Easy come easy go money

[Tonightsthenight91]

Between me and DP we earn quite well. We’re not rolling in it, but above average for our area I would say. He earns 70k annually and I earn anything between 5-9k per month (9k is season depending).

we just seem to be terrible with money. I wouldn’t say we have particularly lavish lifestyles. But somehow have accrued credit card debt. I feel like this is because my money is a steady income daily/weekly so once it’s earned it’s spent just as quick on lifestyle/activities/“stuff” whereas any big purchases tend to go on a credit card. I’m ND which I suspect has a role to play.

Id like to start saving, I’d like to “do less” in regards to days out (spoiled kids that don’t appreciate it anyway as it’s a regular thing), and just generally find ways to save money but in a way I can enjoy the aspect of saving and not feel bogged down by it. Again neurodiversity isn’t on my side with this.

very rough overview of finances:

1100 mortgage
700ish collectively for 2 x cars
400 insurance (I think?)
1000 business expenses
200-300 fuel
no idea on utility bills as OH sorts
dont calculate food shop but I imagine 300-400? (Shopping as and when)
just totalled Uber eats and eating out 1600 in the last month (obviously this is the kicker but the convenience helps my mental health)
Kids activities 200ish
days out etc again I don’t calculate but this week £200ish which has been an average sort of week
subscriptions about £70ish I imagine?
credit card payments 400-500?

we could of course clamp down and just clear the debt by spending less but I genuinely can’t not spend. Instant gratification is apparently part of adhd and autism (both of which I have). Any advice?

Blimey op, we spent about £1k a month eating out/takeaway but there's 6 of us. How many kids do you have?

How much debt do you have? You really need to focus on clearing that. Making sacrifices now to clear it so in the future you're in a better position. If it were me I'd clear it and then continue to save that amount.

Have you ever had any professional help for your mental health?

find a local cook who can make home made healthy food and drop off or out in freezer - will be cheaper and better for you all

It sounds at though working out how to earn more should be your main goal. As a couple, you don't earn anywhere near enough to fund the lifestyle you would like, which is how you've run up debt.

Why don't you try to live off your husbands wages and you keep yours for your business, paying off credit cards and savings?

You are spending ridiculous amount of money on takeaways and making stupid excuses as well. Why don't you use something like gousto where the food is delivered ready to cook? You just choose the menus. It's easy enough for children to cook

Yeah. It’s an adhd thing and it’s a complete nightmare. I have absolutely no advice, just here in solidarity! And if you fancy starting a thread on how you actually found your niche, I would be all ears!

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I’ve only done the maths in my head but if he’s in 70k yearly and you are on 5-9k monthly, between you on a bad month you are bringing in around £7k post tax. Your outgoings seemed to be around £6k a month so you have £1k ish to save… more when you are having better paid months. As I said this is my head maths so could be very wrong

Only on mumsnet would a monthly income of 9k -13k (based on the Dps 70k being approx 4k net) be called "ok but not that high".

Ffs. Not sure the op isn't the only one with a poor grip on financials.

So basically you can't be bothered to sort your life out
How can you command such a high salary when you have no common sense or initiative?
This must be a wind up

It doesn’t matter where you have over spent. The issue is that you have and now you need to cut back to get out of debt. You need to figure out where you can back.

So you got in debt and now spend £53 a day on takeaways?

You are rude and deluded. Aut/ADHD are not excuses for your utter recklessness, particularly if you are fully aware of being ND. Believe me, I know how difficult life is when ND, it does take considerable effort.

You need to get organised, stop making excuses and stop spending so much money on spoiled kids and shit food.

Make your health and your children a priority. If they only know this chaos, how are they going to manage as adults?

Make a list, meal plan, and get over your stupid ick for fridge food. Believe me, your Turkish BBQ and Nandos have been sitting in fridges too.

Plan days out more intentionally, make them a thing to look forward to, rather than taken for granted.

You sat you spend £300/400 shopping as and when, but also eat out every day AND have special kids prep.boxws delivered? It does sound a bit made up, to be fair. But if true, your food waste must be off the charts.

Go one week spending nothing, except proper basics, milk, bread, fresh fruit/veg. You likely have enough food hanging around for that. No days out. Make activities about clearing your no doubt cluttered space. Streamline your life.
Meal plan, set up an ocado order, hardly a hardship, but when done once, much less effort.

