Zero based budgeting when money comes in all through month?

[Fishandchipsareyum]

Hello
So we are in debt and need to make an official budget for our household.

I have seen the zero based budget idea. We get husbands pay end of the month and benefits 4 times a month ( universal credit top up, disabled kids and regular child benefit)

How should we budget this according to the zero based thing ? ( where you tell every pound where to go) we don't have much left after the wage and have a wait for any significant amount of money ( middle of the month ) sorry if this isn't making sense.

I'm looking to organise the budget basically. Money seems to just go and I struggle with the food bill for some reason ( family of 4, kids extremely picky due to autism )

Forgot to add. The " budget categories" ideally need to include extra to debt as the credit cards need more or they won't get cleared. So if we have say 400 end of end left off wage ( that's to cover everything that's not a bill as well as food) how would you work out extra to debt and make sure you have what you need to tide over 2 weeks , I often make the mistake of paying a chunk to card , then leaving us short so using card again ( I know, stupid ) then the universal credit comes .

Child benefit for the kids things they need / want to make life easier/ nicer for them.

I spend too much on the kids actually. My eldest autistic being 11 tends to get depressed etc and often a new outfit brings her right up again. Go to primark mostly now but was next and quiz and river idland and all that before.

Help lol. I just need encouragement really and some ideas on how to split categories.

The universal credit goes on some other loan payment and food and things( lose track that needs to be solved )
Get child disability for 1 child ( applied 3 months ago for 2nd child after they got diagnosed and not heard a thing , we are in Scotland) again... gets spent on the kids in some way.

Have no savings.

I've stopped spending so much so I need to basically each time get paid divide up the money into categories.

You need to go through your spending with a fine tooth comb to find out what you are spending. Put this into a spreadsheet in categories e.g. rent, utilities, groceries, clothes, eating out (including lunches/coffees), entertainment/leisure, misc. See if you can cut anything here - incidentals such as takeaway coffee and 'bits from the shop' can add up to a lot.

Once you know what you should be spending, figure out when the payments need to go out. Generally best to have rent and utilities come out at the start of the month after payday. Groceries once a week. Time your bigger shops that include stuff like cleaning products for after a benefit payment.

Thank you, and yes .... pizza takeaway is often ( dd 11 only eats cheese pizza and curly fries for dinner most nights, or a cheese baguette or cereal on other nights ,refuses anything else ) I obviously make her alot of the supermarket pizzas but when she asks for pizza delivery I often give in because I am happy she is interested in food ( fairly sure she had arfid) and it's only 1 place she will get delivery from, one of the big pizza chains, so not cheap option.

I will sort it all ou, just seems overwhelming and I'm so exhausted.

Honestly I used You Need a Budget for exactly the reasons you give - I had money coming in at different times in the month and couldn’t keep track of it. I did the free trial to see if I got on with it and then paid for the year. It’s totally helped me get on top of my money.

Set up a spreadsheet that puts all your income and outgoings on a monthly basis (so if 4-weekly = X x 52 / 12). Include all one-offs like TV Licence, contents insurance etc.
Then you know how much you really have to spend each month.
And stop the takeaway pizza - ridiculous!

You need a spreadsheet with all the different dates for bills and income, with a running total for each day. I have a similar issue and it's been the only way I can keep on top of my budget across the month. I'm too old fashioned for an app, I just manually set up a spreadsheet for what I needed. It helps me see if I'm at risk of going overdrawn (the difficulties of a 4 weekly payment on some things and a monthly payment for others) and I have a "float" in my savings account that I borrow from until the next payment comes in, then I pay myself back.

Doing it this way was tedious to set up but it has saved me a lot of stress.

Can you get DDs clothes from Vinted? Also sell anything she's outgrown?

I know it's hard but I'd limit takeaways - pizza is one of the worst value as it's not objectively any better than a favourite supermarket one (we get Crosta & Mollica from Costco, not the cheapest but really nice) and can be £££s especially if it's a regular purchase.

Can you at least limit the frequency, make the best use of offers and buy a large rather than 2 medium or whichever way works out cheaper and try and find a supermarket one that she will eat? If it's Domino's Aldi have some good dupes with similar packaging. Or is collection cheaper - sometimes they have collection only offers.

On the matter of the zero based budgeting, can you get all your money paid into one account, then set up standing orders on a set date after your DH has been paid to go to a separate bills account, put money aside for savings for annual and irregular expenses as part of your zero based budgeting (an account with pots will help with this), payments to the credit cards, and also to spending accounts, perhaps one for food/petrol and another for non essentials?

