to be shocked at how few people know how to budget?

[Coldtits]

I see it all the time, both online and in real life - people who don't use their common sense to save their pounds. Or who have so little faith in their own judgement and abilities that they live entirely on prepackaged, pre weighed, precooked food.

I watched one of my friends buy some ready chopped chicken breast and a jar or tomato pasta sauce. Now, I KNOW she's on a budget, and I mentioned that it would be just as nice to get some thighs aand chop them, and use a tin of tomatoes and some garlic and salt and pepper, and would probably cost much less than the nearly £6 she was intending to spend.

"Oh no," she said. "You know I can't cook."

This was not a time saving exercise. We've known each other since childhood (before I get accused of not knowing the situation) and she was cooking dinner for herself and her boyfriend - day off, no kids.

I know she's not thick! I don't get it.

I wish I was good at budgetting, but I just can't seem to get organised. I have no idea what is going in or out .

I have no loyalty cards because I've had hundreds and loose them, and in any case they require you to KNOW you are going to shop in a particular shop that day (which I never do) and find them in your house and put them in your pocket (Don't own a handbag as am always loosing them).

However, I was deathly poor for a loooooong time and when my earnings increased my lifestyle and creative ability to keep costs down had kind of been set, so I am in the happy position of having a little bit left over each month. I only open my bank statements every few months.

btw I don't own anything in my house (except for photographs) that I would begrudge a burgler. No sky and no mobiles. But I think it would be the same if we were very wealthy.

BUT: I LOVE spending money on holidays and buying people presents!

Hecate If you're not fed up, please could you also send me your speadsheet. I might try to be a bit more organised for once.

beth lyn@hotmaaildotcom

Problem is for some people they know very well how to budget or are more than capable of learning they just don't fancy the self restriction that comes with it!

Hecate - I too would be forever in your debt (if you excuse the pun!) if you could also email it to me. I am in need of extreme budgetting assistance...
Many many thanks!!!!

pico at blueyonder dot co dot uk

Surely the key word in all of this is "responsibility"? It doesn't matter if you're unemployed and living on benefits or earning in excess of £silly, but we should all take responsibility for what we have and what we spend?

If you choose to spend money each day on a take-away sandwich, a magazine, a coffee (whatever) as a treat, or if you choose to knit your own lentils every day it doesn't matter - as long as you have taken responsibility for the cost implications and how it impacts on your own money situation.

BIWI You're exactly right.

It is also about priorities. You can have treats, of course, but you need prioritise your spending. No-one should critise you buying a magazine, if you are walking rather than taking the bus to work to pay for it.

However, I think we have become a nation of whingers about money and the true meaning of 'affordability' has become distorted. I hear people saying all the time that they can't 'afford' something that they easily could, when what they actually mean it isn't a priority for their spending.

I think this is what the OP may be hinting at. It is very annoying.

One of the ways I helped myself budget/spend less was to do all my purchasing with cash rather than using even a debit card. There is something about counting out money that concentrates my mind. I did go through a phase of taking a calculator around the supermarket with me so that I knew what was happening (I'm one of those people that get's blinded by stuff costing £1.99/2.99 etc, thinking I'm only spending £1, happily ignoring the 99p and before I know it I've stacked an extra £10 on my bill). I know I sound worthy, boring and dull but we were very broke and it did work.

Hecate, I suspect I am one of these people you have been annoyed by on here, not knowing the intriate details of what I have going in and out.

Could you please send me your spreadsheet too so I can get my finances in order? I would very much appreciate it.

Kay dot Samuels at hotmail dot co dot uk

I use a free budgetting software from here

HTH

try the excel budget spreadsheets from money saving expert.
They are very good and allow you to plan and budget for Christmas, holidays and birthdays etc.
And they tell you how far you are living outwith/within your means.

Does anyone have any advice for how to budget when your income is irregular? I can work out the (horrifyingly large, call it £x) figure we need to pay utilities/mortgage/insurance etc each month but DH might get paid £0 or £6x and we don't know in advance which it will be.

Very impressed at all the soothing spreadsheets.

We have a spreadsheet and it is so easy to do in combination with internet banking.

we keep a track of
mortgage
Gas
Electric
Water
Phone
Council Tax
Sainsburys
Butcher
Green grocer
DIY/Garden
Vet/Cat things
Childrens clothes /shoes
eating out
petrol
other

I keep an eye on these things and every now and then check with DH what we should do with any excess.

