Help! Goals and motivation

[Scarfaceclaw21]

I recently became a stay at home mum due to health reasons and practical issues. My dh is a teacher and works long hours. My family is going through a lot at the moment I am really feeling the strain.
Whenever I am under pressure I immediately want a glass of wine (or 5) and to treat myself and the kids. It's counter productive.

Also, how do you set financial goals when it seems like you are skint?

I am going to sit with dh and discuss budgets but what is realistic?

My head is a mess. Tia.

I posted something similar recently. Boring but do a budget. The one on money saving expert really helped. I have also started the envelope system and only allocate money week by week.good youtube Jordan page envelope budgeting. Really good!

We have a spreadsheet set up and each month our income is updated (as DH might have some overtime), and our bills are all listed. They are all in different sections, for example home will have mortgage, council tax, electricity, gas and water. These stay the same each month. Then insurances, TV and phones, and miscellaneous things like my weight watchers membership. Then we have one for savings and one for spending and each month I adjust the spreadsheet depending on what I know we have coming up.

So for November I already know I am getting up haircut, we have an anniversary present to buy and we are attending our local Christmas light switch on so I have allocated a budget to each of those. Depending on how much we spend I adjust the amount we save. Most importantly everything we buy goes on the spreadsheet then the figure is deducted from that particular budget, so food, eating out or general spending.

It seems over the top when it’s written out like that, but without it we would easily lose track of what we are spending and would most definitely over spend.

Good luck!

For me, the key is working out what the monthly and recurring payments are, including annual ones like christmas and birthdays etc, and working our how much of this months money needs to go into a pot for the future.