ourselves. I’m pretty focused right now on growing mine and have some big goals in place.

If you’re curious about how to start a budget or want some help. Then you can download my free budget spreadsheet below.

Right now my overall salary is £50,000. So how do I spend it? Well for me I find it easier to categorise my spending so I know where all my money is going in certain areas of my life.

For the majority of us, a large proportion or where our money goes is on living expenses and bills. And that’s no different for me. My mortgage, council tax, electricity and other monthly bills – including insurances – totals more than £1,000. That’s a huge chunk of my monthly take-home pay.

Next up is savings. Now since getting myself out of debt over four years ago – I’ll go into details exactly how I did this in the coming weeks – I’ve made a conscious effort to always have money set aside. I have an emergency fund account – which is for well emergencies. Plus a few regular saving accounts. As you can see, I like to separate out my savings accounts. For me, it makes it’s easier to save if I know what I’m saving for.

So let’s move onto food and drink. Now I don’t know about you, but during the lockdown, my food bill has definitely increased. But then my takeaway and eating out bill has most certainly decreased. below is what a normal month would look like.

Next, we move onto travel expenses. Right now, these are minimal due to the fact that I’m working from home. I’m also in a fortunate position to not have to spend money on a car. I have a company car so the only real expense I have is fuel. But seeing as I would usually travel 350+ miles a month, fuel can be expensive – as you can see by how much I would usually spend in a month.

Now we’re moving onto beauty expenses. Now for everyone, these numbers will be different. For me, these numbers might look quite high. But as someone who doesn’t really drink that much, I also don’t smoke so makeup, skincare, shoes and bags are my weakness. And an area that I choose to spend a fair amount of my budget in.

We then have the entertainment field. Again, this is significantly less than normal. No gigs or theatre visits. No cinema trips. Just a whole lot of watching TV on my couch. But think of all the money we’ve saved!

And finally I have my blog expenses. Told you running a blog, or two, isn’t cheap. But it is totally worth it!

Now as you can see I split my budget into projected and actual costs. That’s because as much as I think I know what something will cost. Inevitably it could be a different cost depending on the month. Food, for example, could be a lot lower in the takeaway section for example if I’ve been good and not ordered pizza. Or fuel could be a lot higher if I’ve travelled more over the month. This also helps me to look at where I can make savings month on month. But I think it’s key to remember that this is an ideal budget. The actual cost could change month on month. But that’s life!

So that’s how I budget. Let me know in the comments below how you budget and whether you’ll be using my budget spreadsheet to track your spending.