yet again a bugeting thread!

[Munz]

I posted one a bit ago to see if I could make it work being a SAHM - our first month without my money and we're failing miserablly, so am after any ideas of either shaving things down here or money saving tips - I know I should menu plan more, we're doing more food from scratch but her'es out budget.

DH money - 1150 (ish)
Tax cred - 95
C/B - 69
total income - 1314 P/M

outgoin we have

Debt repayments £350
car finance £120
Car ins £ 42
petrol £ 50
house ins £ 35
Washer ins £ 15
BT (tele/BB) £ 40
sky £ 35
TV licenece £ 12
Food £170
dog food £ 20

gas/eelc £ 70

total there is £959

so in theroy we should have £350 left over after bills - in truth we have 0 left so I have no idea where it's going to or anything.

i'm looking at going back to work which would provide me with approx £400 p/ after childcare and petrol etc, (obv credits would drop thou) DH is due a lump sum in march time which will pay off the car, some debts (those will come down to £280 so a combined saving of £180, ooh and the washer ins runs out so that's another £14 bringing us up to a fair old bit) but I have no idea where it's going to.

waht can I do? does anyone actually use the white board idea which they recommend on the spendoholics programme?

if I could find this £400 and get these few bills sorted out then I won't have to go back to work - which to be truthful is what i'm after but I don't see much other choice at the minute.

(I do do avon as well, this moth I earnt £80, but spent $40 paying for my started stuff and also some demo products as I was wanting to do avon partys on a night - failing that they'd be xmas pressies for the family )

Can I just say, cancel the Sky tv, honestly you won't miss it. We had sky for years and paid £36 a month. Every evening, we'd look at the sky planner, go round and round, say to each other 'there's nothing on I fancy, let's watch BBC'! We ditched it and I can honestly say the ony channel I miss is Nick Junior to keep dd1 amused, and even she has adapted.

The other thing I thought of was babyfood - would you make your own? It is time consuming, but if you spent an afternoon in the kitchen you could freeze it and that would keep you going for a good few weeks. It would perhaps save £15 a month? Oh, and ditching babywipes. We have started using baby lotion and cotton wool which goes much further. Still keep wipes around for dh who flatly refuses to consider anything else (no, you guessed it, he won't do cloth nappies either)!

car insurance is very high! You can get a cheaper rate. We just switched and saved 240 on our annual insurance.

pac - we already do baby food my own - I just have 8 pots in for emergancies - ie when I forget to take some out of the freezer for the boy! lol lol. how do u get on with poopey bums without wipes? I was considering flannels but soon gave that idea a miss.

mum - please bear in mind I'm only 24 with 3 points for speeding and only 2 years NCB - coupled with a 1.6 injection car makes it expensive - besides, when we moved from wales our insurance stayed the same even thou i'd got an extra years NCB, and we live on a army camp - apparently it's the post code?? we're with tescos so I also get back clubcard points for each payment.

Do you have Internet banking?

I found like you that every month we seemed to 'lose' money. I realised, eventually, that we spent whatever we had.

We opened an internet investment account and every month transfer the money we don't need/want to spend when DHs salary comes in, to stop it being spent on non-essentials.

It can still be transferred back over in emergencies and when a big bill comes in that isn't paid monthly, like electricity.

I also sell our old clothes/outgrown equipment on ebay to pay for newer (if not new) stuff as DD1 and DD2 just keep on growing. Maybe you could consider this if you don't already do it, I noticed you didn't include any clothes etc on your budget, is that where the extra money goes?

lol - nole clotehs! what are they?? I've not had any new one since the boy was 6 weeks old - DH well he has clothes at b'days and xmas from friends/fmaily, unless ther's an offer on jeans - I got hima couple of pairs they were £5 each so we don't spend all that much tbh.

unfortunatly we're unable to set up another b/z I did want to but due to our credit record they have declined - not that I can blame them.

we do do internet banking yes, DH is home tomorrow when he'll be getting told a strict budget we will be sticking to.

You may be able to set up a Basic Bank Account - the HSBC one is just an example. They're intended for people with poor credit ratings.

But equally I think what's being suggested is a savings account, so that you can salt surplus funds away to prevent them from being spent. You should be okay opening a savings account as there's no overdraft?

Can you get rid of the car (unlikely on an army base I would guess) or trade it down? The car finance alone is 10% of your available income.

Try using mysupermarket.co.uk its ace!

You do your normal shopping at your prefered supermarket online then it automatically costs the shopping at all the other online supermarkets to let you know who is cheaper!

Then it also shows how to reduce the cost of your shopping by giving you alternatives that are on special offer! It saved me £6 this morning. Just by switching clementines for satsumas, value apple multipack instead of separate ones and switching a couple of brands. Very easy to use too!

we'd still have to pay it off thou wouldn't we - and given our credit history it's highly unlikely to get another on finance - we're hoping next march to pay it off early with DH's lump sum thing is thou just ticking over till then iycwim. (the car's already 7 years old so it's not like it's brand new iycwim) - the garage offered us £1000 for it but the balance outstanding was £2500 so we were way into the neg equity - also why we wanted to pay it all off and then see about doing something then. (or sweet tlaking my dad into giving us his car as he'll be after a new one next year some time - it's not much newer - 2 years a lot more mileage but it's a desile and ford, he has it serviced every year so I know it's a good little one) - then we could sell ours and free up a little more iycwim.

Wow howlidaymum, just looked at the website you recommended - it's great. Unfortunately I've just received my order from Tesco this morning but will definitely use it next week

I know I heard about it on the radio yesterday will save me a fortune!