Another budgeting thread

[Violetcharlotte]

Inspired by some of the budgeting threads on here over the last couple of days, I'm trying to work out a proper budget to stop me over spending. I've realised that the problem is things like car maintenance, servicing, tyres, etc. This sort of thing normally throws me into a panic and I end up binging it on a credit card How much should I budget for this for the year?

Also clothes for teen DC. My two are 16 and 18, still growing and still in full time education so I do need to buy clothes and trainers for them (not designer stuff, but basics from H&M, New Look, etc). How much should I allow each month for this?

Bump

We have a car account. We put about £165 per month in. This covers insurance in a lump, MOT, service for about £300, road tax and fuel.

Work out how much you need by setting up a spreadsheet with the months across the top and each item of expenditure down the side. Put the cost for each in the appropriate month column.

Divide the total by the no of mo the left to get there and you have a monthly amount. Add the individual amours together and you have the monthly amount.

Don't know about the clothes - I'd allocate a termly or quarterly amount and save monthly for it. Maybe £150 per child per quarter?

Thank you. My fuel alone is £160 a month. I know how much taxi me insurance is, I can find out cost of a service and MOT and divide by 12. Not sure how much I should add for thinks like tyres and if something goes wrong with the car.

Violetcharlotte

Budgeting for a car going wrong that is outside the new car warranty is a tough one, but servicing a car regularly to the service plan at a reputable garage should save money in the long run.

An idea of the tyre costs can be found out by looking on the sides of your tyres for the size and then go onto any high street tyre company website, put in the wheel/tyre sizes when prompted, and see what makes come up and cost per tyre (often cheaper in 2’s) – and then you can shop around sites once decided.

With the £160 petrol bill a month it looks like the car is probably doing over the annual ‘average’ of say 10,000 miles.

We don’t do anywhere near that at the moment but we use our car manufacturer to service and MOT the car, as they quote a fixed price for a service we can see before hand, and even on older cars, give a free 1-year manufacturers breakdown service for car servicing there, possibly more use to your household than mine based on our miles.

There is a major High Street car parts store, that in larger stores, both services and provides tyres at competitive prices, so well worth a look once you know what tyres you want.

On tyres, based on what I was told years ago, the firmer the rubber compound of a tyre the better value for high mileage car homes, and even if cost a bit more for say a certain French manufacturer (look for the sign of an obese, bald man, with several fat folds lol), you get a v good balance of performance (stopping distances in dry/wet conditions etc), tyre noise, and wear – so both safer and replaced less often.

Nowdays I think other manufactures get closer on tyre wear, but tyre choice on high annual mileage homes could still mean the difference of replacing tyres annually or closer to 18-months – and something my father said that stuck with me was the area of a tyre that is on the surface of a road at any one time, is similar to the surface area of a mans foot – so considering the speeds of a car, and who we love inside the car, maybe think twice about v cheap tyre makes, and look for better make discounts.

You just have to guess in the short term OP. It's really a how long is a piece of string question. Repairs in any particular year could be anything from nothing to £1k+.

You could start with £100 a month for servicing/MOT/repairs and hopefully adjust it downwards later if you build up a big surplus, or take some of the money saved to allocate to other things.

Are you wanting to include saving up for your next car in this amount too, or that separate?

We have a so-called 'short term savings account' for those sorts of things (ie unexpected car repairs or other random stuff coming up). You could put a fair amount of money into that account. If, say, 12 months later you've built up a pot as there haven't been so many unexpected expenses, you could transfer it to long term savings/pension etc.

With regards to the cost of clothing for children, you could ask them to help ou budget. They could write out what the might need for autumn/winter and then spring/summer and rough prices of the items. You could then double check that they've thought of school wear, underswear, sport stuff etc. The annual amount could be devided by 12 so that you can set the money aside accordingly. Then, every 3 months you go shopping together with a list. If any money is left over, your teens could use it for a top up mid-season.