Creating a budget for 2

FoxandStar wrote: »

Hiya everyone,

Want to divorce him and marry me?

My money gets paid into my partners account. I was ill at the time it got setup and she needed access to the funds.
Well that was her excuse anyway

Bill money + a bit extra goes into my account. Some goes into a savings in her name. why? errr damn.

If i want to buy something i have to ask her and beg. Probably why we are solvent

We only have a joint account - no separate accounts at all - but I know this doesn't work for a lot of people!

Of the amount we have left after bills, we discussed and decided how much of that to save each month and how much to spend. The savings portion is moved into savings as soon as we're paid. We only think of our 'spends' for the month as being the amount we've agreed on.

You'll never get anywhere if your savings just consist of "what's left at the end of the month". If we happen to have any of our spends left at month-end then they're put into savings, but this doesn't happen often.

However, if you're currently spending all your disposable income then it will take changes to your spending habits to free up money for savings. That will take commitment on both your parts, as if he doesn't cut back you'll get resentful.

Start off small - say £100 or £200 a month into savings, and increase it gradually so your spending cutbacks aren't a shock to the system. It will take communication and teamwork though.

We just kind of work together to only spend what we have. We have a loose agreement that we can each buy stuff that's less than £100 (unless we want to buy lots of separate things!) and mention to the other items over that.

As you have separate accounts, what you could do with your disposable money is put £x into savings then divide the rest in half and put it in your own accounts as your 'spends'. Then, when it's gone it's gone.

Our approach works if you both spend fairly equally. If one of your is a big spender, separate 'spends' accounts might be better or you'll get annoyed when he's spent all the joint spends by week two.

The problem is you don't have a budget.

This is the plan for how you want to allocate your money.

DO one for 12 month in detail and 5 years to cover the bigger spend that will need saving for. Set some longer term goals.

Once you have the plan you need to track you are on plan, this is where tools like YNAB can help.

Why not do a retrospective 2014 where did all our money go.
That would be a good start for the 2015 plan then adjust for where you want your money to go.

Even if you can't settle on a plan(budget) track where you money goes in detail, you have to track every penny to get the picture of where the money goes.


It is all about priorities and getting value from your money,
Do your plan normalized on annual spends this gives a much better picture of how much things are costing.

most people cannot rationalize spends over different time periods.

eg £2 coffe every work day is around £500 a year that's another holiday.


Long term goals can help like retire at 50, new car in 5 years, mortgage paid off 10 years early, bigger house, more holidays.......

It's all about the PLAN


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Hi, just reading through a few posts based on groceries spend and I'd love to know how people manage a monthly budget for a family for under £200!

There are two of us plus a toddler and we sometimes struggle to stay within twice that! We do include nappies, household cleaning products and basic toiletries in this too- maybe [hopefully] others don't include these things?