How do you keep to your budget?

[Squishedpickle]

Hello,

I'm looking for some advice please on how you set and keep to your budgets?! My maternity pay has recently stopped and I'm not going back to work immediately, so we are now trying to keep to a much tighter budget.

What methods do you use to keep track of your budget? Do people use apps, or just pen and paper?

Any advice really gratefully received, thank you.

I have a spreadsheet on google docs with all my outgoings and then whatever is left I split between the weeks in the month . I update how much I have spent every couple of days .

I budget on paper. I take our monthly income and subtract the “fixed” amounts - bills, debt repayment (mortgage/rent/loans or whatever) our annuals account (the account into which we save for annual things like Christmas, insurance etc), and also savings (we pay ourselves first and have always done so even when things were tight and it was a tiny amount).
Out of the remainder we budget for groceries, leisure, travel, household, misc, clothing (mainly for the children) etc. I find it a lifesaver to have a misc category as there will always be something we’ve forgotten!
I write down what we spend and dh and I get together weekly (usually with a glass of wine) to review and amend where necessary. It works for us.

Watching with interest.

There’s some good advice on this recent thread. My top tip is to transfer your weekly spending money into a Monzo account then pay everything with that card. It will automatically keep track of what categories you’re spending in and it’s a lot easier to budget overruns a week than a month.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3718233-Whats-the-biggest-single-thing-youve-done-to-improve-your-finances

Over a week, not overruns!

Thank you for the advice and the excellent thread suggestion.

Please can I ask if you find it easier to take out cash and spend that or if you predominantly use a card? How detailed are you when it comes to categories in your budget? I want to keep good track but don't want to get overwhelmed.

Also, do you keep track of your expenditure day by day or some other way?

Thank you so much for the advice, you're all making this seem much less scary!

I find it easier to do everything through the Monzo account, and I therefore use the categories Monzo uses. I think if you’re doing it manually you’d have to enter each spend into the app or notebook as you spend. Monzo tracks it automatically for me.

Thanks