It might take a bit of setting up, or even a frugal couple of weeks while you receive money but not touch it while you wait for the end of the month, but it will simulate a single monthly payment that could help with budgeting.

Also, if you haven't done so already, can you transfer any of the CCs to 0% deals so you get out of debt faster.

But without any amounts, it's hard to say if it's just a matter of priorities or if your outgoings exceed your income and that's why you're in debt, so you need to really review your budget to check whether it's just a matter of cutting back a bit, or if you need a more formal solution. Have a look at Moneysaving Expert for a comprehensive get out of debt guide.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/debt-help-plan/

You Need a Budget (YNAB) is well worth the cost and will save you far more than you spend. We have money twice per month on fixed days, and we have 4 other payments that come in 4-weekly (all at different times). YNAB handles it all beautifully.

It's not always a ridiculous idea when she hardly eats then asks for that. I understand what your saying though and will cut it back.

Great ideas here, thank you , and thank you to everyone. I like the idea of trying to accumulate the money for a few weeks ( need figure out how )

Vinted I have never been on so will have a look.

On the pizza thing I'm going to try and make homemade ones , but she only ever eats chocolate chip cookies if I make food, she is extreme. It's sad. And stressful to see her like that.

Get a bank account that lets you put money into pots and set them up for whatever you need them to be for.

Maintain 2 accounts and cut up the card for the account your money goes into, transfer to the pot account for dividing up, anything not allocated to pots stays in a savings account linked to bank 1.

I'm another one saying to get YNAB (You Need a Budget). It changed us from being in debt to saving enough to get a mortgage on a home in London - it's been miraculous for our finances.

When I did it I sat in on a couple of the free talks and they gave away a membership at the end so it was actually free for me too as I asked lots of questions and was 'randomly' chosen. There are loads of Reddit threads on it.

That's amazing, well done ! I will need to definitely look this up! Brilliant. Thank you.

One thing that we did when I was paid monthly and DH was paid weekly was to put all the monthly direct debits set to come out of the account my wages were paid into. We had a second current account and any of our variable household costs (food , petrol and clothing etc) came out of the second account which had DHs wages paid into.

I have recently created a proper budget for the first time in my life and it's going well. Like you, I also have money coming in at different times of the month and I totally agree that makes it much harder to work it all out. What I've done is list every single bill and monthly repayment and added up the total, so I know exactly what is coming out over the whole month. On my first payday (which is the main one) I keep that total amount in my main account. It is a 'bills' account and I don't use it for anything else. I then transfer the remainder over to my Monzo account and that is my spending money. Here I have 'pots' into which set amounts go to cover different types of spending. I add to these pots as more money comes in through the month. To do this you have to decide and write down how much your budget is for each pot for the month, eg Supermarket -£400. I have pots for supermarket, treats, general expenses (eg school lunches), clothes etc. Once I got the monthly stuff sorted I also created pots for house maintenance, car expenses, holidays, Christmas, and birthdays, which I put a bit into each month but which can grow over time until needed. Those irregular/annual expenses can be what throw a budget out of whack so you need to account for them.

I never got the hang of spreadsheets. I just wrote everything down in a word document so I know what I'm doing and which pot needs to be filled with each bit of pay I receive. I feel in control of it for the first time in my life. Good luck!

Look at StepChange and see if they can get some of the debts written off or at least better managed. Can you move things to interest-free credit cards so you aren't paying interest, but beware the fees when the deals end are awful. I also recommend the Snoop App, it categorises your spend and shows how much you spend on things, our takeaways was awful when we saw it, it's no much more in control. Maybe give your daughter more pocket money but much less than you spend on her clothes and pizza and let her decide how and when to spend it but don't add to it.

My friend had a similar situation with income/outgoings all over the month. She wanted to get on top her finances and pay off debt. Her first move was to get 1 month ahead. So she saved a month's worth of income so she could budget more easily and she wasn't literally living paycheck to paycheck. It took her 4 months to achieve but she was super strict, really thought about every purchase she made and sold bits to build up that pot. Then all the income that came in next month was put aside ready for the following month.
She budgeted with pen and paper and excel and used cash stuffing and sinking funds. Also built up a little emergency fund.
She's now a couple of years in in a great place on a relatively low income but very financially secure.
Worth looking on YouTube and tiktok for budgets, cash stuffers etc. It's a great community.

You Need a Budget (YNAB) is fantastic for this, but after the free trial, you need to pay for it (about £80/year I believe).

It's worth every penny in my opinion.

If you couldn't justify paying for it, It's worth watching the free YNAB videos anyway as their budgeting methods and hints and tips are worth learning.