Hi all - I have my finances together pretty well in the grand scheme of things, but one thing I perennially struggle with is budgeting for all the 'unpredictable but likely' fun things in life - mates calling you out for pints, an unexpected night out, that kind of stuff.
On the one hand, I really enjoy this stuff and am willing to pay for it: I don't want to skimp on rounds or think about money too much when I'm with my friends, but it would be nice to have a sense of agency and control how much money I'm spending / am on track towards, and plan what I can do not have it get out of hand.
My overall monthly spend on pints tracks between £200 - £500, and £100-£200 for clubs, to set context.
I mean that doesn't sound unpredictable it sounds pretty consistent.
How much do you earn, what's the rest of your budget like? £500 per month on going out is different if you earn £1800 vs £4800.
Here's our general guide on how to weigh up spending/saving on one thing vs another by working out what the impact is: https://ukpersonal.finance/budgeting/#plan
My income is a pretty inconsistent in that there's lots of variable components - I try to take my daily spending from my monthly base salary which after mortgage and bills comes to ca. £3k.
At a glance its seems that this is affordable for you then, if you have already bought a home, have £3k per month spending money after mortgage+bills from base salary only, and regularly earn more than this it seems in proportion for someone who likes to go out. How much do you save per month at the moment, on average? (Like if you take total savings last Dec vs this, and divide by 12).
Only you can know what the money would be going to if you weren't going out as often. Meals out instead of drinks? Holidays, watches, charitable donations, early retirement savings? It's up to you how to allocate your money, based on your preferences and values.
If you're currently able to save OK, and there's nothing you'd much prefer to do with this money than drinks out, then it's really less of a budgeting question and more about whether it's actually socially satisfying, how it impacts your health etc.
Okay well it really depends on what else is going on in your discretionary spending but if going out for drinks and partying hard is your thing that you get the most fun out of then 1/4 of your budget after bills on fun isn't the worst thing in the world.
As long as you are having fun then enjoy yourself, I'd say you need to watch out for the day where you are too old to keep up with that but that's not financial advice.
I wish I drank that much, just so that I could quit drinking so much and save myself a fortune.
How old are you? In your 20s it probably makes sense to have fun, make relationships, etc. in your 50s maybe less so.
Give yourself an allocation each month and then update your spending against it after each night out. If you have nearly spent it all a week into the month consider what you do for the rest of the month, what rounds you get into, if you go onto the club etc.
Also consider suggesting fun stuff that is cheaper than boozing or do it at someone's house.
Having people over more sounds like a good idea; it's fun and definitely saves a good deal. I'll need to figure out how to make it a regular habit.
At first look I think £700 a month is insane but I go out once a month and spend £200 in one night (food and drink). If you are in your 20s £700 a month is easy done as likely go out every weekend.
I think the only way to curtail spending is to limit how much you go out rather than set a budget imo
£500 on pints is pretty mental, even in somewhere like London it's 70 pints @ £7 each, or an average of more than 2 per day
But say there is 5 of them. Buy 3 rounds each night out. Average price of a pint is around £5: that’s £75 a night. Go out most Fridays/Saturdays that’s up to £600 a month.
Even is it’s 2 rounds each night that’s £400 a month; not including any food or shots etc
If you are having 3 rounds with 5 people you are drinking 15 pints
If you're drinking 15 pints most Fridays and Saturdays, you might need help
Either that or they are buying more drinks for others than for themselves. A nice thing to do occasionally but if it's regular that means their mates are just leeching and taking advantage of them
Jesus Christ, im sure they are not drinking 15 pints each time. The point being spending a shit ton of money on a night out isnt a stretch. And if someone is in their 20s going out up to 8 times a month isnt abnormal either.
I didn't say that spending that much is a stretch, not at all. I think the budget is fine in my view, I spent that much in my 20's and don't regret it.
It's just the way you calculated it means they are drinking 15pints if everyone gets their round in. And personally that's too much.
You can hit that budget and make your point across by drinking 5 pints, a couple shots, and a decent dinner after
It’s a deliberate exaggeration for emphasis not a literally fact.
Why can't you just accept you made a simple mistake? It's way more likely to me that you didn't realise you were saying 15 pints. Anyway, we agree on the overall point so it's fine, just surprised you kept your stance
Huh? You’re really weird
I might be a little high at the moment so yea sorry if it's not making a lot of sense brother, but swear everytime I read reddit comments and people make the simplest of mistakes, which isn't an issue at all. They take it to their grave that they meant it.
If you legit wrote your first comment meaning 15 pints I apologise ahaha
I don't think many people drink 15 pints that regularly, kind of feels like you meant 3 pints each with your mates but instead wrote 3 rounds
Either budget £700 a month for drinking and clubbing, or go to AA and save yourself a fortune
You can't have it both ways - exercising control and not exercising control.
Being realistic, once you have had a drink or two, financial planning tends to go out the window. That's the business model of pubs and clubs there for you.
But, you can take cash and leave your cards at home or in your pocket. Keep 20 quid for the taxi and use that when you've run out.