We don't budget in the spreadsheet sense. But we are very careful with money. We have very irregular income as we are both self employed. Well, when I say irregular, we are both in work most of the time, but if people pay you on invoices its not like getting a weekly or monthly wage.
So, I know exactly how much all the fixed outgoings are each month. In this I include everything to do with the house, car, childcare, mobiles, everything that we pay out for each month.
If its a month when we are a bit less in the bank because we are waiting to get paid, or one of us got paid and the other has a few invoices outstanding....

well our budget is to just not spend anything apart from basic food. Maybe the odd cheap thing off ebay. Oh and shoes for the boys if they have grown a bit, I don't like to wait for those.

Other months I know roughly whether we have the money in the bank to cover expenditure like clothes, having things done on the house, days out etc etc. Anything major (the only major purchase we made in the past 12 months was £299 on a tv when the 15 year old one blew up last summer!) we sort of mention it to each other and if the money is there we go and buy it.

We don't have cards, loans etc as I look on interest as money wasted. I prefer to save up for things.

On an every day in day out basis though, I just don't spend money when compared to friends. Washable nappies, childrens clothes and toys from ebay, food from lidl and netto, stock up on bargains from B&M, walk anything less than a couple of miles, no sky subscription, cook food from scratch and menu plan....

I could list for hours the things that we DON'T spend money on but bil and sil and their partners DO, and they go on and on about how skint they are.

So my point is, if you just get out of the habit of spending money, then you don't have a need to budget, cos you know that money is there for everyday things.

ps forgot to mention. I am so careful with money now and won't use cards or credit because 15 years ago I was in a BIG financial mess from using them for things I didn't need.
It was getting out of all that debt that gave me my bargain radar and made me watch every penny

Rolf, you need to have two accounts if you are self-employed. Actually three, so that you have one for tax as well. And a good internet banking system.

You have an work account into which your work cheques get paid and work-based expenses come out of. You have another account for domestic spending. You work out what your monthly domestic outgoings are. If the total is (say) £2500, you set up a monthly transfer from the business account into the domestic one for that amount. It's like paying yourself a fixed salary.

You should do a similar monthly transfer to cover the amount you're likely to have to pay in tax.

In contrast to kerala, I put everything on the credit card, which then gets automatically paid off each month just after I get paid. This way I get John Lewis points, but more usefully all my spending is then written out for me on a handy statement (plus bank statement for DDs).

Both MrNC and I were students for over 10 years, and generally used to being skint. Now we usually have money because we're not used to spending it. If we got used to having it then we'd spend it and not have it!

I am eternally grateful to my parents for expecting me to do my share of cooking from an early age, and for telling me about rip-offs to avoid and demonstrating how public transport works. Although it's not hard to learn to cook, as most of my student friends did - one guy mastered loads solely from the instructions on Sainsburys packaging!

I think I've emailed everyone who asked. If I've missed you out, let me know

Feel free to give me honest opinions!!

Gaaaah is anyone else really hungry now?? Mmmm.... spag bog..... (having home made thai green curry tonight, and dp made a leftovers-from-the-roast curry for the freezer, including potatoes, peas and some sun dried tomatoes that were "knocking about in the fridge"... as they do...)

frogs and hedgewitch - yes, we have a business account and "domestic" accounts and do the "salary" thing. Frogs - your post made me realise that we are actually much better than we were a year or so ago! We don't regularly siphon off the tax and VAT money as chances are that won't leave us enough to live off, so tax season is always very hairy. Similarly, some months there isn't enough going into the business account to pay the domestic account, whcih causes problems with the direct debits.

The elusive "when we're sorted out" era will see us wiht a nice big buffer fund to cover those lean months rather than the constant chasing our tails/head in sand that we have at the moment

DO you not include meat in your spaghetti bolognese?

re. comment about 250g of meat being enough in a spaghetti bolognese because it is only a "flavouring"......we are not at all obese, but if I was offered a spaghetti bolognese based on those quantities for 4, well, I'd end up having another meal .

Please, someone out there must also be a bit annoyed at the way so many people seem to want to "brag" about how "thrifty" they are and how small their family meals are.

Some of the advice being given here is so obvious that I cannot believe people actually respond as if it is "useful". For example, advice along the lines up "add up all outgoings, subtract from from incoming money. If you get a negative you do not have enough money. " Oh my goodness.

I agree re. The meat - each person needs a protein portion equivalent to the size of their fist per meal - how can 2.5 oz each satisfy anyone?

I'd say 250g is good for 2 adult portions of spaghetti bolognese.

So would I. Then you bulk it up with pulses and extra veg, just like our grandmothers did.

I don't think they had spaghetti when most of our grandmothers were cooking family meals...