Cash spend and budgetAug 2025 – Jul 2026Three accounts

Household spending is falling, and has been for six months

Monthly outflow across the current and joint accounts has come down from £14,250 in August 2025 to £8,624 in July 2026. Against that, £5,289 of it is fixed before anyone makes a decision.

£7,060
Net salary / month
£5,289
Fixed commitments
£2,548
Variable spend
£960
Groceries / month
The arithmetic

Fixed commitments and variable spend together exceed net salary

£5,289 committed plus £2,548 of variable household spending is £7,837 against net salary of £7,060.

The gap is bridged by Musical Dice Ltd — the business account moved £105,681 in and £106,219 out over the same twelve months, and transfers between it and the current account are frequent. That works, but it means household solvency currently depends on the company, which is worth being deliberate about rather than incidental.

Monthly outflow

Current + joint · trending down

Total money out, excluding the business account. The January spike and the steady fall since March are both real.

Aug 2025
£14,250
Sep 2025
£13,846
Oct 2025
£16,647
Nov 2025
£8,790
Dec 2025
£12,191
Jan 2026
£17,241
Feb 2026
£9,017
Mar 2026
£12,407
Apr 2026
£9,301
May 2026
£7,495
Jun 2026
£8,059
Jul 2026
£8,624

Variable spend

Last 12 months · excludes direct debits

Groceries are more than double the next category. Ocado alone is £5,742 across 32 deliveries — an average of £179 a shop — against Sainsbury's £3,368 across 313 visits.

Category
Per month
12 months
Transactions
GroceriesOcado £5,742 · Sainsbury's £3,368
£960
£11,521
522
Shopping
£424
£5,091
178
General
£227
£2,729
108
Lifestyle
£217
£2,608
86
Bills and servicesOn top of the direct debits
£181
£2,168
74
Eating out
£170
£2,040
151
Entertainment
£141
£1,690
79
Transport
£116
£1,390
137
Holidays
£43
£518
8
Total variable
£2,548
£30,582
1,343

Children

£3,540 last 12 months
Item
12 months
Payments
Note
Iris Pay
£732
35
Frequent small amounts
goHenry
£656
30
Children's cards and top-ups
Cheer London Allstarz
£1,014
12
Across two payee spellings
L&Z / LoveAdmin
£548
7
Includes Thrive4
St Dunstan's
£161
1
Swimming · resumes 7 Sep
ParentPay
£141
5
School
Europa School Events
£102
6

Two things worth a decision

Cashflow pattern

The joint account is topped up ad hoc, and runs close to empty

Balance is £152.14. Transfers in from the current account over the last twelve months totalled about £3,142 across 21 payments, and three months had none at all while the joint account still spent £2,000+ each.

That means the joint account is largely funded by Violaine's own credits — £4,000 twice, £3,570, £900, £737 among them. A standing order of a set amount on payday would make the household budget legible to both of you, which is most of the point of this exercise.

£2,183 a year

Household streaming bills to the Musical Dice card

Netflix, Spotify, Disney Plus, Apple, Ring, Lebara and Lime all sit on the business account. Squarespace and GoDaddy are plainly business; the streaming services are harder to argue.

An allowable-expense question for BM Connect rather than something to settle from bank data — but better raised before a year end than during one.