I've just done a budgeting spreadsheet - shocked!

[Allnewtometoo]

Where does the money go?? I do know i have a bit of a "frittering away" habit. Buying a drink at work, getting the dc snacks from the petrol station, that sort of thing but jesus I cannot believe how much I should have "leftover" each month. I know that on paper can be different to reality but even so, this is mind boggling.

Can anyone recommend a way to sort myself out? Is there a plan/program/book?

I know some of you will say "just stop spending" but I feel like I need more than that.

I've previously read about sone sort of budgeting app but can't remember what it was called.

Rebel Finance School free course! Done it twice now.

It's really cemented in me about not frittering. I'm not perfect. I'm still not sticking to the budget pots I make, but I'm shifting things round rather than actually going overdrawn and not saving each month. Hundreds not wasted every month.

Since starting I've gotten out of the overdraft, saved an emergency fund, booked and nearly paid off a holiday, made a loan overpayment, paid for a course I wanted to and paid for a beauty treatment I wanted. Paid for being the optimal word, not put it on the credit card! I also sorted out my 'irregular spends' budget so all the one off or once/three times a year things are budgeted for. Gosh it's less stressful AND incredibly enjoyable to pay for things I've actually budgeted and saved up for.

Only regret is, had I worked this all out 10 years ago, I would probably have at least £25k more saved.

Just annoyed I missed the Santander bank switch deal ending today!

There's also one called Snoop which may be free.

I actually don't bother currently as all my bills are on a spreadsheet and that all comes out of one account.

My monthly spends are only around £300 - though I do need some disciplined method here. Currently I check in once a week. My main fritter is food so I just need to meal prep ahead.

When I get paid monthly I do a longer check in when I also calculate my (small) net worth on my spreadsheet 😂

I think also its such a consumer market. In the old days you were with BT for life. Now you switch around so have to be savvy. There's all sorts of online digital deals, club cards, points accounts, cash back etc. Every month there's something I need to check or do.

Took me months to move DM off an super expensive Sky tariff. She seems to think that companies are like friends or something. I'm like, no, there is no loyalty Mum!

Thank you. Its definitely something im going to get my children started with ASAP too!

I've downloaded snoop. Seems MUCH simpler than Ynab. And my grocery bill is shocking. I suppose I buy more than just groceries from Tesco but even so.

Lots of people talking about zero based budgeting and I agree that is a good way to go about it.

I leave myself £200 for myself every month, the rest is bills, debt reduction/savings. the £200 covers all my discretionary spending including haircuts, dentist, clothes etc. I just don’t buy myself much these days. I do it like a bit of a game.

I was in a mess a year ago with about £11k of debt. All cleared up now and a small amount of savings in the bank (I really appreciate how fortunate I am to be able to do this).

I followed Dave Ramsey to like a pp mentioned. It’s kind of foolproof and it takes a few years to get debt repaid and your emergency savings built. It’s reassuring to know you can’t do it overnight.

There is a mantra that whatever gets focused on gets improved and I’m a bit obsessive with my budget and getting myself ‘sorted’. need to put this focus on some other areas next 😂

Round up how much you've spent on shite the month before & transfer the same amount to a premium bonds account on your next pay day. I did this & had saved £6k in one year, that's a mind boggling amount previously wasted on shite.

Get a receipt EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Log on a spreadsheet along with all your regular outgoings and also yearly expenses that you don’t pay monthly. So pet insurance (for example) put the money aside each month for the next years payment.

never been overdrawn in 30 years.

You can get a lot of information just looking online at your credit card/s and bank account. Mine does pie charts according to category (bills, tax, subscriptions, supermarkets) compares incomings and outgoings over a specified period. Etc.

Some categories you can cut down on:

Tech. Our mobile phones are all reconditioned and get handed down the family.

Insurance. We have a good home/travel policy and refuse one-off offers they try to sell you.

Gym membership and multiple after school clubs. Get active around the house, teach them something you enjoy, take the dog/kids out for a memorable day trip. One sport and an instrument is loads.

Clothes. Fashion seems to have lost its way since Covid and clothes I bought 7/8 years ago are still on trend. Vinted buy or sell. Kids can get by on school uniform, supermarket casual for knocking around and 1 good outfit per season. Shoes on the other hand…

HTH

Personally I wouldn't bother with an app. I'd export your bank account into Excel and categorise entries I.e. salary, food shop, frittering, etc. I would do a full year. If you know your way around a spreadsheet pivot by category and month. (Otherwise ask someone for help with this).

Then you will have an idea of everything you spend, not just what you think, and high and low months, and from there work out what could be cut back.

Bank account wise, I like to keep things simple: anything leftover in the current account at the end of the month is split in half. Half for 'fun' spending, half for saving.

One painful thing I did was look at my entire last years spending and categorise.

That cemented the knowledge that my biggest waste of money was ready meals, grabbing food when out.

I was (sorry keep randomly posting) unemployed for a bit last year. That actually really helped the budgeting. I stripped back my budget to absolute essentials must pay or can't live. I've still kept that section in my new budget. Find it reassuring to know what I have to spend is actually quite low.

