How do you budget?

[Dontgiveamonkeys1350]

I’m taking over the financial reins in our family. The way we had been doing it wasn’t working before. So I wanted to pick peoples brains on here about how you do it.

Do you have a separate account for ur bills.

Do you budget for money weekly

Do you have a strict food budget and take that out weekly.

Do you always have less money at the end of the month than u think u do.

Do u budget within an inch of ur life or do u wing it.

Really hoping to get some good ideas here to make it easier to keep a track of the in going me and out going’s.

Do you write stuff down everyday you have spent and take it off the total.

Let me know how you do this. As I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by taking this on. It makes sense for me to do this as I’m now at home most of the time and my husband is at work. I just want to get this right.

Each month I draw out £600. This covers all the food shopping, all dc's activities, school lunches, meals out etc. When it is gone it is gone. I find having actual cash in my purse easier to keep track of. I find I can't keep track of my spending if I use my card. When we get paid I put £180 into an account for bills, £150 in a savings account which is used throughout the year for birthday presents. What is left at the end of the year is used for Xmas. Dc each have an account each. I put in £35 a month so if they need clothes/shoes/school trip the money is there ready. £200 goes into another account which covers our car insurance and road tax for 2 cars and there's always a bit to cover any unexpected car repairs/expensive. All this is put in each separate account as soon as we get paid, so it is out of the current account and we aren't tempted to spend what we can't afford. Hope this helps!

We have a separate account for bills. This covers council tax, water, gas, electric, life insurance, home phone & broadband, children's savings, children's clubs and savings for Xmas. I pay house and car insurance annually.

We then have a shared credit card that all food, petrol and family spending goes on. We put our own limits on what we want to spend in each area, and ALL purchases get written in a book. The bill is never a surprise. We pay it off in full each month.

OH and I have the same amount of cash for personal spending each month. This is in our own accounts.

Thanks for ur input.

Add up every weekly monthly and annual ie, rent/ mortgage gas elec water car insurances...everything. divide the grand total by 12. This us the basic monthly figure you pay into a bills account each month. Set up your direct debits and pretty much let it run itself. Do not be tempted to withdraw money from this account. It is accounted for.

from your remaining monthly money, deduct fares for work.

From whats left, divide by 4.3. This gives you the figure each week that covers 5 week months.

Then for food, clothes, savings etc, you cut your cloth to suit yourself. If you go over the above figure, you will be up shit creek. If you spend less, you wont be.

Simple really. 👍

We have a separate bills acount. Only i have access to that and neither of is has a cashcard for it.

His left over money is for him. My left over money is for the food shop, petrol, clothes...

This is really helpful. I already have stolen one idea

Does anyone take stuff out in cash. I’m thinking of doing this for the food budget. Never really had a set food budget before but I’m going to have one. Then only take that in cash with me. I scan as I shop so will add up as I go around to check I’m not going over ?

Also. I’m s cleaner and get paid weekly. But people don’t pay me always on that week which is annoying so that messes up the weekly system. Just trying to find a way to incorporate a chuck of money that comes in not so weekly as well

We have an offset mortgage. All our wages get paid into the mortgage account. We then have direct debits set up to a bills account, each of our personal accounts and a housekeeping account.

The bills account covers everything including all bills, mobile phones, gym membership, house and car insurance, car tax and I even have a service plan on my car. DC’s regular activities come out of this account too. All bills are set up on direct debit and other than a quick glance at the statement, we don’t touch the account and it looks after itself.

We pay an equal amount into our personal accounts and £600 into the housekeeping account which is used for food and petrol. I used to take out cash but DH kept popping out for milk and spending £40 on tat and ruining my budget so we stick to debit cards on that account now.

Everything left in the mortgage account after the mortgage payment is made is offset so we pay less interest and we build up our savings in this account to use as and when needed.

I never draw out large amounts of cash because it can be lost. Plus if you pay for everything on certain credit cards you can get points/deals/cashback but you have to be switched on. It always has to be paid on time so you get zero charges.

My Tesco clubcard credit card has points and has paid for legoland, 3 visits to sea life centres, car hire, ferry fares, hotels, magazine subscriptions and lots of other stuff.

Your employers really need to pay you appropriately and if they can afford a cleaner I assume most are going to be further up the wage tree than yourself. I'm pretty horrified they are not all paying you on time, I bet they would kick up a fuss if their salaries were not paid on time.

Get yourself over to moneysavingexpert.com they are a great website th lots of ideas and also spreadsheets you can download for budgeting,

I have standing orders from my current account on 1st of month to savings accounts for annual expenses (insurances, car services etc) and long term expenses (new boiler every ten-ish years, new kitchen every 20-ish years etc etc) as well as savings. Bills come out of the same current account.

I've worked out how much I have for food, petrol etc every week and I transfer it to a Monzo account every Sunday and use my Monzo debit card for everything. The Monzo app really helps me to budget as you see in there the moment you spend the money. If I have anything left I put it in a Monzo savings pot for the next more expensive week.

I would love people to pay me on time. Most of the time I have to text and tell them I’m due the next day and I due a payment. They don’t seem to realise that I rely on that money for food etc.

Our circumstances have changed in the last few months so money is now much tighter so all this is helpful.

I know I sound like I’m a flake and should know this stuff. I do. And have been for years. But it wasn’t working and thought this was the place to come and see if I could pick up any type of tips.

I went through 1 month of card statement and wrote down amounts for each dd so I had an idea of inflexible payments each month.

Then went through looking for food shops and added them all up.
Ditto with petrol.

