Help needed

[NotOnThe]

Single mum to 3 dc. I'm flat out hopeless at budgeting.
I over spend galore
Online shopping. Regular shops.
I really need to get things under control, how?
Never done a budget or stuck to one,
Average salary but I've been lucky I had savings but that has to stop. I need to live only on my salary.
Help
Help
Help
I feel so helpless

Can you list your income vs outgoings? That would help us help you?

What do you want help with? Making a budget or therapy for the shopping addiction? Both would probably be appropriate.

How do you get in the position of having three children and not being able to control your spending? Just get a grip, you can have a budget and stick to it you're just not choosing to. Sit down right down your income your fixed expenditure and see what's left. Decide how much of that you need to spend on food, etc, keep a bit for 'fun' and put the rest in a savings account where it's not so easy to spend. Only you can do it.

On moneysavingexpert.com there’s a really helpful approach they call a ‘statement of affairs’. It will take some time to complete but it gets you to capture all your spending, including the smaller bits and bobs that get forgotten about.

Never done that.

Both

I'll take a look

Is pen and paper the easiest way?

Use an excel sheet if you are used to them or simply a piece of paper.

put your monthly income at the top, list everything you NEED to cover first - rent/mortgage, direct debts and put how much. For the month of December.

list other expenses- food and budget an amount for December.

if you have credit card debt list that and all debts with amounts.

add up all the expenses and take away your monthly income. If expenses are more than your income try to see if you can adjust say food expenses.

do this each month but track all expenses as you go. So if you thought the food for December was going to be £400 but it was £500 at least you can keep and eye and track on average what you are spending.

it might be slow to get started but after a few months you will have a picture of where money is going and how to keep control of everything

But you must know your income…and then you lost your major outgoings
mortgage/rent
council tax
water
electricity
car
phone
food
fuel

etc

list them out and see what you have to work with etc

Budgeting gives you an amazing sense of control. The tool on moneysavingexpert is great at giving you your full financial picture.

It would help if you could download all of your bank statements for the past 12 months. Tally up all your debts. Calculate how much of your savings you've had to dip into.

Can you put a day aside at the weekend to do all of this? Once you've completed the budget, you'll either see things aren't as bad as you thought or that you need to make some cutbacks.

If things aren't looking too bad, find a budget tool you can use every day so that you keep on top of things. A few mins each day to enter income/outgoings will keep you in control.

If things are looking dicey, then use moneysavingexpert or Mumsnet to ask for help in cutting some of your costs. There some great posters on both forum who will help you find how you can get on track.

Delete card details from all websites. Unsubscribe from the email notification on all websites. When you see an advert, on here or TV, social media, tell yourself the greedy company is trying to get Your money. Say it to your DC to. When they say “mum I need X item” - it’s just companies trying to get our /my money.

Can you do meal plans?

You could try the You Need a Budget app or take a look on Moneysaving Expert - lots on there re budgeting / living frugally / managing debt etc.

The first step is realising you need to act so you're already on a better path!

Ok, so do it now?

If you have time to online shop then find the time to write down what you net income is and what your house outgoings are. Take the second away from the first and that's how much you have left.

Agree with getting a download of your statements.

Then next to each transaction put a category to show what it was for. Eg Food shop, top up shops, eating out (include coffees / sandwiches etc), entertainment, uniform, clothes, kids hobbies, presents etc

Then you can add up how much each month you are spending on each area.

It is likely that these totals will show that £7.50 here and £2.99 there end up as a few hundred every month.

Then you set a target for each category and track spending against that target

The YNAB app is really good for that as it automatically pulls in all your bank transactions then you file them into categories and it takes that amount off your budgeted total

Longer term, you then need to budget an amount every month towards annual expenses eg £100 a month towards Xmas. YNAB will help you save these amounts too as you stop seeing a credit balance in your bank account as 'woo hoo money to burn' and instead realise that most of it is already allocated for something else so you look at YNAB and go 'have I got enough in my eating out budget for a takeaway tonight? No? Ok then I'm having beans on toast"

Moneysavingexpert.com also has advice on how to stop spending money you can't afford on stuff you don't need.

Have a look to see if there's anything helpful.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/stop-spending-budgeting-tool/

Thank you everyone. The year has been unusual and lots of spending, house move change in jobs etc.

So what I'm going to do is start from Dec 1 and write down all of my expenses and daily spends.
Removing card from online stores is a great first step.
I don't any debt so that's not an issue but if I keep spending like I have I certainly will.
And I'll read some of those links
And take a look at the app options? Are there any other than ynab?
I don't have excel access at home is that the only option or can I find unpaid versions?

Another option is that with some banks you can create ‘spaces’ so you can put £100 into a “Christmas” space every month so that it’s there but not in your current account - it’s still available incase of a genuine emergency but not for a dominoes takeaway! Starling bank does this but I’m sure loads of others do as well,

Google has a free spreadsheet that's fine for this purpose. There's also Open Office.

I could have honestly written this myself OP a few years ago, good for you for takings steps to get a grip of it before it leads to debts. I find a spread sheet with all incoming, outgoings and what's left over really helps to budget. It could also be worth considering a 2nd account for bills only with a set amount being transfered over each month so it's clear what you have left to spend freely.

I use 'Numbers' on my iPhone rather than Excel. I even update it while I'm out and about if I'm spending.

I do a fair amount of financial capability/budgeting work with clients with mental health problems.

Having a "bills" account that's separate from the "spends" account really works well for a lot of them. I tend to advise doing it the other way round though: have the income going into the "bills" account and a sum transferred from there into the "spends" account.

It also suits some people better to have money transferred into the "spends" account weekly, rather than monthly. That way, if they overspend, they're only skint for a few days rather than a couple of weeks or more.

Thanks everyone just jumping back in.

Is numbers an app?

Thank you everyone, I've downloaded a budget spreadsheet and opened this on google sheets.
I'm pulling out my bills from the past six months.
I start a new job next week so I'm starting to write down all my spending from the 1st of December.

I had a bit of a wtf moment when I downloaded my transactions, one particular store where I live (cheap department store) as I'm not in the uk at the moment.
My purchases in this store on average were a 1/4 of my take home pay. I have had to restock a whole house so this accounts for some of it. But not all of it. We could have had a family luxury holiday with that money 😢😢😢😢🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬.
So daily writing down every single purchase is the way to go.