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Save To Spend
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MATH
Posts: 2,941 Forumite
It is fairly easy to budget for all the everyday, regular payments and monthly bills but what about all the one offs that even though we know about them always take us by surprise. Here is where a save to spend account comes in handy.
Each year I make a list of all the one off payments and infrequents bills with estimate values. This list contains all the once a year things such as Buildings/Contents Insurance,Mine & Mrs MATH's Car Tax/Insurance, Children's Birthdays x 3, Christmas Total Budget, and so on. Some things are more frequent, children's qymnastics subs paid quaterly. My contact lenses are the same. Each year a number of items will be in for that year only for egample our nephew is getting married this year so Mrs MATH will NEED a new outfit:rolleyes: When you have included every thing you can thing of and added an amount for unforseen emergencies you have a total spend for the year. Divide this by 12 and you know how much you need to transfer into this account each month.
When you car tax is due or whatever you don't need to panic cos the money is there to pay for it. Leaving your current account cash for day to day spending (after you've moved some to genuine savings of course)
Even better some months you may find you can skrimp one of the listed payments from the current account cash leaving the budget in Save to spend surplus - move this to Pin Money PDQ before you spend it:cool:
Does anyone else run this kind of system. My grandmother ran it for years out of cash boxes in the blanket chest.
Each year I make a list of all the one off payments and infrequents bills with estimate values. This list contains all the once a year things such as Buildings/Contents Insurance,Mine & Mrs MATH's Car Tax/Insurance, Children's Birthdays x 3, Christmas Total Budget, and so on. Some things are more frequent, children's qymnastics subs paid quaterly. My contact lenses are the same. Each year a number of items will be in for that year only for egample our nephew is getting married this year so Mrs MATH will NEED a new outfit:rolleyes: When you have included every thing you can thing of and added an amount for unforseen emergencies you have a total spend for the year. Divide this by 12 and you know how much you need to transfer into this account each month.
When you car tax is due or whatever you don't need to panic cos the money is there to pay for it. Leaving your current account cash for day to day spending (after you've moved some to genuine savings of course)
Even better some months you may find you can skrimp one of the listed payments from the current account cash leaving the budget in Save to spend surplus - move this to Pin Money PDQ before you spend it:cool:
Does anyone else run this kind of system. My grandmother ran it for years out of cash boxes in the blanket chest.
Life's a beach! Take your shoes off and feel the sand between your toes.
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We don't really do this very much as we have split all those payments into monthly direct debits, the car insurance is also paid monthly and the tv licence. I buy £10 worth of car tax stamps from the post office every month so that covers those. The other half's contact lenses are also paid for by monthly dd.
What I have realised though is there are certain things that seem to crop up that we haven't budgeted for like having the boiler and gas fire serviced, (we had to find the money for that rather urgently the other day) and now I am growing my own produce I need to budget for next years seeds and grobags as I am having to find the money for those out of the housekeeping. So it's definitely something I will have to think about.
Might need to get one of those little multi slot tins I think.Organised people are just too lazy to look for things
F U Fund currently at £2500 -
Don't you have to pay more when you pay car/house insurance by DD. Mine was about £15 a year more expensive that paying the full bill. Never heard of Car Tax stamps before but know people who buy gas/elec on stamps but once again thought this was an expensive way of doing it? - Don't know if this is true or just my perception.Life's a beach! Take your shoes off and feel the sand between your toes.0
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I'm not sure if we do pay any extra for the insurance paying by monthly dd, but our car, house and contents insurance are still the cheapest we could get anywhere even if we do. Lloyds Bank had that "give you £30 vouchers if we can't beat your quote" thing. They couldn't even touch our insurer pricewise.
And no, you don't pay any extra for the car tax stamps, you just get a little card and stick the stamp on it, then when you need to buy your car tax you just hand over the stamps like cash. Doing it this way means I can tax my car for a year instead of raiding the bank account hurridly for 6 months worth.Organised people are just too lazy to look for things
F U Fund currently at £2500 -
MATH wrote:Never heard of Car Tax stamps before but know people who buy gas/elec on stamps but once again thought this was an expensive way of doing it? - Don't know if this is true or just my perception.
It's no more expensive to buy car tax stamps or pay for tax using them. They come in £5 stamps and you can use them as part or full payment for car tax. I used to save them myself and currently have £30 worth that are useless to me as I don't have a car anymore :rolleyes:"An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will"
~
It is that what you do, good or bad,
will come back to you three times as strong!
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Like the sound of car tax stamps - will look into that as a way of spreading the cost.
MFW 2015 #41 = £20,515/£20,515
MFW 2014 #41 = £26,100/£25,000
MFW 2013 #41 = £10,000/£10,000
Original MF date = May 2036 - MF achieved on 15 June 20150 -
Car stamps? I will bear that in mind if and when I get a car 0
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Yes, i do something similar. I have 3 online savers attatched to my bank account. One i use for anything i have left over when i am a good girl and save from the money MrJudi gives me for the shopping. The Other one i use for a clothing allowance for myself. I only put £5 a week in it, (i dont need many clothes), the other one houses the family allowance. I save it in there as i cant really tie it up because MrJudi quits his job on a regular basis and sometimes we need to dip into it.Does anyone else run this kind of system. My grandmother ran it for years out of cash boxes in the blanket chest.
I have been trying to persuade MrJudi to adopt the same approach with his finances.
This is a system account and does not represent a real person. To contact the Forum Team email forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com0 -
When I got my Child Benefit in cash, I used to buy Car Tax and TV Licence stamps because it was convenient. When it comes to renewing, you just hand the card of stamps over and pay any balance. Not any more expensive but I did resent the 'them' getting the money in advance, I felt I deserved a discount! Now I pay them in Feb and March when I'm not paying Council Tax and Water Rates instalments.0
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moggins wrote:We don't really do this very much as we have split all those payments into monthly direct debits, the car insurance is also paid monthly and the tv licence. I buy £10 worth of car tax stamps from the post office every month so that covers those. The other half's contact lenses are also paid for by monthly dd.
What I have realised though is there are certain things that seem to crop up that we haven't budgeted for like having the boiler and gas fire serviced, (we had to find the money for that rather urgently the other day) and now I am growing my own produce I need to budget for next years seeds and grobags as I am having to find the money for those out of the housekeeping. So it's definitely something I will have to think about.
Might need to get one of those little multi slot tins I think.
They're stopping those car tax stamps at the end of the month
“A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.” - Dave Ramsey0 -
Yes but they will be replaced by Post Office Savings Stamps which will serve the same purpose Organised people are just too lazy to look for things
F U Fund currently at £2500
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