Help, how do I budget money

[kellyb85]

Hi everyone.
mum really hoping someone can help me please
me and my husband actually earn quite an ok wage but every month we seem to have nothing left. Luckily we can get by but I feel with the money we are on we should be left with quite a lot to save each month.
we were quite silly with money in our younger years and we do have quite a lot of debt to pay off but with the money we are currently on this shouldn’t be a problem (albeit it will take a couple of years!)
my issue is we are just terrible budgeting! As in I go shopping and do not think about what I am buying really, I kind of just throw things into my basket and don’t think about meals as such. I also generally have quite a lot of food waste each week as well so this is something I am really trying to not do.
i have tried to meal plan for the week but never seem to stick to it!!

my husband leaves all the money side of things to me as he is worse then me when it comes to money!!! He is the sort of person where if he had £10 and went to the shops several times buying £1ish items he is then confused as to where his £10 has gone!!!

is there any good sites or apps that can help me with budgeting correctly

i know I definitely need to meal plan

I was also paying £250 a month extra off my mortgage each month but I have decided to stop that and put that money towards any outstanding debt to pay off quicker, do you think this is a good idea?

how much would you recommend a family of 4’s (2 adults an 11 year old and a toddler) weekly food shop should be? I’m a bugger for nipping to places like home bargains for milk and spending £30 easily on things I do not need!

my children also will eat fruit 1 week so the next week I will buy a variety of fruit for them to not eat it so it goes in the bin!!! Arghhh!

please help me get better with my finances

Pm

@kellyb85 I can't speak about monzo as I've still to look into that. Hyperjar is a app then you sign up and get a bank card. You then move money from your main bank account into the app main jar then from the main jar you can transfer amounts into your jars. I now have a jar addiction 😂

I also remembered that I've changed from plastic bottle hand soap to bars of soap and changed from plastic bottles of body wash to a bar of soap. Also in January I set a budget and start putting money away monthly for Christmas so it's not all going out at once in December.

I have my “pots” on a spreadsheet, it’s quite easy but as PP said, you have to be disciplined

Think about upcoming events like birthdays and Christmas.
Birthdays. Decide who will get presents (I only do DH, DS and DM. DSIS and I no longer exchange presents). Have a budget for that . Save a twelfth of the budget each month
Christmas. Only buy for family. I no longer do Christmas cards, or tip the binmen or postie etc. Treat Xmas Dinner as a normal Sunday dinner.
Look at other annual expenses like MOT and servicing.

See if it's cheaper to pay for insurances annually (you're probably paying extra if you pay in installments due to tax and because its taking out a credit agreement).
Pay council tax over 12 months . Our council allows it if you're not in arrears. (I found the two non paying months meant I was spending it elsewhere).
If you're on a water meter look at water saving devices and also look at special tariffs. If you aren't on a meter see if having one installed will save you money.
Don't forget to budget for school uniform, trips and dinner money.
I meal plan for 3-4 days (which tends to coincide with the milk running out). Freeze leftovers
Review insurances and utilities to check you're getting the best deal. Don't let them auto renew. (,put a reminder in your calendar)
Check your benefit entitlements.
Check tax codes and allowances (I don't meet the income tax threshold so my unused tax allowance has been passed to my DH
Make money. I currently have 7 for sale listing on Facebook marketplace for things we no longer use.

Hyperjar sounds interesting I will definitely take a look into that 1 aswell, thank you 😊

ok so a bit of a shock last night and this month alone, I have spent over £500 just nipping to shops!!! - I can’t remember exactly what I have purchased but I can guarantee I probably NEEDED about £50 - maximum £100 and that’s only because my daughter was going away on school trip!
so that is an extra £500 on top of my weekly shop which has been from £90 - 1 week was £135 (I also used club card points this shop of £9)
I also checked my freezer as I never seem to have any food in and my freezer is rammed. There is probably enough food to last the month but I have just been being lazy and forgetting to get things out! My daughter doesn’t really like oven food like pizza/chips so I generally cook from scratch but i have been quite lazy with this really so I need to find my joy of cooking again.
also been lazy with pack lunches and just been letting my husband use £5 a day for his dinners (which has significantly impacted his waistline 🙈) also daughter has been having school dinners but the amount she eats I could probably feed her off 30p a day if I made it at home instead of £2.70 it costs me now!

I just wish I could write off all previous debt and start from scratch 🙈 but I suppose if I didn’t have to claw my way out of the debt then things would never change

so going forward

payday is Wednesday, I am not going to do a shop this month and use up everything in my freezer - we use a lot of milk so I will be going to my closest corner shop for any top ups I need and just take the correct cash for it

i am going to withdraw a weekly amount and only spend this amount. When it’s gone it’s gone

i will open 1 of the accounts that has been suggested and start different ‘pots’

go through all my finances and cancel/reduce anything I can - I found out I have been paying for Disney plus for about 6months and I haven’t watched that channel since Xmas!!!

start a weekly meal plan and stick to it

set up a snowball spreadsheet for debt and pay off as much as possible each month - making additional payments with money left over at the end of the month

save a little each month for miscellaneous items

god what a pickle I have let myself get into and it’s all purely from being lazy and blasé with money 🙈🙈

I can imagine once you start doing all this it becomes a bit of a game to see how much you can save this month 😁😁

Well your mortgage is a debt and I do think in the ling run ypu save more by paying that off quicker than by paying off your debts. When we pay £250 on the mortgage we can cut off a month, so we save around £500 on interest. So if I were you I'd carry on paying that.

