I'm ashamed to say I don't know the first thing about budgeting

[Bitofnamechanging]

I'm early thirties with a husband and two children.
We're in 13k of credit card debt. We love beyond our means. We don't have much but just living makes us go over budget easily.

I pay the Bill's and dh pays for incidental (kind of but really we put stuff on the credit card).

My bills are roughly 1k per month including mortgage and we both have cars to run which are essential to our work.

I think a joint account would be best but I don't know whether to include food shop in that budget.

Our income is so variable that we cant say we have x coming in so much y on bills and z left over for spending money. Some months I'll earn £1500, other months I'll earn like £100. Dh is the same

Get rid of the nursery. I would only use it if you need it to work. Once ours went to school it was amazing the difference not paying for nursery made and as you are paying for 2 children that will make a huge difference.

If you are paying the nursery bill from your income then the money saved will easily cover the petrol, activities and other incidentals, so you shouldn’t need to use the credit card at all.

Bitnamechange it’s not sounding viable if you didn’t earn for 3 months between July-sept this year and some months your only making £100

Have a look at entitledtoo

Imo you need to look at this as a whole, don't worry for now which account the money comes out of, that's for further down the road when you've got a grip on what your expenses are. If you can't change the way you work it's your spending you need to concentrate on. Make sure you include absolutely everything on your list and don't guess the amounts, use your bank and CC statements

Ok.
Start from the beginning.
Have a bank account for bills (mortgage, utilities, insurances for the whole year then split into 12). That account must be fed with X amount every month without fail.

Pay the debts (cc) before food, but after bills.

Have another bank account for food and petrol, haircuts etc.

Cut the credit cards and get rid of any overdraft.

If you are budgeting properly then everything is included in the budget. All incomings (so yours an DH's salary plus child benefit if you're in the UK, which everyone is entitled to so you should be getting for both your kids), and all outgoings. You can use past bank statements for an idea on what you actually spend money on. Once you know all your outgoings and add the total cost of these up is it more or less than incomings? If it's more then you need to loose some outgoings. Prioritise. This will only work if your DH chips in. It sounds like he's onto a good deal here. You're paying for the roof over his head and he is just racking up debt.

You need a central household account from which you pay bills, food, nursery, cars, phones, kids clothes, all essential household expenses.

Both put your money into this account.

Agree a personal spend amount if and when there is enough to do so.

Cut up all but one emergency credit card,

Work out your weekly / monthly expenditure: include everything, house insurance, council tax, kids birthdays, MOT, petrol,

Make a spreadsheet of all these expenses month by month, regular amounts plus one -offs in the month they occur, MOT, for example.

Then you can see how much you need per month against how much you have coming in. And how much to save for the one-offs.

Can you really not manage with one car? If you work evenings? Can DH not go on the bus? Car and nursery costs are eating into your net profit.

One car would be a nightmare. The nursery is a bit essential for both my mental health and ds1's development. I can't go into it here but he has some health and development issues. I need the break from him and the support that it provides. Both our boys are under 3.

We 100% need both cars. We often have to both be in different places at the same time with no bus routes. He's often somewhere outside london (1.5 hours from home) and I travel around 20 miles or so for work per day seeing various clients. The nursery is also not on a bus route.

I'm writing it down and it all looks ok. I think it's the discretionary spending that's the issue. I shall update...

If you’re regularly travelling 20 plus miles to see clients for work you need to work that into your hourly rate / budget. You won’t be earning £30 per hour if it costs you xxx to even get there.

Don’t be ashamed. You’re earning a reasonable amount which is more than a lot of people in this situation, you just need to grab the bull by the horns.

As hard as it is I agree with those saying you don’t need the nursery. I completely understand it helps your mental health (I have a son with severe autism who attends complex needs school and if I didn’t get a break I’d go insane) but being in this much debt is also damaging your mental health isn’t it - maybe see it from that angle too.

“A nmw would be in no way beneficial to either of us.” I don’t see how if some months you’re only earning £100!

35 hours at nmw is a GUARANTEED 1200 odd a month - that’s not even much less than your max months!

“Theoretically we shouldn't be in a mess” but you are so clearly your theory your way of doing things isn’t working

You’re being entirely unrealistic and when you have dc depending on you that’s unacceptable.

“My business is viable as it works well with the children” do you even understand what viable means?

If it were viable you wouldn’t be in the debt you are and you would have enough as a MINIMUM each month to cover essential costs - which you don’t.

