I’m 48yo and only just learning to budget….

[Icannotbudget]

If anyone else is out there and in a similar position and maybe wanting to support each other, please post here.

About me- I’m 48, professionally successful, beautiful home and kids, basically a reasonably functional person, however, ever since going to university in the mid 90’s I have literally always failed to budget and been in debt. Its always stuff we need, in as much as its not due to drink, drugs, gambling or frivolous personal spending.

My DH is the opposite with money and about 10 years ago our marriage was placed under huge stress as I had run up over 30k in debt.

i have never done a budget ir even looked closely at my finances as as a consequence they are a constant source of pretty significant stress.

Things have to change now, I’ve been diagnosed with a serious illness (potentially life limiting- if Im in the unlucky 30%)

I do not want to die in debt.(literally crying writing this)

As for why- I grew up in relative poverty, sometimes even food was scarce. I can see that affected me on some deep level and cheap debt has almost become a way to avoid having to face there being a ‘limit’. I find thinking about money incredibly overwhelming and frightening but I am determined.

It sounds like this is a very emotional and tough subject for you. Probably loaded with guilt/expectations/fear of judgement.

However getting a grip on where you are is really easy and you can even do it completely privately. You just need a piece of paper and your online banking.

Write down everything you have coming in for a month.

Then go back over your online banking for a month (in the first instance) and write down all the regular outgoings such as mortgage/rent, electricity, mobiles etc.

That gives you a baseline of where you are regarding income/outgoings. Not perfect but good enough to start.

Then the harder part will be making a list of all your debts, the interest rates and the repayments. That will hurt and probably upset you. But you only have to do it once and then it’s done and you can tell yourself it will NEVE get worse than that.

Sorry about your diagnosis, that must be really hard for you.

im good with budgeting and so not the person you’re looking for, but didn’t want to read and leave.

hopefully someone will be along that is also struggling with budget to support you.

Thank you, literally sat here crying my eyes out that you’ve replied….

I promise you that although getting the figures together will be horrible and scary, this is a time when knowledge is definitely power. People will come and give all sorts of way to budget but until you have that knowledge in front of you, you can’t do much. How can you deal with spending when you don’t know how much you spend or where it goes?

I used to be the same, money was like water through my fingers and I racked up ccard debt. We changed our dynamic, everything in joint accounts, joint ccard. We both have a cash amount per month to spend on our wants. We both have full access to see what is going in and out of joint accounts. Its been about 8 years now and I have radically changed how I view money and spending.
Good luck, with everything.