Financial planning/budgeting/sorting yourself for normal people- NOT high net worth

[Fayrazzled]

Does this service exist? My husband and I really need to get on top of our finances this year and could do with some help. Happy to pay someone for their time and understand it won't be cheap- but does this service exist?

Good luck! I will keep posting on here to try and keep myself accountable so feel free to do the same.

This is a 'meta' problem - if you want to pay someone to help you to sort it out, it could be unlikely that you'll continue to keep it sorted out as you go on. The problem is your lack of wanting to sort it out, not how you do it!

It really is the best idea to begin small and manageable and see the benefits - it's encouraging.
Look at your bank - does it offer a 'regular saver' account? Set up a DD for the max and look at what you'll have in 12 months. You can have many reg savers (one with each bank, sometimes called loyalty savers).
But start to read online - FB have a Meaningful Money community page which you can ask anything, no matter how silly.
There's lots of help online.
Martin's Money Saving Expert website is not to be beaten for updated rates on savings, bills etc.

Do this together in the new year! 🎊
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/financial-education/#oucourse

The best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. Second best time? Tomorrow.

Good luck, OP. We did this several years ago. It felt a bit scary at first but now it’s really empowering to be in control - I love it.

Do come back and update us x

We started our spreadsheet about 10 years ago and it's still going! The first few months were the hardest but overtime we have tweaked it and improved it

Tips!
Remember to add dates and a comment column - when were fixes arranged, what company are you with for energy etc and when can you re do them. When are automatic increases due for phone plans etc. it also works as a prompt for reviewing whether the

Add dates to a family a calendar so you know when to start looking for new deals. You can move penalty free from your energy provider 49 days before your switch ends, the best time to do car insurance is 3 weeks before it's due etc.

Include everything in the budget - we have a line for both of our cars but that calls up another sheet which has the cost for the insurance, MOT, Tax, breakdown cover, new tyres, brakes, service and so on. This is included as 1/12th in the monthly budget. Also small regular payments can add up, my partner pays £3 a day for parking, there are ~250 working days a year so that's a £750 annual cost that could easily not be accounted for. It doesn't take many small regular payments for £1-2k to be unaccounted for!

We have several tabs

• expenses which is our monthly budget and which dictates how much we have in our joint account. We use this account as the account we live from and nearly all of our spending is from this account. I'm currently on mat leave and out of employment so my maternity allowance goes into here and my partner pays the rest of what we need. When we were both working we based on our relative take home pay
• savings summary a list of our accounts, bank, rate and when they were opened so we can track when the rate is likely to drop.
• month by month savings this is only when we have a savings goal but it helps to see the impact of the month by month savings and helps us see what sort of time frame we would be looking at to meet our goal. Similar could be done for clearing debts
• project expenses we do this when we are doing things on the house so we can keep track of the costs and whether we are still in budget. For example we renovated the kitchen diner last year but did it piece meal so took us a year and it would have been difficult to keep track of the costs otherwise.

Amazing! Well done!

Theads where everyone comes on to say they've got a massive budget gets me down. It can't all be true. I think the only way to save is to not spend even if you want to. Writing down what you've spent can help you reflect at the end of the week but your money is still gone then. I know that's a simplistic answer and I'm sorry if that's not helpful.

I have always enjoyed budgeting and I would recommend the MSE Forum if you are wanting to get on top of finances.

If you are self employed the most important thing is to keep business expenses separate from personal and make sure you set aside money for tax/NI and pension.

There are loads of personal finance blogs online. You don’t need to pay someone.

Wow- thanks for your time setting all that out- such helpful advice! We always get caught out by last minute renewals!

We really noticed the difference when we bought a car a couple of years ago. Our previous car was written off in an accident at the end of that policy so we had to get a new policy. We looked up insurance when we saw the new car the insurance quote was something like £350 at this point we didn't know when we could pick the car up so didn't know when to start the policy. Due to everything that was going on it was the night before we picked the car up that we had chance to get the policy by which point it had gone up to £550! Waiting 8 days cost us £200!! Had we known we definitely would have rejigged the order we sorted things in, naively we thought it was something we only had to think about before we got the car

I listen to quite a few money related podcasts and pick up lots of helpful hints along the way which makes a difference and just increases awareness about how to make your money go further. We all know about shopping around for your insurance but by listening to these shows I now know I can also save myself more by timing when I do that shopping around for insurance.

I've just been looking on our local libraries for activities to do with my little one and seen that some of them have drop in clinics for financial and budgeting advice. I'm not sure what they offer but it might be worth seeing if there is something like that in your area too.

@Superscientistcan you recommend some pods?

I exclusively listen to BBC podcasts/radio just because I think they would be more impartial.
Money and consumer favourites are the Martin Lewis Podcast, Money Box, you and yours and sliced bread.

Martin Lewis podcast is partially his radio 5 live show currently with Adrian Chiles and he now has a weekly podcast answering people's questions. Quite a lot on rights and products that are available - best savings accounts, energy deals and so on
Money Box is a mix of a news podcast focusing on consumer finance but also has weekly phone in on various personal finance related topics.
You and yours is similar but comes at the same topics from a consumer perspective, they also have a weekly phone on a Tuesday - call you and yours and you where they have an expert panel offering support to those calling in.
Sliced bread is from the you and yours team but from a product perspective and they look at whether various things are worth the money covers lots of things that come up on social media. Are they SB (better than sliced bread) or BS? There are about 100 episodes now covering everything from SAD lamps to fitness trackers to car tyres to ancestry DNA tests. A bit adjacent to actual budgeting and money but it is interesting to see how often the price doesn't dictate value and how many claims can be made with limited evidence

The consumer rights stuff has been interesting and it has given nuance to things you hear in the news. Take the insurance one. Car insurance companies now have to give the same renewal price to new customers as old customers.... So you might think there's not necessarily worth the effort of shopping around. However, it's not quite the policy. The policy is the same price to new customers from the same place. For example you could have an car insurance policy from the Mumsnet Car insurance firm and found that policy last from the aardvark comparison site. They offer you a renewal at £500, any new customers from the aardvark comparison site would also get this price. They could however decide this year they are going to give an extra 10% discount to the Banana comparison site so new customers through them could get a like for like policy for £50 less.

I've made use of information about the consumer rights act to get myself essentially a new pair of headphones after mine stopped holding charge just after the warranty ran out. I would usually have begrudgingly accepted they didn't last very long but never mind. Instead I approached the supplier said I didn't think they had lasted "a reasonable length of time" they agreed and said if I returned them I could have a full refund as they didn't make the headphones anymore. I bought a new pair for the same price.

A lot of the tips have come from phone-in shows so I'd have a look through the topics of those.
The adding the reminders to the calendar I got from someone phoning in, having the expert there as well means that the advice is sanity checked at the same time!

Could you survive on your lowest income month? If you could, take your lowest income month in the last year and set that as your income. Anything else is 'savings'. Budget using the amount of your lowest income month and then you have a natural buffer and source for debt reduction. I use YNAB because it allows you to easily move money around the categories even though it's still in your account.

@Superscientistthank you!