Household budgeting - sheepish admission of being very crap

[Pigletdoesabravething]

I am thoroughly ashamed of the way DP and I DO NOT keep track of our spending. We are pretty much responsible folk in most areas, but this is defintately a huge thorn in my side. That said we are not huge spenders, but we are barely above the breadline, in rented accommodation and we need to get a grip. But I have no idea what our annual expenditure is, or how much our joint income needs to be to get us into a safe future. I still have a student loan & overdraft from 2001 FFS.

We have no pensions, only a tiny amount of savings and live in a rented house. All I know is we are struggling, my hours and pay are being cut (job is so dire I may be forced to resign soon which is another pressure), I live out of an overdraft (interest free) and I have to do something about it. We only get £10 per month in tax credits so I figure we must be able to better on what we earn, surely?

DP drives me crazy as he is adament that planning and budgeting is useless, his argument being there is always something out of the blue that knocks any budget out of kilter.

Does everyone else on the planet apart from us go through every receipt and log their spending? Please can anyone give me some tips on how to tackle this. I dream of being an organised person, with a close eye on the purse strings. I know it's not just me that has to change but it must be a start. Please someone shake some sense in to me, I need a mentor!

And please no flaming me with "you shouldn't have children if you can't plan financially for them" I don't think I could take it. My response would be "we can't undo having a child, we can only change the future"

We aren't budgeting and recording at the moment, but we have done in the past. We are fairly comfortable about our level of spending vs income (basically, we don't have a lot of discretionary spending).

It's not hard to start to track your spending though.

You can use a computer program such as Microsoft Money (costs about £20), or just use a simple spreadsheet. You can download your bank statements into Money or type it into Excel, and then allocate categories for each item.

Just do what you can from the bank statements - you won't be able to track cash spending without your DH's support, but that can come later.

Do it quietly and reveal your results to him after 3 or 4 months.

I've got an excel spreadsheet. It works really well. I would be very happy to email it to you if you think taking a look at one would help?

A blank one, btw. I'm open but I'm not THAT open

mud24 at hotmail dot co dot uk

I've also got a diet one, where it calculates my calories.

I'm a big geek

Right, my tips:

If you haven't got online banking, get it
then download a couple of recent bank statements
categorise each item so food, take aways, utilities etc
Then do a pivot table if you know how to in Excel or, just sort by the column with the category in and you should be able to see where you are spending money.

Only then can you even begin to think about where to cut back. Easiest cut backs:

mobile phones, I just got ours down from £100 a month for 2 of us to £30 by changing to Sim only deals
Ututilies: go to uswitch and see what you could save
credit cards: if you have any see if you can get them onto 0% deals, that way your monthly payment goes to clear the debt rather than just interest. If you can't get them onto 0% your priority should be clearing them
food: shop around, meal plan, cook from scratch as much as possible
If you can, take out the cash you need at the beginning of the week and DON'T take out ANY more.
Insurance, car and home contents, shop around. I got ours down by LOADS (home ins only £5 a month atm and car for me is £25 a month) by shopping around
tax credits: check you're getting everything you're entitled to
Go to moneysavingexpert and read the tips. I have just asked the rating people to re value our council tax and I'm expecting a rebate, which should be around a grand I reckon

Your dp is right in a way about there's always SOMETHING, there is, but if you plan and budget then you should be ready for it.
I am not a natural planner btw (fine at it for work but not for home!) but I've made myself take our finances in order and it's working.

the ONLY way to have more money is a) increase your income or b) decrease your expenditure. But you can only do the latter if you know what it is!

There are some great budget spreadsheets out there, I think moneysavingexpert has one. Good luck.

Wow, thanks all, that's some great advice. ScienceTeacher, I love the "do it quietly and reveal your results to DP after 3 or 4 months"
I will do that!

Hecate, I may well take you up on the spreadsheet, if I can't tinker with the one I've got, and attempt a pivot table thingy like WWW suggests.

Thank you all though, for such thoughtful responses. I will do my best.

Ok, my next question, how often to punch in the numbers, weekly? monthly? How do I give myself the kick up the backside to do it and stick to it?

Ooh and how much time should I allocate to getting on top of this? I put myself off by thinking I would have to spend a whole day at it, but I guess once up and running, a couple of hours a week? There aren't enough hours in the day at the moment.

And Hecate, I wish I could get geeky about all this

Worth doing as you could be surprised where your money goes.

We have a spread sheet and every now and then (once a year or couple of years- when it feels that the spreadsheet is not mirroring reality) we download statements for 3 months and check what's going where.

The fixed things are fine - but extras, groceries, clothes, lunches etc can easily get out of hand.

weekly. monthly is too long and by the time you go through it, it's too late to do any 'jiggery pokery'. If you are really haemorrhaging money, even a daily tot-up is worth it for a bit!

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