Anyone good with money? Mines a mess and I don't know where to start!

[KaySamuels]

Am quite good at budgeting but my budget is tight and I have never had enogh to save, to cut a long story short DP had a bad couple of years works wise and we now pay 50/50 towards the house, I have also just had a parent I childmind for go awol with no notice, owing me money.

I am over my overdraft and getting fined and can't increase it, have personal bills and household bills and I am beginning to realise - not enough money!

I am not exactly extravagent anyway so have no clue how to sort the situation out. Any ideas really appreciated.

Try the "living below your means" or "dealing with debt" discussion forums on www.fool.co.uk and post your statement of affairs. At the very least it will show you where your money is going and get you some useful advice from others who've been there. You need to set it out in black and white - how much is coming in and where its all going.

moneysavingexpert is good too. It does take a bit of time to go through all his stuff, but it is good for a systematic approach to reducing your outgoings.
Hope things work out for you.

when you say you and your dp go 50/50 towards the house, do you mean your income is shared, or you give the same amount for the bills?

because if he earns more than you then he shouldn't be paying the same as you for household bills - does he have more disposable income than you?

Get together everything you no longer need or want round the house and ebay it. This is a source of income that is actually not taxable (it's not officially 'income' as you are disposing of your possessions so not increasing your net worth) as long as you don't start either buying or creating things to sell.

Thanks will check out those web sites.

DP and I both put in the same amount of money per month into our joint account for household bills and groceries, and our ds.

I contributed minimally in the past for various reasons (have had threads about it before) it was an agreement we came to, but things change and when dp was made redundant (twice in 1yr), we had to both put in what little we had. Our basic CTC and CB goes into this account too and it just covers it all!

Madamez - I periodically do ebay already, cearing out every 6 months or so, the last few times have made very little.

When ds is in bed will write down ins and outs.

The only solution is to really really go through everything (cannot recommend moneysaving expert's budget highly enough for this) and work out exactly where everything is going at the moment. ie not writing down what you would like to be spending, but writing down what you actually are. You can then go through the budget and see where you think you could spend less.

Having done the budget, I also found that living in a cash economy was really effective - I had somehow convinced myself that our food bill was completely reasonable, and took out the amount I thought I was spending in a month. 2 weeks later it was all gone, and it became very apparent that DP and I were spending about £100 a week on food (not eating out or anything, not buying caviar, just buying organic/local food and eating meat 3-4 times a week), which is ridiculous!

If you do the budget and find that debt repayments and household bills are taking more than you and your DP are earning, you are then in a position to tackle the problem, in full possession of all the facts.

Oh, and it's worth noting that your food/energy/petrol bill will probably have gone up compared to even a couple of months ago. I poo pooed this initially, but actually DP's fuel bill has gone up by 25% over the past couple of months, which really makes a significant difference to our budgeting.

Hopefully makes a good point - have a long, hard look at your food bill. I know all food prices have gone up, but (for eg) ready meals are dear. You don't have to cut down on fruit and veg (which is expensive) but buy the ones on offer/in season. Buy the 'value' versions of stuff you don't care about (eg, have posh coffee if you like it, but buy a cheap version of, say, loo cleaner or kitchen roll). Consider visiting Aldi or Lidl for basics once a month, then topping up from nicer stores.

Go through all your bills and go to a price comparison site and work out if you can get your mortgage/gas/house insurance sheaper elsewhere. I warn you, this is very, very boring. But you will save money.

I don't want to sound preachy, but I feel quite passionately about this (got myself out of some debt a while back, and it took me yonks and it was boring, but I did it - THERE IS LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!) You are being vv sensible to tackle it. That's half the battle.

Hopefully makes a good point - have a long, hard look at your food bill. I know all food prices have gone up, but (for eg) ready meals are dear. You don't have to cut down on fruit and veg (which is expensive) but buy the ones on offer/in season. Buy the 'value' versions of stuff you don't care about (eg, have posh coffee if you like it, but buy a cheap version of, say, loo cleaner or kitchen roll). Consider visiting Aldi or Lidl for basics once a month, then topping up from nicer stores.

Go through all your bills and go to a price comparison site and work out if you can get your mortgage/gas/house insurance sheaper elsewhere. I warn you, this is very, very boring. But you will save money.

I don't want to sound preachy, but I feel quite passionately about this (got myself out of some debt a while back, and it took me yonks and it was boring, but I did it - THERE IS LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!) You are being vv sensible to tackle it. That's half the battle.

Thanks everyone for replying,

We spend £50 per week on our grocery shop, on a Sunday and buy nothing in between. This feeds me, dp, ds and mindees mon-fri and me, dp and ds on a weekend. We buy whoopsies and smartprice mostly, meal planning and making packed lunches. Oh and cat food and litter in the shop too!

Will go write down everything now and check out those sites {dons sensible hat}.

Thanks everyone for replying,

We spend £50 per week on our grocery shop, on a Sunday and buy nothing in between. This feeds me, dp, ds and mindees mon-fri and me, dp and ds on a weekend. We buy whoopsies and smartprice mostly, meal planning and making packed lunches. Oh and cat food and litter in the shop too!

