Weekend food/army/Tondella question!!

8pnoodles

Managed to get a 10 minute garbled conversation with the bloke last night. Told him I'm now on a budget of £75 a month for food. Said I don't know how to sort out when he eats round mine though as sometimes I end up buying shopping for him for the week too.

He said it's easier if I do all the shopping for the weekend for us and he'll just give me money towards it. Sorted! I think this is because sometimes he comes round mine on a Friday and we've run out of beer which he looks forward to after work, bless. lol

Still gotta work out how much I need off him, might just keep a rough running total of what we've had and guesstimate it, seeing as some weeks I see him loads and other weeks/months I don't see him at all.

Tondella, you mentioned signing off the mess at weekends, I asked him about it and he said he doesn't know anything about it but would try and find out. How does it work? Cheers.

Tondella

Wow! A thread title with my own name in it, how cool!

To be honest I've never witnessed the "signing out of the mess" thing, however I think it happens at the porter's office. Essentially, it's declaring that you won't be around for x days, and so your mess bill can be adjusted for missed breakfasts, lunches etc.

I think the best way of working the weekend food budget is to agree a fixed amount, say £20? contribution from him for the weekends that he comes along with you. Having to sit down and go through the receipts each week will become tedious and might make him a bit more uptight about money.

8pnoodles

I'm only gonna do the reciepts thing a couple of times to get a realistic idea of how much I actually would spend extra with him being around. Then see if he's ok with the amount.

He said he'd give me £50 (I presume he means for the month) which is way too much!

skintchick

Well - why not take it anyway? You said he's bad with money too, so you could save the extra for him in your savings account, then present it to him after, say six months or a year, and show him not only that you love him lots but how to save cash too!!

8pnoodles

lol great minds. I nearly posted to say i was going to do this. He has a car on HP, with an option to buy in two years. I thought I could see what i can save from the money he gives me and stick it in a high interest account for him to help finally buy his car with!

But... as he is bad at budgetting, I'm worried he'll not adjust his spending, but still give me money. So he'll just end up more in debt. So I'm going to try and take less money off him than he's originally suggested, and still save.

It's hard to do as some weeks he'll be around all week (on leave) and sometimes I won't see him for months, so we have to work out a system for it. I was really surprised how happy he was to go along with me though on this, well impressed!

Tondella

He's probably pleased that you are presenting him with solutions, rather than just "nagging" him about money like his ex-girlfriends. I see your problem about him not adjusting his spending, that might be something you'll need to put on your to do list, once he's been gradually introduced to your other money saving measures!

8pnoodles

He rang me last night and you know what he spent his time talking about? It was along the lines of - well, I've put this cheque into the bank, I have x amount of money coming in from so and so, and I've got this from my pay this month, which means I have enough money to get my car serviced, without using my credit card!".

Bless.

He's told me about five times how he's saved up for it (and to be fair his card is maxxed out so he can't use it) and I'm so proud!

He's got a £3K credit card, and once he's paid it off he's going to ask them to reduce the limit to £500. Well, I say £200 for emergencies, but he reckons £500. We shall see.

My current thing is to work on him to save up for his car insurance, tax and MOT/servicing in advance every month. Reckons he needs to put £90 a month into a savings account for this. The soon he'll be able to afford to get 12 months tax in advance not six, and a year's insurance without paying it monthly! So he'll save money there.

He's been so stressed through getting posted to somewhere he doesn't want to go to, and so busy, it's hard for him to find the time to sit down and sort out money. But we talk about it whenever we can. My aim is to get out of debt not long after we're living together around this time next year (I reckon my debt freeness is about 18 months away IF I stick to this budget!) and then to really tr and focus on getting his debts paid off asap. then we can save for a house. It's what we both want, it's just working out how to do it!
Baby steps... and we're getting there slowly. Just starting to pick up the pace a bit now...