£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

Week 7: Day 5


Morning! I am itching to get to the end of this month, repair the budget damage and get into a new month now. Bored with March now, financially speaking!

I am also still feeling like I'm doing a bit of a headless chicken impression, in terms of the amount I have to get done vs what I am actually achieving. I can't particularly see a light at the end of the tunnel on that front before September when DC3 gets more preschool hours, and I need to manage my time carefully over the Easter holidays to make sure that I still get the work done that I need to do and don't start the summer term even more stressed and behind.

Today’s list is basically yesterday’s list, since I ran out of time for almost everything...

To do today:
1. social media while working.
2. plan out Easter hols so that we don't have another over-budget month, and I get enough work done.
3. tidy house a bit - the rooms that aren’t on ‘public display’ look like they’ve been hit with a bomb.
4. NSD
5. bake bread
6. Find banking keycard thing so I can actually log on to DH’s account to move money around on the 1st.

To do this week:
1. List old nursing chair on eb@y too, unless my mum wants it back (we 'borrowed' it 9 years ago, she had said before we can sell it when we no longer need it, but I will double check).
2. Make candles. Annoyed that this keeps falling off my priority list - I need my essential oil hit!
3. Finish my socks and knit my dad's birthday socks - again, I really really need to do this. My dad is visiting over his birthday weekend so I need to have them ready to give.
4. Plan April's budget in YNAB.
5. On 1st April do all the money transferring from business account and into savings, setting up our accounts for the month.

motivated wrote: »

Hi TOPM

quick question, I see you plan to organise Aprils budget in YNAB. Should I leave all April sections blank on mine until I have the money to budget or should I have it filled in now? We have a weekly wage coming in tomorrow and should I just be budgeting with that and then when I get paid do the same? See DH gets paid weekly and I get paid in the middle of the month. This is what's confusing me.

I've confused this post I know sorry
M

Personally I leave the month blank until the first day of the month, when I fill everything in. All the 'envelope' names (e.g. 'food shopping', 'mortgage' etc) have the regular amount written as part of the name so I don't need to check to see the amounts (eg 'food shopping £350' as the title). DH gets paid in the third week of the month, so I have a separate 'envelope' called 'money for next month' which that pay gets assigned to until the 1st of the next month, when I move it out of that envelope and make it available to budget with - it stops me inadvertently thinking I have it available to spend, as the 'available to budget' number stays at zero. I also do this with any ebay/cashback money that comes in that I want to put by until the following month, but don't want to move into an off budget account.

When we first started with YNAB we had to assign all money as soon as it came in, as we didn't have a month in hand (so some of DH's wage would get used between when he got paid and the end of the month, rather than all being saved for the next month). We still don't have a month in hand, but after being frugal for a few months we were able to start putting money into the 'for next month' envelope, so eventually we slightly removed ourselves from the 'paycheck to paycheck' cycle - not entirely, but enough to be able to budget from the 1st to the 1st of the month, rather than from paycheck to paycheck, if that makes sense.. The eventual aim is to have an emergency fund equivalent to a month's salary available, but we're a long way from that point just now (I believe our emergency fund stands at something like £5!)

In short, yes, you should only be budgeting things when they come in, BUT when we weren't able to budget for a full month at a time I found that really hard, so did 'overbudget' to cover the bare essentials on the 1st (so I had some red numbers in my budget) and paid those envelopes as a priority as money came in. It depends how much you are affected by the feeling of seeing red numbers vs the feeling of not knowing whether you have enough coming in to meet your essential outgoings (this probably isn't a problem for you, thanks to fixed salaries and the DMP making outgoings manageable).

Cherryfudge wrote: »

Hi TOPM,

Just looking at your 'to do' list is exhausting! I do feel for you. Yet when I looked at your signature, you've already made inroads into your DFD, so don't lose track of that. You're winning, despite everything.

Can I suggest that instead of trying to tackle the lot, you (for instance) just tidy one room (bathroom always makes me feel better), just spend X amount of time on social media, plan out week one of the hols? There is a sort of magic to quantifying and achieving just part of the whole. Of course with kids underfoot it won't stay tidied or planned but those are all areas where if you aren't careful, the whole day will get taken, whereas if you just do a bit, you can know the target is met. Tomorrow you might do a different room or spend more time on the computer or plan week 2 of the hols, or maybe they will have to wait, but at least you'll have got somewhere.

Best of luck

I do need to do that - I am terrible for over-committing myself and then getting cross when I don't achieve everything. I think part of my stress at the moment is caused by my own expectations of myself, but equally the life choices we have made (me being self employed and essentially a SAHM from the kids POV) means we have to work extra hard to keep everything balanced, and have to have high expectations of ourselves so that we keep on top of everything. It's a tricky balance. I sometimes wonder whether I'd do things the same, given my time again, but there's no other way I could have been around for the kids in the way I have, so I can't complain too much.