UK here. These are my current year numbers. Do note OP numbers are from 5 years ago.
Electricity: £100 or so normally, £200 during autumn/winter. I dont have gas, everything is electric and I use my PC 8/7.
Internet: £50 for basic 1GB speed nowadays. You can try playing around with new customers contracts just to go down to 30 again but it's more trouble then it's worth. Avoid Vodafone though, they cancelation process is cancer.
Mobile Bill: £10. Sounds about right. I dont do much calling around though.
Council Tax: £110. It keeps growing 3% every year for the last decade.
Car Insurance: Dunno. I cycle everywhere.
Food Bill: £300 without takeouts. With takeouts it might be 400.
TV license: You don't pay for that unless you're dumb. Everytime I recieve a letter I regret not collecting them because I'd have enough to make a wallpaper.
Fyi, you can actually declare you don't need to pay a TV license if you genuinely don't watch the crap the license people try to collect money on. They've obviously been sneakily trying to expand it but I'm one of those people who don't watch television at all and normies give me confused looks when I mention it. They absolutely would make the TV license a proper tax soon enough if they could get away with it and they might do it because more and more people are simply refusing to pay and the boomers they normally milk for money are dying off.
Getting out of paying a TV license after you've already been paying at the same address is actual aids to do.
They expect you to "prove" it with photos and shit. And because they've overstretched if you take any photos of a TV/computer or laptop they'll deny it.
Moving address is the easiest way, you just don't pay from day 1.
lol well I guess I'm lucky because that's what happened to me where I moved out and was getting that stupid letter from them. I don't know if the rules changed though, but either way even if they did try and berate me I would be able to do a rant to end all rants about how television can die and society would be better off for it and they wouldn't need convincing that I don't watch television.
Wow, and I thought I was frugal. Granted, I'm not sure what a council tax is or what the American equivalent of that would be. It sounds like a property tax, but you pay it even when you're renting? The food bill definitely seemed low to me, but not impossible I suppose.
Council tax is what goes towards local services including police and firefighting as well as bin collection and general infrastructure, at least, that's what it should go to, the local councils organise that sort of thing per constituency.
By the way I feel I should mention just for the sake of accuracy except for the TV license which is an incredible grey area even by UK politics standards local council taxes have existed for years and the British public are thoroughly cucked on the issue of paying taxes. Now where Britain has been getting really nasty and it will definitely make Americans vomit is with stuff like ULEZ cameras and green zones. As well as the idea of trying to turn little suburbs that can barely maintain the infrastructure as is into these creepy 15 minute areas.
The ULEZ stuff in particular has the working classes up in arms because van drivers especially are simply not going to be able to afford to work as this stuff spreads. To call the UK a police state at this point is something of an understatement of how bad things really are and even the normies are getting sick of it all. They'll vote Labour though and stick with the two party system, because they're utter brainlets and then Labour is probably going to collapse the government outright rather than keep things at the speed limit as the Conservatives have.
Other than the $10 mobile bill, you could do all that in a small apartment in America. Or at least you could until recently. I just say small because your electric bill on anything I think more than 1BR is going to top ~$120 . Electric bills have gone up 30% for me this year.
We don't have council taxes, though, though there are all kinds of other taxes. Typically that would be built into your rent, assuming you rent. Rent is really expensive. Car insurance is a lot more than GBP45 a month equivalent.
These days, I feel like you'd be very limited what you could eat on a $300 food budget a month. If you need 90 meals a month, that's $3.33 a meal. You can't buy a meal for that, hardly anywhere, for good reason. I'm sure you could do it and not starve, but it would be a lot of beans and rice. Yes, it is substantially cheaper to buy and cook your own food, but we're looking at the ingredients cost quickly approaching what you have to spend without, certainly, any extravagance like prepared foods.
UK here. These are my current year numbers. Do note OP numbers are from 5 years ago.
Electricity: £100 or so normally, £200 during autumn/winter. I dont have gas, everything is electric and I use my PC 8/7.
Internet: £50 for basic 1GB speed nowadays. You can try playing around with new customers contracts just to go down to 30 again but it's more trouble then it's worth. Avoid Vodafone though, they cancelation process is cancer.
Mobile Bill: £10. Sounds about right. I dont do much calling around though.
Council Tax: £110. It keeps growing 3% every year for the last decade.
Car Insurance: Dunno. I cycle everywhere.
Food Bill: £300 without takeouts. With takeouts it might be 400.
TV license: You don't pay for that unless you're dumb. Everytime I recieve a letter I regret not collecting them because I'd have enough to make a wallpaper.
Fyi, you can actually declare you don't need to pay a TV license if you genuinely don't watch the crap the license people try to collect money on. They've obviously been sneakily trying to expand it but I'm one of those people who don't watch television at all and normies give me confused looks when I mention it. They absolutely would make the TV license a proper tax soon enough if they could get away with it and they might do it because more and more people are simply refusing to pay and the boomers they normally milk for money are dying off.
Getting out of paying a TV license after you've already been paying at the same address is actual aids to do.
They expect you to "prove" it with photos and shit. And because they've overstretched if you take any photos of a TV/computer or laptop they'll deny it.
Moving address is the easiest way, you just don't pay from day 1.
lol well I guess I'm lucky because that's what happened to me where I moved out and was getting that stupid letter from them. I don't know if the rules changed though, but either way even if they did try and berate me I would be able to do a rant to end all rants about how television can die and society would be better off for it and they wouldn't need convincing that I don't watch television.
Wow, and I thought I was frugal. Granted, I'm not sure what a council tax is or what the American equivalent of that would be. It sounds like a property tax, but you pay it even when you're renting? The food bill definitely seemed low to me, but not impossible I suppose.
Council tax is what goes towards local services including police and firefighting as well as bin collection and general infrastructure, at least, that's what it should go to, the local councils organise that sort of thing per constituency.
I knew y'all don't have formally allocated levies but that's actually worse than I thought.
By the way I feel I should mention just for the sake of accuracy except for the TV license which is an incredible grey area even by UK politics standards local council taxes have existed for years and the British public are thoroughly cucked on the issue of paying taxes. Now where Britain has been getting really nasty and it will definitely make Americans vomit is with stuff like ULEZ cameras and green zones. As well as the idea of trying to turn little suburbs that can barely maintain the infrastructure as is into these creepy 15 minute areas.
The ULEZ stuff in particular has the working classes up in arms because van drivers especially are simply not going to be able to afford to work as this stuff spreads. To call the UK a police state at this point is something of an understatement of how bad things really are and even the normies are getting sick of it all. They'll vote Labour though and stick with the two party system, because they're utter brainlets and then Labour is probably going to collapse the government outright rather than keep things at the speed limit as the Conservatives have.
Other than the $10 mobile bill, you could do all that in a small apartment in America. Or at least you could until recently. I just say small because your electric bill on anything I think more than 1BR is going to top ~$120 . Electric bills have gone up 30% for me this year.
We don't have council taxes, though, though there are all kinds of other taxes. Typically that would be built into your rent, assuming you rent. Rent is really expensive. Car insurance is a lot more than GBP45 a month equivalent.
These days, I feel like you'd be very limited what you could eat on a $300 food budget a month. If you need 90 meals a month, that's $3.33 a meal. You can't buy a meal for that, hardly anywhere, for good reason. I'm sure you could do it and not starve, but it would be a lot of beans and rice. Yes, it is substantially cheaper to buy and cook your own food, but we're looking at the ingredients cost quickly approaching what you have to spend without, certainly, any extravagance like prepared foods.