Decided extras were clubs, clothes and haircuts for us - I decided clothes were least important here (bar school uniform) so if I had to cut I could take from that. Add all of these for a month and be sensible - if you know you spent £100 on a dress for a wedding but that isn't normal average it out, or if you usually bleach your hair but skipped that month add it in for eg. I'd usually round up rather than down to be realistic.

I discovered I was routinely past my incoming amount by week 3 of the month. It certainly made me more proactive about using my freezer to batch cook and order online only every 2 weeks rather than popping out for whatever we fancied. I find keeping to a fairly regular meal plan helps here as we usually want something out of the week's menu and can switch around if we don't fancy chicken that night etc.
I also decided to spend to get my hair darker as the colour was costing far too much even doing it every other month. Dd has enough clothes and i'm trying not to take her into town as much to save from those little cheap bits they see and you think "oh it's only 99p" adding up.
I had a terrible 2 months where BT was charging me 60% more - which is when I noticed I was suddenly going really into my overdraft. One call and I'm back to £48pm fixed for 18months. I now have a reminder on my phone for 2 weeks before that runs out again as they don't inform you before they put you on the most expensive option.
I'm also more careful now about driving people everywhere - I was becoming a free taxi service. I now don't feel bad asking for a bit of petrol money (most friends know I'm on a budget which helps).
So far this just about keeps me level and not into the overdraft, which is actually quite unusual I think in this day and age! HTH.

Oh yes and all of my dd's come within the first week of the month as income comes in between 1-3rd of each month. Therefore I know the inflexible bills are sorted.
Just read as i'm typing that you can't do that. That deffo makes it harder. It's why so many ppl doing deliveroo etc on gig economy can't get on as there's no way to monitor what's coming in when. Hope someone else can suggest a way you can make them pay? Is it legal to put a note on the invoice to say must be paid within 15 days or a charge can be applied? (NB -PROBABLY NOT BUT WORTH ASKING!)

I told them when they employed me it has to be paid within four working days. They don’t do that. No matter what I say.

My wages go into one account which bills come out of and I work out what will be left and transfer it to another account which I then know I can do what I want with. I have a good idea of how much our food will cost so I know what to leave in there; we do a fortnightly big shop and buy milk and bread in between and I found that gave me a much better idea of what we spend on food a month

Also This year I started putting £25 into another account for Christmas; it doesn’t entirely cover it but it’s made a difference rather than having to go short in October and November for it as I normally do

Look at what I have once all bills have come out.

Divide it by four so I know how much I have each week.

Try to spend as under that amount as possible.

The most helpful thing for me for tracking has been using the app GoodBudget alongside my bank accounts.

It's tricky with unreliable/fluctuating income, but the Goodbudget app means I can add payments to my budget as I get paid, move money between different budgets, and use my bank apps to check for when my automated payments go out and double check any payments in or out.

I tend to do a big monthly plan at the end of the month for the next month - plan out expenses, see areas from the last month I can improve or things I need to look into getting cheaper or cutting, then check on a weekly basis to see how on track it is so I can adjust it as things go on.

Thanks for all the ideas

I do what others do and just take cash out, I calculate how much is needed at the start of the month. It's usually around £450-500 (for two adults)

I don't take my card out so I can't be tempted

If you're self-employed I would start fining the late payers. At the moment there's no consequences for them in paying you late, so they're taking the piss.

If they have weekly cleans and haven't paid by the time the next clean is due, they don't get their cleaning done that week. And then three strikes and they're out, you don't provide your services to them.

If you advertise well and get a good reputation, you should be able to get as much cleaning work as you need, unless you are in a sparsely populated area.

For dealing with money coming in dribs and drabs, can you get it paid into one account, and get a set amount transferred out to your bills account, and to pay for food, on a regular weekly/monthly basis?

How much budgeting you need to do depends a lot on whether or not your incomings cover your outgoings. If they don't or you don't have a lot of excess, you will probably always be living week to week. But if you have a decent surplus, it is much easier to just wing it and pay for things like insurance as they come along.

You say you have taken over the finances for your family, which suggests you have a partner and children?

You could get all income (all wages, any benefits) paid into one account. Get all bills paid from that account. Don't spend from that account.

Work out how much you need to cover annual and irregular expenses like Christmas, Holidays, insurances, broken cars, pets and washing machinse etc and set aside money for that, only to be spent on those things.

Work out an amount for food, travel, days out with the DCs, other DC expenses and put that in a separate account to spend from that account. Use cash or card, as you prefer.

Split 50/50 whatever is left for spending money for adults.

For a step by step guide to sorting your finances look at the MSE money make over.

I do envelope budgeting I have an envelope each week for food , household items/toiletries and one for fun money once it's gone it's gone and anything left at the end of the week doesn't carry over I pop that into my savings account

Do you have a separate account for ur bills.
yes - we can both access it

Do you budget for money weekly
sort of, dp gets paid weekly and me monthly so we just budget what we have for each week but obviously my pay day a lot more comes in and goes out

Do you have a strict food budget and take that out weekly.
yes not massively strict but enough and I meal plan mostly

Do you always have less money at the end of the month than u think u do.
nope

Do u budget within an inch of ur life or do u wing it.
my budget is pretty stringent, we have just moved and increased mortgage and are trying to save for renovations so we are trying not to waste money

Do you write stuff down everyday you have spent and take it off the total.

no but I rarely use cash so can see it all on online banking

Op, write down what you have coming in each month, and what you have going out.

include average weekly amount for food, petrol, other regular costs (ie a club for the kids that costs you £5 a week or whatever)

put whatever is left over in another account, and then you can either spend/save it and know you have enough for the monthly bills coming out the other account.