Will go write down everything now and check out those sites {dons sensible hat}.

Thanks everyone for replying,

We spend £50 per week on our grocery shop, on a Sunday and buy nothing in between. This feeds me, dp, ds and mindees mon-fri and me, dp and ds, and two step sons on a weekend. We buy whoopsies and smartprice mostly, meal planning and making packed lunches. Oh and cat food and litter in the shop too!

Will go write down everything now and check out those sites {dons sensible hat}.

grr stupid computer !

Good luck Kay, though I have to say that if you are feeding all those people on £50 a week you are a miracle worker, and there ain't nothing those sites can teach you. Hope you manage to save money elsewhere though. Like I said, phone bashing and moving your insurance and mortgage around is horribly boring and time consuming, but savings can add up.

One thing I don't really advise is converting your overdraft to a loan. Although you will pay less interest that way, it is virtually impossible to not run up your overdraft again so you end up with a loan AND an overdraft to pay off. However, might it be worth talking to your bank about how to get yourself out of trouble? I am not the greatest fan of banks but you never know, they might come up with something.

Kay, if you've managed to write everything down and have any other questions, feel free to ask, we'll try to help!

I think you are right about the food, we actually eat a more varied, healthy diet now (lots of F+V and luxury range food whoopsied down in price) than we did before budgetting too, just take more organisation.

Still haven' written everything down been chasinup a client who hasn't paid me, working and doing coursework, oh and ds is still awake!!

Will come back though when I have written it all out!

Changed OD to loan when I first left home, still paying loan off and have new OD so have learnt that lesson myself!

I know if I go into the bank they will just offer me loan.

Ok here are my personal outgoings GULP!...

Monthly outgoings:

Money to joint account £435 p.c.m
Loan £80
Car insurance £40.19
Road tax £10
Tax ? NI £10
Lottery subscription £4.33
Laptop on credit £45
New washing machine on credit £6.50
PAYG Phone £5
Childminding expenses (travel, playgroups, craft materials, etc) £30? estimate
TOTAL £666.02

So my outgoings are below my income (just!) thankfully so were am I going wrong? Having a client rip me off hasn't helped! Any suggestions?

Most of your outgoings look fairly non-negotiable, except maybe the money to your joint account - what does that money cover? If DP is putting in a similar amount, then you're putting over £800 into a joint account, which as well as CB (another £80 a month or something) CTC (how much do you get?) makes quite a lot of money. Does your rent/mortgage come out of there? how much does that account for?

other things I suggest are:

• Your car insurance isn't hideous, but unless you have a 2 litre engined car, you should probably be able to get it for a bit less next time you renew
• Lotttery subscription? Scrap it! You have more chance of contracting AIDs than winning the lottery
• Is there any benefit in paying off your laptop/washing machine earlier? If they are on high interest credit it may be in your itnerests (unless there is a fine) to add even just a pound a month to each

Childminding expenses - you claim back for tax purposes?

You pay £435 into joint account - what bills here can be looked at and lowered therefore saving both of you money?

There doesn't seem to be enough detail for your outgoings yet - what about petrol, food, council tax, rent/mortgage, birthday pressies, treats, mags subs, Sky, Bband, landline etc etc. These need to be looked at too.

TBH the car is a bone of contention at the moment. I have not passed my driving test yet (have done theory) as can't afford lessons, my nan gave me the car when she got a new one, insisting I keep it taxed as she wanted me to use it, DP is currently using it for work as his needs expensive repairs he can't afford and he is paying the petrol for my out of his own money. I drive it locally with DP in car,ut in reality this rarely happens.

I followed martin lewis advice on my car insurance, sarched the top 3 price comparison websites and got the cheapest deal I could. I am fully comp as a prvisional driver.

ivykaty44 - my childminding expenses aren't claimed back as such, the money I send on expenses is not income taxed that's all.

TraceyK will look at joint outgoings too when I get chance. Our main joint expense is mortgage which we are currently paying arrears on too from when dp was last made redundant.

Don't have sky - dp wants it have told him he can pay for it if he wants it so badly. I could really happily live without out tv, begrudge paying the licence never mind sky on top of that!

I know lottery is silly - but can't bear to stop now as have had the same numbers for years, if I desperatelt needed to save that £4 a monthI would quit chocolate!

Car seems singularly unnecesary if you can't afford lessons. Does you DP have his own car as well? Could you declare yours off road and save a ton of money? You can usually even suspend car insurance for a short period of time...

If your outgoings exceed income in your joint account, it might be worth talking to mortgage company about paying arrears more slowly rather than risk not being able to make the payment. Although it's hard to make sweeping statements like that without seeing your joint account budget - I'll await that and offer my nosy opinion then!

Good point hopefully - SORN the car you aren't using and get a refund on the tax disc.
Also make sure you are getting as many miles to the gallon as you can. Empty the boot and don't carry heavy stuff around with you. I used to go mad at my dh carrting around a full set of golf clubs all around the country with him every day!

Could you up your income by offering evening childminding services?