Spreadsheet for budgeting?

[WanderleyWagon]

Kind mumsnetters,
I am really bad at budgeting. It's not been a problem as I was on good money, and I didn't have expensive habits, but things are getting tighter and I would really like to cut down on spending.

I have a budget spreadsheet (sort of) with all annual expenditure, but can I ask how people track their spending? I pay off my credit card with what's left in my current account, and I pay with cash the odd time. I haven't worked out a way of tracking spending except sitting down every evening and looking at all receipts and remembering any cash payments that day, and I'm really bad at doing that.

I'd be eternally grateful for any suggestions!

HyperJar! It’s amazing and free

Martin Lewis has a good one on his website money saving expert. It has all the everyday stuff but also the yearly and monthly things you forget to include in the budget. I found it really helpful when I was organising my money

Also I found cash envelopes were really good idea. You take out your money each week or month and divide it up into the various categories (food, fuel, bills that aren't direct debit etc) then you can clearly see how much you can spend on each thing. I found it made me focus more on what I was actually buying instead of frittering it on rubbish and it's easier than trying to add it up each day as you can just see what's left.

We write it in a book as we go.

There's an INCREDIBLE app for this called YNAB (you need a budget).

Takes a bit of time learning and building your budgets but once you're up and running it's a life changer.

Linked to all accounts so all transactions are pulled in automatically abs then you assign them to the pots allocated. Easily shows you where you need to slow down / stop spending that month and also encourages you to take money from other pots to cover overspend.

Thank you so much, all! I'll definitely look up HyperJar and YNAB (which I think I might have heard of before). I've not excluded the writing-it-in-a-book but I haven't managed to make that work for a while. We'll see! The support is much appreciated:)

I use the Everydollar budget. If you get the paid version it pulls transactions from your bank acc but I use the free version and write the transactions in, I like using my bank card instead of cash, then it's easy not to forget what I spent. I check it every week and make adjustments.

If you want software for your PC then Microsoft money is an excellent programme and now available as a free download. I use it all the time and it runs fine on windows 11.

I'm in France and we use an app called Linxo. I'm sure there will be a uk equivalent.

It pulls all the transactions from your account and you label them. It learns and guesses what all the transactions are.

You can download every month or week or year or whatever into an excel and see where you are spending.

DH occasionally asks where our money goes and I can absolutely tell him.

I pull down annually for my accountant on both our small businesses. It takes very little time to do the reconciliations. I go through the chèque books at the same time.

If you have a Monzo bank account you can allocate all of your transactions to different categories of expenditure e.g. groceries, entertainment, bills, etc. You can also use the Monzo savings 'pots' to put aside money for regular expenses e.g. food, or fuel, for the month and move it back across as and when you need to use it. Really helps me to be aware and accountable for what I'm spending.

I created my own spreadsheets a few years ago where I record EVERYTHING I spend via cash bank and credit cards. Definitely helps to avoid frittering money when you write it all down

I use the Budget Mom method. She uses things like cash envelopes, calendar for direct debits, sinking funds, savings funds, etc. I like that her budget are realistic and she’s not judgmental. You are still allowed treats. I think her YouTube videos are really easy to understand.

The humblepenny.com is a personal finance blog, which includes free budgeting and cash flow spreadsheets. I find the cash flow one really useful as I can use all my own categories (I do income, essential and non-essential expenditure and try and be quite detailed, without going bananas, under each heading) and it helps me see where the pinchpoints and easier patches are going to be in the year ahead.

HyperJar is basically cash in envelopes in an online form, and you can Apple Pay from your jar or envelope.

I was going to mention this and YNAB.

Not being in the UK means I can't use HyperJar, and it's such a shame. The cash envelope method really does work though. It helps me keep track of what I have. Good luck, OP.

Thanks a million to all posters for all the further responses to this - lots of things to consider! Solidarity in budgeting to everyone... :)

I think ultimately it doesn't matter which method you use so much as long as you can stick to it.

Good luck!

I looked at YNAB but it looks like it doesn’t automatically link to UK bank account to import transactions - is that correct?

It does now!

You need to pay for YNAB so I use a spreadsheet instead - takes a bit more time, but saves money.

I just download a month’s statement into an Excel spreadsheet and then categorise each item into a heading, e.g bills, mortgage, food and then sort and subtotal. I’ve been doing it for the last 4-5 years so I can work out how I much spend in each category. I have an ideal budget which is averaged per month. It really helps you work out where you are overspending.

Thanks again to everybody who's continuing to reply to this thread! I like @Tayegete's approach a lot - thank you!

@Takingabreakagain

Cash envelopes was utterly life changing for us!
I actually came up with it myself! I didn't realize it was recommended on there.we don't use them now we have a spreadsheet but it definitely trained us.