How do people budget?

[TDSR26]

I’ll admit myself and my other half are both not great with money and have plunged into so much debt we’re drowning!
He’s currently working two jobs pretty much 7 days a week, I’m a TA so my earnings aren’t great but I do everything at home and I need to be there for the kids.
We try and budget each month but our money just seems to disappear and we’re often just cutting it fine by the end of the month or spent slightly over what we’ve earned.
We have three kids so everything is so expensive as a family of 5, they all do quite a few clubs outside of school so that does take up a chunk but they enjoy them and it’s good for socialising (some school friendships haven’t always been great). There always seems to be something they need / outgrown / for school, it just seems never ending!
I sell and buy so much on Vinted and I can’t even start on the food shop as that’s just ridiculous these days!
Neither of us socialise much with friends or go out together as we simply cannot afford too.
We hardly ever go out as a family to eat unless it’s an occasion i.e birthdays etc.
Day’s out are saved for school holidays, we haven’t been on holiday in two years and that was paid for by the in-laws as a gift.
We moved house four years ago and it’s so outdated and we’ve not had any spare money to do anything, not even the kids rooms!
It just feels like an endless cycle of just trying to get by and we’ve got to the point we’re both so miserable and stressed out!
How do people do it?! Any advice welcome 🤗

I know but I’m trying to read all the positive in between.
Everyone’s situation is different but some factors just can be changed!
Thanks for the tips, Wednesday night is actually pasta night as it’s easy because of swimming. But said child who swims doesn’t eat pasta so I always do eggs, toast or whatever I can find in the freezer and it fills him up.
It is the food shop that’s just so hard to keep down, I freeze where I can, always supermarket own (with few branded exceptions), try to do one big online shop a week to include everything. Honestly a huge proportion of my wage goes on food.
Will have to double think everything I’m putting in my basket.

thank you

What if you did a physical shop. How much is an online shop. If it was £5 a week it would save £20 a month not much but it all adds up. Also work out when your local supermarket reduces things. Mine always used to be around 4pm on a Monday. Great bargains to be had then. If you have a freezer what about monthly shop with only the need for fresh weekly- it could help keep costs down.

Just be aware that the advice is never to convert unsecured debt into secured debt (i.e your house).

Of course there are exceptions, largely where the debt has been run up for something specific like maternity leave or redundancy, when it can make sense.

But for general overspending which is still ongoing, be wary and explore all options. It may seem a simple solution but it can make your situation worse and shouldn't be done lightly.

An average Tesco shop online is about £150 but includes most food for the week and any toiletries / cleaning products. Then I’d say a top up can be between £10-£20, I try to do Lidl for top ups as cheaper.
it’s a lot but as we’re a 5 and my other half does have huge appetite!

But I think I can make some changes.

I think its really tough at the moment especially if you are in the annoying middle bracket where you earn too much to get any help but not enough to feel like you can live life nicely.

I have made huge progress paying off my debt by using an app called debt payoff planner, you pop all your debt in and put in how much you want to pay each month. It gives you different options such as debt avalanche where it pays off the highest interest first.

We are just about OK most months but its the unexpected expenses that do for us as we just dont seem to have enough to make any savings to cover for issues.

We have 3 kids too and we definitely do too many clubs but they are mainly sports related and I'm aware girls particularly tend to drop sports by secondary school so we are trying hard to keep them motivated. We haven't been on holiday since 2022 and even that was a local caravan park for 4 nights.

Sorry to bang on about it, but I've aligned all the pots in my bank account to match the budget lines in the MSE spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is great because it includes treats/takeways/saving for Christmas etc. Exactly the sort of things it's easy to not budget for in advance.
At the very end of each month we put lump sums from our accounts into this account. The pots get filled on the 1st of the month, so I know anything left over is spare money.

Can you do your full shop at Lidl or Aldi…I find it much much cheaper!

Would you be willing to share your income and main outgoings @TDSR26

Basic things like

Turning water heating and central heating down one degree.
Switching to own brand foods & cleaning materials
Cooking from scratch, including bread
No eating out, no coffees or takeaways
Very few new clothes,
No gym membership, nails or brows
The list is endless.

OP if you look on the food boards on here there are excellent meal plans and ideas etc for money saving. I got some fab recipes.

How do we budget? By knowing every single expenditure that’s fixed and tracking that monthly AND by tracking variable spends monthly to create an annual total that we then allocate a monthly average to.

Every single penny is counted and accounted for.

We have an outgoings spreadsheet that sets the scene for our budget. It’s has 38 budget lines on it. We keep track of date, item, amount, method of payment and keep a note next to the budget line if it can be cancelled or reduced in times of need.

Every single penny is accounted for. I know we need £3,541.86 per month to meet our bills and current lifestyle expectations.

There’s no holiday savings line or a general savings line but these will appear in future versions once we have things worked out.

We bring in more than this as a couple. We allocate a share to the joint expenses pro rata on income and each have exactly the same disposable income for personal spends. I spend on gym memberships, tech, Vinted, and savings. DH likes clothes, whisky, rowing and tech.

