1100 euros a month for four people and no mortgage: it doesn’t stretch

1100 euros for four people: the budget that doesn’t add up

Four people, 1100 euros a month and no mortgage or rent to pay. On paper, it should work. In practice, it doesn’t. The budget detailed by the head of the household —the only salary after his vvife lost her job and no longer receives benefit— comes to 1140 euros, forty more than comes in each month. And that’s with the car paid off and the home debt-free, the two expenses that take up most of the household money.

The question he asks is anyone’s: how do others manage? The answers paint a country where the same figure means opposite things depending on who is looking at it. Some see plenty of room; others, a pipe dream.

The spending breakdown: 1140 euros you don’t see coming

The item-by-item detail is what throws you. The monthly total, as set out, comes to this:

• General shopping (food, hygiene, cleaning): 600 €
• Various phone bills: 100 €
• Car (insurance and maintenance): 100 €
• Unforeseen expenses (breakdowns, books, etc.): 100 €
• Electricity, gas and building fees including water: 60 € each
• Clothes for four people: 60 €

Almost half the total goes on general shopping. Phones and the car tie as the second-biggest item, ahead of utilities. Read coldly, the problem doesn’t look like splurging on restaurants and holidays, but a constant drip of small expenses that add up to a figure impossible to reduce on its own.

Phones and groceries: the two items where you can make savings

There is little disagreement about the 100 euros for mobiles. With low-cost operator tariffs, it is calculated that the four members could get by on about 36 euros; at a push, some lower the estimate to 8 euros a month between them all, limiting calls and keeping data use to a minimum. The potential saving is around 60-90 euros a month without changing their lifestyle.

On groceries, opinions divide. For some, 600 euros for four people, two of them teenagers, is no outrage. For others it is outright madness. The most repeated advice is to separate food from cleaning and personal-care products, use own-brand goods and work out how much of that 600 goes on dispensable things. The clothing item also jars, 60 euros every month when the norm is to buy clothes sporadically.

Cook, freeze and buy whole cuts

Here the consensus is broad: cooking is the most powerful and least exploited savings lever. Stews, lentils, pulses, cooking extra and freezing in portions. Buying large cuts and butchering them yourself. Among the prices mentioned are chicken breasts at 7 euros the kilo, beef chops at 20 euros and Iberian pork shoulder at 8 euros. The repeated sarracena: eating healthily and cheaply is possible, but it requires knowing how to cook and make the most of leftovers, something that has been lost.

From the notebook to the spreadsheet

Tracking spending is imposed as the first step before cutting anything. People mention Excel sheets divided by category —food, household, leisure, housing and cars—, the Toshl app and the GnuCash programme. Someone has kept household accounts down to the cent since the late 1990s, with a separate sheet even for the light bulbs in the home. The other front is negotiating rates: one account describes an ADSL price cut from 37 euros by threatening to switch operator, and the difficulties of getting a supplier to apply a gas tariff change.

850 euros with three people and 400 living alone

Comparing cases throws you. A family of three, with a small child, says it lives on 850 euros from two family benefits and pays no housing costs: “just enough, but nothing is missing”. Another person living alone gets by on 400 euros a month. And there is a budget with a 2013 average of 1090 euros in prorated income plus 45 in interest, with 300 rent.

That the problem is one of income and not of numbers doesn’t close the discussion either. How much needs to come into the home to stop doing the sums at the end of every month? No one gives the same figure. And those who do qualify it.