Can anyone help me budget & get our finances under control a bit better........

[ScoobyDooooo]

How do you all sort out your finances?

Dp gets paid on a weekly bases every friday, our bills seem to go out all through the month.

I try & budget but nothing ever goes to plan!

I did write a plan on my laptop tried to stick to it but it never worked, just like usual never works. I blame dp he is dreadful with money he just thinks i am tight!

So spill the beans how do you work all your finances>

I put money by for gas electric, phone etc etc and keep in in the bank in virtual pots marked gas, electric, phone, car tax etc and I can see at a glance how much is in each one, as its in pots waiting its gaining interest and theres usually more than enough to cover each bill when it falls through the door.
At the start of the month I work out how much is coming out of each bank and leave it in there. DP has strict instructions not to touch his bank as the money in there is for DDS not spending!
I take out rent and council tax and pay them right away.
And then if theres anything left I take it out and leave it in my purse and when thats ran out thats it...wait till next payday!

Joint account
all bills on direct debit
shopped around for home contents and car insurance (home contents is now £5 a month and saved loads on car when I changed it)
all credit cards on 0% or paid off
shop online
meal plan (I don't do this v well but it makes sense)
take packed lunches, don't buy lunch
If he's the one who is rubbush with money can you limit his acccess to it or only give him a certain amount a week?(not that you should have to but)

Yep, bills on direct debit: shop online: we have a joint account for joint outgoings and pay into it roughly proportionate amounts from our respective earnings.

Also the joint/separate accounts arrangement means that any personal bills DP has run up on his credit card are none of my, or our joint, business and I can pay into my own pension and savings.

Ok sounds good.

We have sperate bank accounts no joint one yet, i am in charge of both because dp would not know where to start.

The thing that throws me is dp takes the card, draws a tenner here & a tenner there then everything i have budgeted for goes wrong.

He has not been taking packed lunch & this has been costing a fortune i believe.

I do meal plan, don't shop online used to, all bills are dd.

There no point whatsoever you budgetting and him taking 10 here and 10 there as it will completely feck up your hard work
Is there money spare for him to have after bills food etc are paid? if so give it to him cash in his hand and take the card away. Or remove all the DDs from his bank account and have his spending money in there. Let him know how much is in there to spend and let him take the consequences of going overdrawn.
Ie...next month your spending money is X minus the overdraft charges....

We have a joint account which is just for bills & mortgage. DH pays a certain amount into that account by SO each month, all bills come out by DD.

I also take out a fixed amount each month for supermarket/ household shopping.

We pay our own car bills separately from our own accounts.

Anything left is up to us individually how we spend it.

www can I ask who your home insurance is with?

would swap if I can find cheaper!

We've got everything in a joint a/c and all bills on direct debit then we each get 'pocket money'. DH was the same for getting money out here and there, buying lunch at the garage etc. Now that we each get the same amount to spend on ourselves he's stopped buying food and spending on rubbish. He took some convincing to start with but it's going well (only been doing it for about 3 months - before that he spent loads on himself and I compensated by spending nothing because we couldn't afford it by the time he'd got what he wanted).
I find it easier to think monthly rather than weekly as that's how most of the bills work.

This is what I have done in the past:

Take out cash according to budget at start of the week. Use that to pay for everything (apart from bills/DDs). When it runs out, tough! ScoobyDooooo, one idea is to 'confiscate' your DP's card for a while and hand over his weekly cash to him.

Also, try and write down everything you spend each day. This will give you a good idea of where you are overspending. Sound's a bit obvious, but it's amazing how it adds up when you are taking out tenners here and there and are not really sure where they are going.

I have also done an Excel spreadsheet of my income/outgoings in the past, but I normally 'forget' to do it after a couple of days If you can, that is a really good idea.

Yes, our home contents is with Barclays.
When I was getting renewal quotes I put our details into moneysupermarket.com (I think) and then called existing insurer and asked could they match the cheapest quote because if they could I wouldn't move. It would have been easier for me and they'd have kept the business (Prudential) but they said no so I moved. OK, so the Barclays one probably is a loss leader but still, mad that my existing insurer in both cases wouldn't match the new quotes - it must cost them £x every time they lose a customer.

Set up all outgoings to leave your joint account at the same time each month e.g. 28th of each month. After this date you know that whatever is left in the account, if yours for the spending. Find out how much dh spends on food and other pleasures and for you and over-estimate how much that is. Set up a monthly dd for e.g. £10 savings a month to go into a different untouchable account. You'll be surprised how quickly this adds up.

Main thing is to organise your bank account. If you need to find a set of keys in a messy house, it will take all week, its the same here.

We work best with seperate accounts.

All the bills come out of DH's account as his wage covers them (just). He gets paid weekly and knows what the total monthly bills are so has to leave enough in each week to cover it all. Most now come off at the end of the month, ask to change any that are out of sync, most will be able to change. He knows how much he can use for stuff like his lunches and his own personal purchases.

My wages cover things like the shopping and kids clothes and activities. I am not dipping into the joint account so DH doesn't get any nasty surprises when bills are due. If I am short I ask DH before drawing money as he knows what is still to come out of the account.

I suppose it comes down to trust that we don't really fall out about money, we both know we will pay for the priority stuff first and help each other out if we need it before buying personal stuff.

If both wages have to cover bills it might work to have wages paid in to one account and have a seperate account for direct debits and bills, work out how much has to be paid in each week to the bill account and stick to that. You can then choose how split/ use the money that is left over knowing that the money is there building up to cover the bills.

Oh I also have a spread sheet on google documents (google that it will come up) that I tick as I put the money in the right place, or the direct debit comes out.

Thanks for all this great advice it does really help, going to try to get it all sorted out in the next couple of weeks, i think i mostly get muddled because we have bills & things coming out at all different times through each month, i really need to try & set up DD for one date in the month so then i know they are all gone at once IYKWIM?

Instead of changing the dates to the same one would it not be easier to open another account and keep one just for dd's? Then you'll know that the other account is for 'spare' money and you can just leave the 'bills' one.

I think that telling him he mustn't withdraw 2any money would solve the problem, tbh