@ireallycantthinkofaname If you want your post to be deleted, you need to hit the 'report' icon at the bottom of the post and ask Mumsnet to delete it. At the moment, people are able to click on the word 'edited' in your post and see the original message. Which, imo, was a perfectly justified one!

Chicken and egg.
Sit-down with dh and write down all essentials outgoing that can't be negotiated.
Including petrol, bills and food.
Then work out what you want to spend on food, convenient look into hello fresh, weekly on line shop.
Have meals out and take away but set aside speficic money for that.

Two meals out a month and two takeaway for instance.

Put money aside for big events like Christmas, holidays and birthday. Savings and so on.

Your unstable financially because you are in the dark as to what to spend.

In 10 mins you will stabilise yourselves and have a rough budget to work too.

Oh I didn't know that, thanks. TBH I just felt it came across spiteful/trollhunting.
I'm ND and shit with money too but it's possible to make the best of a raw deal by just being sensible.
No one can say they need £53 a day on takeaways or 4-5 holidays a year, it's insane if true.

There are plenty of ND people who don’t even have £1600 a month to live on, never mind spend on takeaways! You’re using your condition as an excuse for poor behaviour. Aside from being completely financially reckless, your health must be suffering from eating processed crap every day of the week.

You need to sit down with a few months worth of bank statements and work out where every single penny goes. A budget doesn't have "ish" on the end of any thing.

Work out your incomings, work out your outgoings to the exact penny and figure out where you can cut back.

I think, in your case though, it's pretty obvious where to start. 1.6k on takeaways is absurd, both from the point of view of your bank balance and your health.

Your problem is you can't budget for fuck.

Your business expenses need to be in a separate budgert for your business no in the houehold budget.

Is the £9k pm your business brings in net or gross? If it is gross you need to allocate money for tax and also some put aside for pension payment and sickness.

Do you pay yourself a wage or do you take dividends?

I have a horrible feeling you are simply chucking any surplus cash the business makes each month in to your household budget.

So you need to create a proper budget and strucutre formyour biskess, separate from thr houwrhold.

Then honestly tot up how much you spend each month, how much you have coming in each month (net), your assets (eg how muh your house is worth, and any other substantial assets) and debt (credit cards, mortgage, car finance).

Once you have done that you can work out where the money goes and how to cut back.

Look up Dave Ramsey, there's lots of videos and podcasts - The Ramsey Show. It is USA but same rules apply to get yourself out of debt through straight talking advice. I find it very inspirational

@Tonightsthenight91

Take a look at lions prep meal service.
they deliver twice per week.

if deliver is costing £1600 you’d save a significant amount I’d say and it’s very healthy/macro based

The trouble is that lots of posters here are just getting ragey as they see the OP being wasteful, and they perceive her to be lazy.

But if you’re not ND, or your ND affects you differently, it’s not easy to comprehend how hard all of this can seem.

As a fellow ND woman, the OP doesn’t seem lazy - she seems overwhelmed by where to start. She knows this isn’t ok. But sometimes knowing what you SHOULD be doing doesn’t necessarily help if you can’t manage it. If it were as easy as “just doing it” then difficulty managing money wouldn’t be seen so commonly in ND individuals.

And as for the snark, I think OP probably snapped after a thread full of people judging and criticising. And there were a couple of comments that suggested ND is just an excuse. Which I can assure you it fucking isn’t!

Im not like the OP as I’m sadly not a high earner. And I also enjoy cooking. But there are days when I struggle to do meals for myself/DP (we often eat later than the DC for various reasons). I’ve tried batch cooking too - and it always seems unappetising when it’s time to defrost/reheat it so I don’t do this any more. Life is exhausting when you’re ND - everything is so much harder. It is annoying to feel so bloody useless. And I can see how it would be tempting to just chuck ££££s at the problems.

I hope OP has gotten some ideas from this thread. The most important thing is to start by knowing exactly what the expenditure is. Posh/local homemade ready meals are another step in the right direction - better than takeaways. Both of these are easy first steps to take.

You need to understand your spending triggers OP and prepare for them. Otherwise you’ll end up continuing to impulsively spend and things won’t improve. I would remove your credit card from your purse and put it at the back of a drawer or something. And delete any saved payment details on your laptop etc. Don’t make it easy to splurge - the inconvenience may mean you don’t bother to hunt down your credit card/payment card details.

Good luck, I hope things get easier for you to manage OP.

Yeah. I am a single parent. I meal plan to save. There are some lovely fakeaway recipes.