do bugets really work

earwig

hi i have tryed doing a buget but i cant seem to stick to it for example i have set a buget for next month but i need to tax the car and in my buget there is only 10 allowed for this so i would have to take the rest of the money from other things i buget for but then i wouldnt have that money to buy the things i need but if i dont do a buget i can pay for the tax just buget for bills and food i have 5 hundred pounds left to get the rest done pre school fees smokes clothes ect what am i doing wrong

exessexmum

The first few months are difficult with a budget.......and I'm not going to mention the fact that you are probably smoking away more than your car tax costs a month......... ;-) The first few months of our budget I did find i was having to take out of one section to cover another, but it does work out in the end, honest!!

HazelEyes_3

Hi Earwig, Welcome to the Forum. It would help if you post a full SOA - see the sticky at the top of the forum.
However just on what you have written so far - when you say you allow £10 in your budget for car tax, what do you actually do with the £10 each month? For non monthly expenditure in your budget you need to reserve the money - preferably in an interest bearing account.

moozie_2

I am with exessexmum there!

The first few months, I guessed what my budget was for things and in many cases, I got it wrong. In fact, I think I got it wrong in most cases as I was so clueless about my spending! :rolleyes:

There will be times where you have to adjust your budgets to accomodate wither things you had forgotten about (it happens!) or unexpected costs. The important thing to remember is that you are better off now than before as you know you have a shortfall and are working in covering it - where as before, you may have not known or did anything to deal with it.

Keep at it, it works

lynzpower

Hiya hun :wave:

Now I know you did an SOA ages ago. Did you put the money away for the car tax then?

If not, I know this isnt ideal NOW, but I did read you can buy credits/tokens etc from the post office towards car tax, so thus you can pay monthly. But it doenst help that you need it NOW.

I personally, really dont know about this one but I do agree. Eg its all very well me putting a tenner a month away for dental, but this crowns gonna cost me 250 quid, plus vat. Do I have to save up for 2 years, and if I do what happens if it goes pearshaped in the meanwhile?

Sorry to hijack , but I think this is a really good point that no one seems to really talk about

HazelEyes_3

lynzpower wrote:

Hiya hun :wave:


I personally, really dont know about this one but I do agree. Eg its all very well me putting a tenner a month away for dental, but this crowns gonna cost me 250 quid, plus vat. Do I have to save up for 2 years, and if I do what happens if it goes pearshaped in the meanwhile?

Sorry to hijack , but I think this is a really good point that no one seems to really talk about

Hi, I think this is a very good point - in an ideal world we would all have an emergency fund in our budgets to allow for the unexpected or unexpectedly high expenditure but when all our focus is on paying off debts it is difficult if not impossible to "square this circle"

Ruby_Pudding

It has taken me a year to get my budget to work properly to be honest. I understand the complications with big payments and this is why it's taken me so long to actually get it right. For instance, this February I paid for my car insurance in full for the year but from March onwards I put away an amount each month (£400 divided by 12 = £33.33) so next February I can pay the whole lot in full again. I've also done this with the car tax & house insurance but only because I've been running it so long I've been able to build up those totals. It took me about 3 years to even get a budget up and running because as soon as I did I seemed to get hit with a big bill or payment or emergency and it would put me back to square one time and time again.

Try baby steps at first - attempt to stick to the budget to the very best of your ability but realise that until you have those little individual funds set up for car stuff, christmas, household emeregencies etc you are going to have to dip in now and again.

But please, please, please don't give up on it - it really works and it is so rewarding to look back over the months and see how far you have come.

livinginhope

Hi earwig,I feel a bit like you at the moment,unexpected expense after expense,I try to put the money away but something always comes up
This is the first month since our major budgeting (03/06) that things seems to have settled,then I muck up the figures ,christmas is also coming and there is nothing put by for that,but we won't spend much
Things do settle down,I hope :rolleyes:

taplady

Hi ! We too found it hard to start our budget off and for quite a while we had to rob peter to pay paul but eventully it does work out. You can buy £5 stamps from the post office to pay for your car tax so although this doesn't help you now it will stop it happening next time.

Imelda

I agree with RubyPudding,

You should be budgeting for the things you expect, like car tax and insurance and once your debt has been paid off then get an emergency fund started. Does anyone remember the thread Martin started a while back regarding DFW's having savings? Basically he was saying there is no point someone paying out more interest than they are earning. It's a tough view as everyone likes the security of a few ££ in savings (and I think I argued that point) but would make sense for some.
Earwig- do you keep a spending diary? I use mine to enable me to see what I should be budgetting, eg I know that typically I spend £10 Monday- Friday and around £65 per month on food. Are you paying off too much of your debt and leaving yourself short? I know that once I fall off the budget waggon it is very hard to jump back on and my spending goes out of control.

climbgirl

It does take a while to get budgets going because of the big payments, and because they always need a bit of tweaking to fit your lifestyle. If you've only started budgeting and you've divided your car tax annual payment into monthly instalments, then of course you won't have enough to cover it. Best thing to do is cover it as best you can, and start from next month putting money aside to cover next year's car tax payment.

It's tricky at first, you feel like you're taking one step forward and two steps back. But keep going with it and it'll fall into place in a couple of months. I find that I change mine regularly anyway, in fact I write a new one every month (I get paid monthly). I have the regular monthly/annual payments which are set in stone, like rent, utility bills etc. Then my savings, spending money etc is tweaked depending on what's coming up that month. Your budget needs to be realistic if you're actually going to stick to it....

It'll take a couple of months to settle down but it will.