With regards to other spending, you have to really work on micro habits. We started off by batch cooking and freezing family portions of bologna, chilli, stews etc so when we cba to cook we don't get a take away. I'd start there. it was the biggest help for us.

I use a milkman for our milk; its more expensive than buying supermarket milk. But it lands on the doorstep 2-3 mornings a week which means I never run out. And that saves me money in the long run as I too have a terrible fritter habit if I just nip to the shops for it.

get your children on board; they don’t need to know the details of your debts and stuff but you could get their help with making savings, especially if you can put some of those savings into a Big Day Out/holiday fund. That £450 of frittering; £200 of that could have given you a weekend away or a trip somewhere special. £50 of it (with 400 going on debts) could have paid for fish and chips by the sea or petrol to see relatives, or whatever motivation works.

so tell them you’re trying to be careful with the pennies so you can have some extra fun in the summer, and ask them to help you plan some meals etc. If they have some involvement in the process it can help - it isn’t you suddenly saying no to everything, it’s you saying yes to a bigger thing, but later.

speak to a debt advisory service - CAP, StepChange, or others. Not ones which charge you, but free voluntary ones. They can help you work out which debts are best to pay first, which are worth consolidating. They will help you to look at your finances and work out the best way to climb out of this vicious cycle.

m re mortgage - overpaying is great, but not if you are going into further debt in order to do that. If the interest payments on your mortgage are lower than the interest payments on your credit cards then that’s costing you money. Keep paying what you need to pay on the mortgage, but use that overpayment to pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first. And then the next highest. And so on. This is where one of the debt advisory places can really help; they can work out which debts to prioritise, and may be able to work with the companies and you to fix the repayments at a fixed monthly level. It sounds as though you have a reasonable income, so having someone help get a handle on all your commitments should hopefully help rather than you having to constantly damp down all the fires but never actually manage to put one out.

sounds obvious too but just in case - stop putting anything extra on the credit cards. Don’t take them with you when you go shopping. If you don’t have the funds for whatever it is you are trying to buy, ask yourself if it is absolutely essential to have it right now. Baby formula, prescription medication, essential. Most other things can wait a week or two.

Working through your freezer sounds like an excellent plan - will definitely help reduce your outgoings too. And going forwards, take stock of what you have, plan your meals around those things, and just buy what you need to fill the gaps. Packed lunches will definitely save money over meal deals and rejected school dinners, but just not going to the shops and using up what you have sounds like it’ll make a decent dent in your finances. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking they all need new lunch boxes first!

Well your mortgage is a debt and I do think in the ling run ypu save more by paying that off quicker than by paying off your debts

OP unless your unsecured debt is interest free please ignore this as it is utter bollocks.

Your mortgage interest rate is about 2-3% and unsecured debt could be ten times more costly at least. Pay off your unsecured debts then tackle the mortgage

But it sounds like you've had a bit of a wake up call which should help with the motivation. Make sure you get your DH on board otherwise his £100+ a month lunch habit is going to derail your efforts. Tackle it as a team with both making efforts and sacrifice.

Some great advice here!

Just a couple more tips-

For online food shopping there are often online money off codes if you google. I have been getting £20 off a weekly £100 shop recently saving £80 a month.

For credit cards you could swap to a 0% card and consolidate - then if it is e.g. for 36 months calculate how much each month and set up a standing order for this, then you could pay it back with no interest (there is usually a small transfer charge) if you didn't want to go the route of debt management plans etc

Best of luck!

Someone said about milk man

there is a milk and more app so you just have milk when you order it, maybe daily or random times, along with bread and stuff

saves popping to the siperyfir that £20 loaf

Well I have taken on board everyone’s advise.
I have opened an account which seems fantastic. You get excellent cash back with using this card and I can also add money to specific pockets (I can have as many pockets as I want) I have also opened my 11 year old daughter an account which I can control with my account
if anyone would like to get financial control then please look into Revolut. I have a basic account so it’s free to use. Also every time I use my card it rounds it up x5 and puts that into a savings vault which has quite good rates

if you are interested in opening an account please use my link and we both get £50 referral added to our account (you will need to add money and use it twice for purchases over £5 each)

honestly though this account seems to be a life changer for me as I have set a budget and it tells me every purchase and how much budget I have left or if I have gone over. After 1 month of using this account I will then get spending insights - something I’m scared and also excited to see!!! My referral link is below

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