How do you budget?

[Flopisfatteningbingforchristmas]

Like lots of people we are going to have to be more careful as a family. How do you budget and keep track of spending? What method works for your family?

Currently we have a joint account for family expenditures, family credit which is in DH name (paid off in full every month) and personal accounts for person spends.

We have a joint account where all wages go in and all bills come out. I transfer 500 from that to a Revolut account every week (we both have this Revolut card on our Google Pay) and we use that for all groceries, fuel, shopping and fun spends. Anything left over by the end of the week (rare) builds up and covers weeks with more expensive splurges.

We use a joint Monzo for most day to day spending, the pots feature is very handy. So on payday we each pay in an agreed portion of our wages straight to the Monzo, and from there the majority gets immediately redirected to pots, we have pots for loads of things including bills, car expenses (inc MOT, insurance etc), christmas, holidays, other annual bills etc. For the things which are an annual bill we agree a reasonable budget at the start of the year, divide it in 12 and pay that much in per month so we should always have the right amount of money available. What's left in the Monzo that doesn't go into pots is our food, groceries, general living expenses, treats like eating out/takeaways etc budget and we try hard to live by the 'when it's gone it's gone' mantra - we do have credit cards for the cashback but try hard never to spend more than we can immediately cover from the Monzo joint account.

The portion of our wages we don't pay into the joint account is mainly savings (mostly in our own names rather than joint but we agree what our saving priorities are and the money is treated as joint) - standing orders to savings accounts go out also on payday so it doesn't 'sit' in our accounts and get muddled with spending money. What's left is a small amount of personal spends for things like haircuts, socialising, hobbies etc...

All money goes into joint accounts and bills get paid from there. Both of us have a prepaid debit card-type arrangement: we have worked out a monthly budget each for clothes/personal spending/petrol etc and that gets transferred to the debit cards on payday, so we don't pay anything out of the joint account other than bills. We also have a food budget and that goes to my card as I do the food shopping. Anything left at the end of the month gets saved.

Dp and I both put an equivalent amount in a joint account and bills are paid from there. It works for us as we’ve always earnt similar amounts, even though we are in very different roles.

I use Microsoft Money to download my statement each month, see where I’m spending money and if there is anything costing more than it should eg subscriptions, excessive take away etc

budgeting is one element but you also need to know where you’re currently spending by analysing it - it just looking at your statement as hoc.

I use the app You Need A Budget (YBAB). It costs £80 a year but in the last three years I've gone from having £50-£200 left at the end of the month to having about £7,000 on average in the bank. It really helped me manage infrequent bills and build up emergency savings.

I use YNAB, been using it for about six months.
I love allocating my money every month when we get paid I feel much more in control of my finances.
It's complicated to get your head around though, or I find it is! The YouTube videos are really helpful.

Just a spreadsheet of outgoings that is edited each month. No joint accounts. What is left is split in half for personal spends.

I also use YNAB and echo the other comments about how it revolutionises the way you budget! It's a brilliant system and absolutely worth the annual subscription.

When we were struggling with money several years ago, we were up to our eyeballs in debt so I went through our outgoings with a fine tooth comb, worked out how much money we needed for food, petrol, school bus fares and dinner money then withdrew that amount in cash each week. I think it was around £200 a week. We only spent that - nothing on debit cards. We factored in things like Christmas and birthday expenses and made use we saved money each month to cover those. We did allow ourselves £10 spends each week! If we had money left over at the end of the week we had a take away, if not we had beans on toast 😂. It took about 3 years of doing this to get ourselves straight financially plus it thought us not to overspend. The feeling of seeing our debt reduce each month was the incentive to keep going.

I use the money dashboard app. Takes a little bit to set up with your different budget pots but then every morning I import transactions and see where I am.

It auto populates most categories and others I just manually update.

Just me so at least I have control of everything.

I have a regular bank account, a short term savings account for things like school uniforms, holidays and xmas, and a credit card for major unexpected expenses like a broken dishwasher.

I also have an ISA that I pay into if I get a bonus from work, and a pension.

At the start of the month, I put £400 into short term savings and try to leave it there. All my direct debits go out at the start of the month, so dividing the remainder into 4 tells me how much I have to spend per week until next pay day.

I don't use an app, I just try to spend as little as possible. I don't buy brands for groceries. I hardly ever do coffee out, mobile phone is second hand on £10PAYG and new clothes/other purchases are planned carefully ahead of time, no impulse buys.

I use a spreadsheet to track my earnings and I have a list of outgoings where the priorities are at the top and the less important things are at the bottom.

I do a weekly food shop and I've got it down to £40 by cutting out processed foods and cooking using the cheapest things including the 6 offered fruit and veg at Aldi.

Me being a SAHM and cutting out childcare costs and being able to cook all the food from scratch is actually proving economically beneficial right now.

We're growing food in the garden and eventually can cut costs down there too.

Ynab. Since 2013. I love it.

I don't budget in advance anymore, I track actual expenditure instead. I have enough reserves to not have to worry about planning things a month ahead but I still need to keep control of what I spend. Tracking in near real time let's me allocate expenses to categories and see when spending on eating-out is getting out of hand.

I use GoogleSheets so I can update from mobile at the time I spend money.

YNAB is amazing!

I use YNAB and honestly it’s changed my life. I’ve got ADHD and money management has always been a struggle, I’ve never felt so in control in my life

We pay the same amount into an account where the household bills and food come out of , rest is ours to save / spend as we like

Is YNAB helpful if you don’t have debt? I see lots of people saying how it helped them pay off their debt etc but we don’t have any, just struggle each month to have anything “spare”

On payday we pool all funds and pay a lump sum into the savings account to cover a monthly contribution to: car insurance, tax and repairs, petrol, holidays, school holiday spending, kids' clothes, presents (Christmas and birthdays) and savings for next car. Long term savings go by direct debit into the ISA. Another lump sum goes to the joint account to cover the direct debits for the mortgage, council tax, utilities, mobile phones, all insurances and groceries for the month. We have a set amount each per month which is ours to spend as we please. The numbers get tweaked as bills change over time.

Making a monthly contribution towards all bills on payday means we know we won't run short.

I use YNAB too and haven't been in debt for over ten years. I use the legacy version though after using new YNAB for a couple of years, I like to forecast
I get a bit obsessive and granular with it but everyone needs a hobby, right?!

I didn't have any debt when I started using it, I was good at living within my means but not good at building up savings.

You don’t need to be in debt to feel the benefit of working with YNAB. I gelled with it immediately. If you are not in debt, you can start in a very easy low key way, and elaborate your budget as you go. Since you only budget with money you have, not money you are expecting, the first month is basically looking at your bank account and wondering if you have enough to pay the next dd. For me it all built up from there. I love it. My income is very irregular, and so there’s never any ‘money I’m expecting.’

@Lazydaisydaydream it can help if you have debt but it’s not a method for debt specifically. Watch some of the YouTube explanation videos they’re really useful

YNAB.

However, I purchased it when you could buy a lifetime licence & use an older version.

It does everything I want it to do & has become a habit (to enter everything in it) so I always have all my weekly/monthly/annual bills set out a year in advance, money budgeted for birthdays etc.. & I know to the penny how much I have in my purse, my accounts etc.. without even having to think about it any more.

I wouldn't pay for the new version as it's subscription software now & although I tried it, I actually prefer the old one.
You can do the 34 day free trial though to see if that sort of thing is for you.