How do you all manage your bills and spending?

smallandcute · 8 July 2016 at 8:00PM

Hi again forumites,

So how do you all manage your bills and spending? I'm thinking of setting up basic accounts for essential bills, so rent council tax and to license, non essential bills such as phone and Internet, pets account for food and vet bills, essential spending for travel to work and food and non essential spending so clothes presents etc?

Or should I set them up as savings accounts and transfer the funds the night before the dad is due? oh and I currently get paid weekly so everything will be divided by four and put into each account.

Thanks for the help.

kjp · 9 July 2016 at 10:19AM

I run a slightly complicated system to take advantage of switching offers but the general gist works for me!

Bank account 1: salary paid into. Transfer food, spending money, and petrol money for month to bank account 2. Remainder stays in bank account 1 to pay bills by direct debit (plus extra for savings/acts as buffer in case of high bill) Check this account online regularly but don't spend from it via card
Bank account 2: day to day spending, this account I use a card for
Bank account 3: direct debits set up to various savings pots (with tesco bank). Money transferred by standing order from bank account 1 a few days before direct debits are taken. Don't spend from this, just check online

Savings pots: tesco instant savers for car stuff, holidays, emergency fund etc. Transfer back to bank account 2 to cover spends.

I'm sure there are easier ways and you could keep all your savings pots in one account to maximise interest, and manage the different amounts in the savings pot via a spreadsheet or something such as ynab. I definitely recommend having a separate bank account for spending though, I can't accidentally spend my bills money that way!

Hope that helps

cmcavon · 9 July 2016 at 11:28AM

I've recently set up an extra bank account to make it easier for me to manage our money, I was constantly adding up what bills still hadn't come out for the month and dividing the rest by how many weeks were left in the month, it was getting ridiculous!

Now we have one account into which both our wages get paid, also tax credits and child benefit go there too. Then I know our total bills for the month so I leave that amount (plus a small buffer) in that account and the direct debits just come out as and when they're due.

The rest of the money from wages etc now goes to another account which is what we use for food, petrol, day-to-day spending. I always calculate a weekly budget at the start of the month so I know we don't massively overspend, if we go slightly over one week then we claw it back the next.

We have three savings accounts, one is the emergency fund which generally doesn't get touched, the second is the Christmas fund which I'm trying to add £25/week to. Finally we have our DMP overpayment fund which is more than likely actually going to be eaten up when we move house. But the intention with this is to build up a lump sum to pay off a creditor in full. Any extra money I can make goes in here at the min!

Sorry for the essay, but hope that helps.

swampduck · 9 July 2016 at 7:40PM

I just have a simple spreadsheet with both mine and OH's Bank account current up to date balance on. All due payments from whichever bank account are listed below each account ie direct debits, standing orders and expected credit card payments etc.
Each column is added up and the balance left for that month is divided by the number of weeks in the month. This is the overall balance left available to spend on food, entertainment, petrol etc
You can update this by adding further expenditure and if you overspend one week the balance left is divisible by the number of weeks left in the month.
So usually there is always something left to cover outgoings. Any balance left at the end of the month is usually chucked at a credit card with any balance on it and on a good month headed towards savings!!:D

Swampy

inkie · 9 July 2016 at 9:10PM

We used to have one account for our salaries and everything came out of this. It was fine, but I was constantly having to try and work out what was yet to come out of the account to determine what we had left in until the end of the month. For the past couple of years we have been operating a different system and we do this:

Current account 1: both our salaries are paid in to this. I then pay credit cards out of this. I then transfer the required amount to account 2 (all direct debits), account 3: my petrol and household food, and account 4: (husbands petrol and road tax).
I then transfer out of account 1 in to several savings accounts and what is left in account 1 covers incidental expenditure. What's left at the end of the month there is then transferred in to savings

lhead123 · 10 July 2016 at 4:26PM

Surprised no-one has mentioned it yet...

I use YNAB to sort out my money. It means I know exactly where every single penny of our money is going to be spent. I also know exactly how much extra I can send to debt without kicking myself for sending too much or too little.

I pay $50 per year (was £36 including fees for paying for something in $ when I paid in January).

I've been using it for 2.5 years now (older version before December) and in that time we have not got into any more debt whatsoever, and have paid off over £2000 in debt.

We are a mostly single income family (I earn about £50 a month, Partner works full time). We have cut everything down as much as we can and live off my partner's and my income. Any extra we get through tax credits or selling stuff usually goes toward paying off debt.

poppasmurf_bewdley · 10 July 2016 at 5:18PM

smallandcute wrote: »

Hi again forumites,

So how do you all manage your bills and spending? I'm thinking of setting up basic accounts for essential bills, so rent council tax and to license, non essential bills such as phone and Internet, pets account for food and vet bills, essential spending for travel to work and food and non essential spending so clothes presents etc?

Or should I set them up as savings accounts and transfer the funds the night before the dad is due? oh and I currently get paid weekly so everything will be divided by four and put into each account.

Thanks for the help.

That is a classic example of how to get yourself into financial trouble. You only have to forget one item once and you're in the financial do-do.

And you can't say you won't forget. I always assumed I'd never forget to pay my credit card bill on time, but I did once. I'll never forget that little red dot in a sea of green on my credit report.

It's not worth it.

mrsbee17 · 10 July 2016 at 7:37PM

Another YNAB lover here!

How do you all manage your bills and spending?

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