Everything else is a value choice. Do I value this? Important to prioritise that.

Also highly recommend looking into what your pension is invested in and what the fees are. I moved mine out of the default funds into index tracker funds.

I have wages, maintenance, UC, and CB go in all at different times.

This is a pain in the bum to manage. I wish the government would sort it out as it doesn’t help people. It took me ages to perfect my Excel spreadsheet budget in a similar situation. I have 3 outgoings columns to represent 3 income streams and then I align my spending to when each one is paid.

I’ve also just set up a Monzo account which is a game changer and would really recommend it. I’ve gone for the £7 a month paid option and it’s so easy to categorise all your spending and set up virtual cards linked to different pots. I’ve linked up my current account with a different bank to my Monzo account, set up loads of budgeting pots on Monzo, and then you can see every single transaction from all your accounts and categorise them. You can set when you want your calendar month to start/end and then it shows you totals for each category and graphs to help you stay on track. Frighteningly I found out exactly where I was going wrong as it automatically categorised £300 in my first month as ‘eating out’ and it was pretty spot on! 😱

I can PM you my Monzo referral link if you want a £10 bonus for setting up an account and making a payment within 30 days (I’d also get £10 too - but it is genuinely great!)

Actually lockdown was amazing for my food budget. No way did I want to queue up in the supermarket to trawl through the one way system more than once a week. I made meals stretch, bought only what I needed with a reasonable amount of treats and baking stuff. Once the treats were gone, they were gone. Any more treats would have to be baked.
I saved loads and we ate really healthy because I focussed on health.
Should really go back to that.

I don’t know anyone WITH a budgeting spreadsheet. People usually just know how much they have left and mentally spread it across the weeks

We have always had a spreadsheet. I could tell you our expenditure for past years plus projected income and outgoings. It can give a projection to account for inflation plus the trajectory of how our investments could do.

No need to do this these days if you spend by card.

Just download transactions into a spreadsheet or use the tools in bank accounts and credit cards to analyse the information already there. You do sometimes have to alter things as some of the categories are a bit weird, eg some banks count McDonald's as entertainment but that's easy enough to fix with a find and replace.

Use cash. It's much more obvious how you're spending your money, and onec you've used it you know there's none left eg if you set aside x for coffee's.
Your bank should have the ability to export your spending into excel and automatically categorise it, then you cam apply more filters/formulas if you want.

There us a free app called Emma that will record all spending and then you can see where it goes. I have used Emma since it started and it's good to help

I find keeping snacks in the boot works. Not exciting ones but oatcakes, bottled water, dried fruit/ trail mix.

I did this one month. I’d spent £150 on Amazon without even realising! It was all crap too, nothing significant. It’s quite scary

I think you’ve done well to identify the issue OP. Imo first goal is getting out of overdraft. Identity one small thing a week you can change - instead of buying kids’ snacks out, buy as part of your weekly shop and take with you; instead of a takeaway get a good quality ready meal or think, hold on, every Friday evening we end up with a takeaway because we’re all home but the weekly shop is a day away - instead let’s - whatever - make our own pizza / eat egg and chips - etc.

Like a PP I also transfer money into savings on payday. My circumstances are different from yours but I try to save £400 each month - £200 goes into an easy access account (so I can pull it out if needed), £200 goes to overpayment of the mortgage.

0% CC on purchases do exist. I just got one with a 23 month 0% period. Have a look Money saving expert. Really handy if you know you have a big purchase coming up and you want to spread the cost without paying interest, though you do have to be disciplined and get it paid off before the end of the offer period.

Rather than bother with an app, I set some basic rules.

• I only buy petrol at a petrol station
• Snacks come from a supermarket in large multipacks. I buy them once a week and when ds has eaten them, there's no more
• I take water bottles in the car
• I keep a cafetiere & coffee at work
• Never use motorway services
• I don't buy takeaways ( not hard here, there aren't any)
• Get your dc to do a blind taste test between brands and supermarket own

I did a CAP money course years ago, found it really useful. It suggested using cash, I always find when I have say £20 in front of me I'm less likely to waste it. It also suggested using pots for each thing you spend so groceries, petrol etc. I also remember watching a tv programme years ago where they gave someone envelopes of money for each week and they had to live off what was in the envelope that week.

I have a spreadsheet where I log everything, money coming in, bills, and spending. I've recently updated it so I now have a separate bit for regular weekly spends (petrol, milkman, and groceries), I allocate the same amount each month, this comes off at the start of the month along with my bills, what's left is my spending money for the month. I can alter it slightly if I need to. So for example I'm not in the office next week so won't need to fill my car up so some of next weeks petrol money can move to either groceries or my spending money. I'll then split that spending money equally over the weeks/days.

It's tedious logging everything but it's the only way. My Dad does it and has done for decades, he allocates himself a daily amount, if he doesn't spend it he rolls it over, then at the end of the week he takes my mum out for lunch or a couple of drinks.