If you can't trust yourself to do that, then advice from an internet stranger won't help
I don’t think that’s unreasonable based on your income. Yes you could save and that would be the better choice financially, but you have to live your life as well. Time spent with friends has benefits that go beyond the obvious. So maybe see whether you can adjust some of them so you are hanging out at home, or changing the scenery (board game cafe that serves alcohol?), give yourself a budget and look at how you can be a bit more measured such as not getting food when out drinking, having a soft drink every 2nd/3rd drink etc. but enjoy your nights out. There will come a time when it’s not so easy getting friends together, and you’ll look back at these night fondly.
Honestly this doesn’t look unpredictable, it looks like a flexible category that just isn’t capped yet.
What worked for me was treating going out as a fixed monthly pot rather than trying to budget per night. For example, decide upfront that £400 or whatever is your fun money for the month, stick it in a separate account, and once it’s gone it’s gone. Some months you’ll have loads left, other months you’ll burn it quickly, but over time it evens out.
That way you don’t have to think about money on the night, you’ve already given yourself permission to spend it. The control comes from setting the limit in advance, not from micromanaging pints.
If £200 to £500 is normal for you, just pick a number you’re genuinely comfortable with relative to your income and savings goals, automate everything else first, and enjoy the rest guilt free. The problem usually isn’t the nights out, it’s not deciding what “enough” actually is.
I have a separate bank account for Fun Things. After I have budgeted for bills and savings, I divide the leftovers into 5 and pay that amount into the Fun Things Account each week.
The round system is massively flawed and always leads to an unbalanced fairness over the course of a night. The only benefit of not having everyone in your group queue up individually for drinks has been solved by the fact nearly everywhere has an online ordering system and table service. Anywhere that doesn’t have this I find to be quiet enough for it not to be an issue and being able to drink at your own pace and buy a new drink whenever is freeing. Also helps with budgeting for the night.
Pints first then see what’s left for savings
I budget for days out and meals out, if I'm going the pub I'll take it out of one of those two budgets. I based my budget on how much I wanted to be spending on those things rather than how much I was spending before I made a budget.
Depends how tight you want to be but my approach is to have a miscellaneous budget for each month. If there’s anything left over then I roll it into next month.
I’d be cutting from other places before I started cutting from spending time/money with friends.
Is the issue that you'd prefer to spend closer to the lower end, but are actually spending the higher end? Or that you don't know from month to month where it'll fall in that range?
One way I've lived my life, and I do it pretty intuitively now is to think on a bimonthly basis rather than a monthly basis. The credit card bill each month is a pretty good reminder of how much I've spent, and if it's above a certain amount I tend to spend less the next month. So, for example, if I spend £3K in one month, I'll usually get closer to £1K or less the next so that my credit bill tends to average £1.2K each month. Sometimes I'll deliberately hold off an upcoming bigger discretionary spend until the next statement comes in.
I also tend to think in terms of seasonality too. Dec tends to be a high spending month as does my birthday month (as I'll treat myself). The months around them tend to anchored downwards as a result.
I just have cash available for those reasons put to a side. If night out happens I obviously spend, if doesn’t I have it for the next time.
£500 a month on pints is something like 16 pints a week. You shouldn't really be drinking more than about 6 pints in a week if you don't want it to be seriously impacting your health later in life.
Wow, that's quite a lot of money spent every month on drinking/going out. Maybe I'm just jealous all my friends live too far away to regularly see :'/.
I am Dutch so by nature cheap, and I would 100% keep track of who is buying what if you are out with friends. Not down to the penny, but I wouldn't be funding my mates' drinking habits. I don't drink alcohol so when I went out with my friends from uni, I never paid into the pooled beer money as I would never get back what I paid in, and my friends were OK with that. If you do drink, then IMO it should be kind of balanced with regards to each person's contribution to the shared drinking. If there's someone who often doesn't pay or always waits until a few people have already left before getting a round, I would mention it.
Besides that, I'd just plan your social life more so that you know roughly how much you'll spend on it, and then impose a budget on yourself for these nights you go out, whether that's £50 a night or £100. And don't go out more often than you have money set aside for. I can't imagine spending £300-700 a month on this no matter how much fun it is.
You can also suggest some cheaper activities with your friends, like doing something at your home (or the home of one of the other friends)? Movie night, boardgames, just hanging out with some music. Then BYOB and everyone brings a few snacks and you probably have a great time at a fraction of what you'd spend drinking outside of the home. If you guys do this you'll need to figure out who will host: is it mainly going to be one of the friends because they have the best place (whether it's the biggest, most comfortable, has no shared walls with neighbours, or is in the middle of everyone else so no one has to travel too far), or will you rotate so everyone will host once and then you kind of start with the first guy again? If you have a habit of regularly going out to drink, I'd try to set up something within the home at least once a month if not every other week, for this friend group. You'll save so much money.
Monzo virtual card linked to a “fun” pot. I budget my pub/gigs/shows spend monthly and use Apple Pay with the virtual card linked to that pot.
I used to struggle with the same issue but find I often underspend against the monthly budget I syphon into the pot. It’s been a real game changer.
£700 on nights out per month seems like a waste to me and you’ve probably underestimated both.
Follow the 50/30/20 rule: 50% of income on needs; 30% on wants; 20% on saving
I go out, get drunk and stop buying drinks when I get told to go home.