How much is housekeeping?

[Milims]

I have a form to fill in and one of the questions asks how much I spend on housekeeping. It doesn't include things like untility bills, so I assume it's about food, clothing entertainment etc. I have a family of 5 - 3 adults and 2 teens, but I cut my coat according to my cloth - so if we are skint we don't spend (not that we spend much anyway!) If we have spare cash we buy in bulk so that we don't get caught short later on. So how much is the average housekeeping bill???

[Green Aura]

I don't know really but it occurred to me that if you're on a fixed income and you use most of it for living expenses then

income minus utilities (and anything else they said wasn't included) = housekeeping

Sorry if I'm stating the bleeding obvious.

[Milims]

Well that's exactly what I thought too - you pay your bills and what ever is left is what you buy the necessaries on! But it's still a bit hard to put a figure on just what you really spend. Some weeks we spend very little, but that's because we bought in bulk the week before, or got lucky with reduced to clear stuff for the freezer. As my OH pointed out, I'm a frugal shopper, which (with the excetion of the likeminded Ishers) isn't necessarily the norm! I just wondered if there was some kind of formula or something. For example - how do they account for someone who buys own brand products against someone who buy the more expensive ones?

[Green Aura]

I don't think you need to be that specific, just average out what you have available for housekeeping. If you've managed to save a few bob by being canny they don't need to know that surely?

[Milims]

I don't think you need to be that specific, just average out what you have available for housekeeping. If you've managed to save a few bob by being canny they don't need to know that surely?

That's what I though too! I can just be a bit too honest sometimes!

[oldjerry]

Just draw a picture of your arm and your leg!

[Milims]

Just draw a picture of your arm and your leg!

With my children munching on them!

[MuddyWitch]

No, with the tax man munching on it! lol

MW

[noplasticbags]

I think it would be good to think about why they want to know.

If it's for a loan, they want to know you can afford it - so if income is more than housekeeping + bills they would know you could afford repayments. However, if it's for a grant or something then you want housekeeping + bills to be more than income, so they know you need the grant!

Whoever is asking they have a criteria they are trying to fit you into. Whilst being honest with your answer just bear the reason they are asking in mind!!

[Milims]

The reason for the form is this, my ex husb took me to court for contact with the kids - even though he didn't need to as I was more than willing for him to have contact and had written letters to my solicitor indicating this, he just wanted to do everything he could to try and break me. The result is I have a bill for about £8000 for the court cases and he has totally rejected the kids and pays nothing towards their maintenance. Obviously I don't happen to have 8 grand hanging round in my pocket so I had to have a charge put on my house. The form is from the land registry so that they can decide if I have to start paying it back now or it can stay as it is for a while. If I don't pay it now the sum is deducted from anything I make from the sale of my house - should I ever sell. Since I bought half of the house outright (before I received the bill for the court cases so all the money I had available, from the sale of my other house, had become tied up in bricks and mortar) and the value has increased since I bought, I don't think this will pose too much of a problem. We don't have a huge income and we are very careful with what we have. Treats are small and limited, we save for what we want, don't take holidays and are generally as frugal as possible. I guess I possibly could start to pay something towards it - but quite frankly I feel that if we shaved any closer we'd hit bone pretty soon! Life has to be worth living!

[Flo]

My income and expenditure Excel spreadsheet lists allotment costs, birthdays, contents insurance, food and cleaning, household furniture, phone and internet, heating and electricity, rent, council tax and water rates all as separate items. Housekeeping is a very old fashioned term and usually just refers to the food and cleaning element.

[boboff]

Milms £450 a month is reasonable.

[merlin]

I mean I presume house keeping needs to reflect what it costs to 'keep a house'. So that would be the rates, mortgage or rent, etc, would it not? If they wanted to know about the food costs, would they not have asked for 'person keeping' ? Is it just me, or does big brother just ask inaccurate questions in order to prolong the agony and keep us down?