So we budget by knowing exactly what our money goes on based on months and years of tracking. Then we meet regularly to update our budget so we know in advance where the money will be spent.

It’s all about the data!

3 kids are expensive. Obviously the debt is a problem, and you've had good advice on here as to how to deal with that. Prioritise repaying as fast as you can, transfer to a 0% card if possible.
As for the kids, we had to limit ours to one thing a week each plus Scouts, and even that was a stretch. You can take them swimming yourself, they can play sports in the park and at school. If there are free clubs at school sign them up for those, but you are home after school so you don't really need them. You could invite other children over if they need entertaining, or arrange meet-ups with other families in the park/local woods.
Meal plan and work out how to reduce your food bills - you should be able to feed them all for about a hundred pounds a week or less in Aldis. I feed 4 big adults on that, and I could reduce it to cheaper options.
Holidays and eating out are really expensive, and most children don't even enjoy sitting in restaurants - work out what's the cheapest you can do for a ( very occasional) treat.. probably Maccy D.
It's not easy.

Can you afford almost £750 to go on food and toiletries in a month though?
You can get that down, it’s not going to be a case of super exciting meals for a while but sometimes you don’t just get to say “things have gotten expensive”. If you’re actively going into debt most of the time, while also having huge outstanding debts you need to reduce your spending.
If you work reduced time to be around for your children then you’re around to cook thrifty meals every night and not opt for convenience.

It’s a lot of money to spend if you don’t actually have it.

I used to shop at Sainsbury’s and then switched first to Lidl then Aldi- prefer the freshness. I tend to do a monthly shop for toiletries at Sainsbury’s and odd things I can’t get at Aldi and then everything else I stock up on weekly or monthly. When I first swapped I was amazed at the savings. Now the big supermarkets try to price match.
I have also found bulk buying from Amazon for my favoured brand of shampoo although bigger outlay to start certainly saves in the long run. It’s amazing how small swaps add up.

Big eater kids - make sure you fill them up on the cheap but healthy carbs - they shouldn’t need extra protein and such - but bread and butter / jam buttie for a pudding rather than for example a few extra fish fingers

and always a glass of water with their dinner

full fat milk for the children too - it’s still quite cheap for what it brings

This is where AI can be a really powerful tool. If you get the commands correct, you could even include information about the interest rates on each of the debts and it’ll help build a budget for you.

Yes that’s exactly where we are in the middle bracket and not that we’d ever try and claim when we’re not entitled but hard when you can’t get anything!
Some months were just about ok and like you say something happens / goes wrong and that’s it. Just feels like one step forward and two steps back sometimes.
It’s tough when it comes to clubs as it’s so good for them.

I have tried but can’t always get everything under one roof. Annoyingly I have a 12 month delivery subscription with Tesco, it renewed in December as forgot to cancel it!
I may start alternating between the two each week.

No not really, it used to be less then £100 a week but it’s gone up and up.
I cook from scratch most evenings, pizzas / burgers the usual nuggets are only the “convenience” foods for quickness on busier days and that’s not every week!
it is so much money I’d rather be spending on us / saving or cleaning debts

When you write a budget, you need to write it by year and divide by your paycheck interval. If you do it by month, you will always run into problems because far too many expenses are not evenly distributed.

It should include line items like home and car repairs. It should have an allocation for any major celebrations like Christmas or birthdays, it’s also a good idea to put a line item for a random expensive week. Something like we all got sick and had to order delivery of supplies like otc meds, liquids, and cleaning supplies just to get through the week.

You will end up with a smaller monthly budget, but it will be better able to actually account for the spikes in expenses that life inevitably brings.

I have two extra accounts to help manage the money:

1. household direct debits & monthly costs, and
2. annual lumpy stuff (leasehold charge, car insurance, professional membership fee, house repairs, etc.)

There's a standing order into both accounts, just after pay-day each month, based on what we expect the cost to be for the year, divided by 12. (expected = historic cost + buffer). Obviously that gets tweaked if it looks like our expectations were off!
Generally this smooths out the spending so there's no nasty surprises. It removes a lot of the stress from tracking my current account and discretionary spending, and makes it easier to see the wood for the trees. Good luck!
(edited for clarity)

Thank you.
we already have separate accounts for everything…

• one for mortgage / bills each month - exact amount and never gets touched for anything else
• one for food shopping so we can keep track
• one for anything else we need through the month - so basically what’s left over after paying debt / any monthly payments which isn’t a lot.

We just have nothing left to save and that’s our biggest struggle. It’s clear we need to reassess a few things and make some spending changes.

For a month write a list of every penny spent. Look at what you can cut out. It's amazing how much money is wasted

£750 a month on groceries seems loads even if it includes cleaning and toiletries. Could you give us a bit more of an idea of what you're buying? I know prices have gone up but we spend £400 a month (we're a family of 4 rather than 5 admittedly, but even then I'd have thought you could save a few hundred on your food shops!).

And cutting even say £150 a month off your food bill would allow you to put money aside each month for things like birthdays and not have this panic that you can't afford them.