How much can you save?

nomorekids

AlwaysHappy wrote: »

Its that time of the month again, and I have once again managed to scrape together the £500 for my Halifax monthly saver - the 10% is a hugh motivator, but as each month goes by it is harder to find the money!

me too, but take a leaf out of my book and nick it from the kids accounts. The £500 for Halifax has to go via Alliance and Leicester for two more months before I can simplify the whole merry go round and in the meantime there is christmas....

Lokolo

I am assuming you lot of have budget spreadsheets. Do you keep previous months actuals? i.e. this month I have overspent on so much (petrol and entertainment mainly) but this obviously doesn't reflect my budget.

Do you just transfer actual spending into your budget spending once the month is over? Or do you keep it alongside it so you can see where you went wrong?

LucyTheDwarf

I redesign my budget spreadsheet whenever I get bored... geek that I am.

At present, I have an annual budget, rather than weekly or monthly. It's a bit harsh, in that I budget my net income to be about 5% greater than my actual take home pay (meaning I have to do overtime), and the expenditure is a bit less than I normally manage! It's based on the actual income and expenses 6 months before I created the spreadsheet - I took between 5 and 25% off all expenditure, and added about 15% onto the income.

Basically, I have a column for each month, and a row for each category of income or expense, and I input the actual figures in here as I spend throughout the month. At the end I have the actual total for the year so far, then another column for the "budgeted" total for the year so far (i.e., this is my month 6 (why did I start it in June I ask?), so it's 6/12 of my annual budget for each category). I then have a variance column to see how much I've over- or underspent thus far, which allows me the flexibility of cutting back one month, if I over spent last month, to bring down the variance a bit - and also allows me to "save" up a variance, for something such as car insurance. At the moment, it looks like I've underspent in the "car" column, but I know my car insurance will be at least £600...

Also, any month where the actual spending is more than 1/12 of the annual budget in any area, I have that highlighted in italics, so I can see at a glance what my poor areas have been this month.

My general view is that actual data should always be recorded somewhere - otherwise there's no way of making up for bad months, or of monitoring progress and adherence to the budgets set.

Lokolo

Indeed exactly what I thought. But each sheet is per year so its just a bit effort having Jan Budget, Jan Actual, Feb Buget, Feb Actual etc., as that makes up 24 columns in itself.

I may instead just have 2 sheets each year, one for budget, one for actual.

JimLad

All this talk of spreadsheets has inspired me. Im going to work one out then start in january

LucyTheDwarf

Why wait 'til January?! December 1st is far nicer a start point, in my opinion! Everyone else does the January to December thing. I used to do August to July, but now I'm June to May.

PS: I'm so excited. Three days 'til ISA interest and four days 'til payday!

Castleman

LucyTheDwarf wrote: »

I'm so excited. Three days 'til ISA interest and four days 'til payday!

Oh dear!

Enjoy your celebration anyway :beer:

Lokolo

Castleman - give it a year and you'll feel the same way. I do! Can't wait for interest day, even though I know how much I will be getting :T

gelato_cat

I actually find it more exciting when my interest date is ad hoc (eg with fixed rate accounts) and I haven't calculated how much I'm getting... that way it's a nice surprise!

Suze

LucyTheDwarf

I am really looking forward to it... I know how much I'll get... I just can't wait to see it!!!