I strongly suspect you’re not even running things well with regard to accounting for what your business costs you and I’d bet good money you’re not keeping yourself straight with national insurance and future pension needs etc

How much PROFIT did your business make over the last 12 months? Not just the total of what your clients paid but deduct from that all the costs of the business - materials, transport, advertising, admin costs, additional electric/heating/water if that applies... is that REALLY more than you’d have got nmw?

“and I travel around 20 miles or so for work per day seeing various clients” have you informed your motor insurers of this? If so the extra insurance costs are a cost of the business too

Ok you need both cars - what kind of cars have you got? Do you own them outright or are they on finance or lease? Could you change to cheaper to run cars? (More economic fuel, cheaper insurance etc)

You need to get real

Have you considered using YNAB (You Need a Budget)? It's an envelope budgeting tool. You create categories for every expenditure, then allocate your income to each category as if you were putting cash in an envelope.

Please can I request that posters are gentle. I don't need a lecture. I'm seeking support and advice rather than chastising based on the very little information I've given. Some posters are making me feel shitty and I feel that's unnecessary and unkind.

I'm trying to sort this mess and I dont need to be told to sort it. That's exactly what I'm doing right now

You say you’ll earn next to nothing between July and Sept, if you got even a part time job during these months, that would help enormously to paying off debts.

you are making a good start, I’m sure you’ll get there.

I earn minimal in the summer. Dh earns approx 600 or so per week. That's only in the summer though. I'd love a part time summer job actually. I wonder if a pub would have me

Yes, lots of businesses take on temporary staff for the summer.

Don't worry too much. There are two types of financial messes: One is where you don't have enough income to meet your needs - that's a real problem, fixed only by increasing income or reducing outgoings. The other is where you have the income, but you don't allocate it wisely, which is fixed by assessing your priorities and allocating according to need.

The YNAB method has at its core the question "what does this money need to do until I next receive money?" If you're on a variable income, you might need to look further forward with your view. For example, if you get £3000 one month, but nothing the next two months, you need to really think of it as £1000 per month. So, rather than thinking 'great! Loads of money, what shall we do with it?' you need to think 'ok, so that covers the rent for the next 3 months. What shall we do with the rest of it? Council tax for the next 3 months. And so on.

I strongly recommend a book called the Barefoot investor. It’s a very easy to understand book on budgeting and saving and it has transformed our spending and saving.

I do have membership to ynab but find that my annual priorities make it really hard work. I will tackle that again. I always make really good progress and then my spending habits slip.

I'm trying to open a new joint account online but everyone seems to say for a joint account you need to be present

I suspect your post asking us to be gentle was at least partly aimed at me.

So gently

One of you needs to be securing a guaranteed income that's enough to cover your minimum essential costs every month without doubt.

Sounds like dh is retraining? So not really in a position to take a full time job which means really you need to.

You (plural) also need to make a list of all your outgoings and see where you can cut back, start with luxuries (don't have to be big things, regular takeaway coffees, branded groceries etc soon add up) then stuff you might be able to negotiate a better deal on (gas, elec, water, mobile phones, WiFi, car costs) shop around and get best deal you can on those - mse site is great for tips on things like this, then look at reducing use where possible - lower heating temp, use less hot water, electric etc

Debt charities can be incredibly helpful with budgeting generally not just debt.

Also worth checking if you're getting all you're eligible for - if one of dc are disabled you may be able to get DLA and other help

Not sure if this will help but we have 3 accounts - a joint account into which all income is paid and all bills come out of. We also leave an allocated amount “extra” for days out / kids stuff etc. We then have our own single accounts (that we can both “see” online - they’re actually joint accounts but we use one each, we’re with Halifax) and we transfer a set and equal amount of personal spending money into these to each spend as we wish. It means no one is dipping into the house account and we both have money to spend of our own.

Yes to dla and possibly carers allowance too- you don’t need a diagnosis to claim dla. Google the cerebra dla guide.

cerebra.org.uk/download/disability-living-allowance-dla-guide/

Hi. Eating gluten free is more expensive but less so if you focus on foods that are naturally GF. Some people try to replicate their typical diet using foods from the free-from aisle, which are not only more expensive but also less healthy. Rice, potatoes etc are cheaper and less processed.

You need to pay yourselves the same amount each month. Look at last year’s earnings, divide by 12 and that’s your monthly (predicted) wage for this year. Luckily you earn the most at the beginning of the year so you can put the surplus away for the leaner summer months.

Please can I request that posters are gentle. I don't need a lecture.
I’m genuinely sorry if I’ve come across as harsh, I don’t mean to. I am sincere in my offers of a different view point which may help you, thus the suggestion of temping