Where is my money going?

maggiecon

So my new years resolution is to sort my fianances out once and for all. I do be on this site every now and then and take little bits of advice from it and have reduced my spending significantly. I even managed to get rid of a £6k credit card debt last year

However, I just used the budget planner on here and have noticed that I should have 46% of my income left after all my bills etc. So can someone explain to me why I am always broke. I havent bought new clothes for over a year. I never go out, I dont drink or smoke, and according to the budgeting tool I should have over £1000 in spare cash every month!! :eek: yet when I check my bank balance yes you guessed it £200 overdrawn.

Does anyone else have this problem of unexplained disappearing money.

To sort the problem out I have decided to keep a money diary and see if that will shed any new light for me. I have also started doing a menu planner to help reduce my grocery bill.

I am also selling my car. I only travel 1 mile to work everyday. so I dont need a fancy car. this will save me £250 a month, and it should leave me with 3K to buy a nice wee run around.

So my goal is to be able to go shopping at Easter and buy some new clothes - without feeling guilty.

2011 is the year I will sort myself

zarazara

There must be things not accounted for on the planner . Go through your old bank statements,writing down what each purchase is and you'll know where its going. If you cannot do this then start now,today,writing down every penny you spend and what its for as well as your direct debits .

daisy_may

Maggiecon-SNAP!:rotfl:
you are not alone.

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

Hi maggiecon, I would suggest that you keep a spending diary for a month and write down everything you spend. Also try to pay cash for everything and avoid cards.

Lastly have a look round your local charity shops for clothes, I rarely buy new clothes as I can find everything I need for all the family in the charity shops and good quality too.

weezl74

maggie, you can also consider looking at where it has gone wrong in the past by looking back through bank statements and credit card bills.

I used to have 4 different colour pens to circle, food, bills, fun/pocket money spends and fuel. It quickly becomes clear where it went wrong!:)

The only spanner in the works is if you made a lot of cash withdrawals and spent those, as you may not remember what you used the cash for.

maggiecon

weezl74 wrote: »

maggie, you can also consider looking at where it has gone wrong in the past by looking back through bank statements and credit card bills.

I used to have 4 different colour pens to circle, food, bills, fun/pocket money spends and fuel. It quickly becomes clear where it went wrong!:)

The only spanner in the works is if you made a lot of cash withdrawals and spent those, as you may not remember what you used the cash for.

Oh this sounds like a good idea.

I might need about 20 colours though:rotfl:

Carafan

Maggie, you are not the only one:D

I have the exact same problem as you and have just started doing a spending diary. Too early to see where my money goes but should be interesting!

Well done for clearing the credit card:)

mlz1413

Many bank accounts allow you to have a linked savings account that you can only use via the internet - if you have this facility try taking out in cash a set amount say £100 just after payday.

Transfer out of the main account the value of 'spare cash' ie everything apart from your DD values. Keep your spending diary in £100 lots - if it doesn't balance you are forgotting things.

Keep only transferring £100 from savings to main account (so you can draw out in cash) for the whole month and again keep the diary so that you can analysis this at the month end.

Another way is to pay for everything on a credit card for 1 month and then paying the whole balance off when it is due. This should give you a detailed breakdown of what you spend.

I split my analysis into:
DDs&Bills / fuel / shopping / pets / myself / extras / other
myself is things like haircuts, clothes, magazines
extras is things like birthdays, meals out with friends
Other is any other spending that is not regular

JulieGeorgiana

I used this tool the other day:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/Budget-planning

Martin mentions that when we budget we don't add in EVERYTHING so we think we have more then we do.

ie. 1 off car costs, Christmas etc etc!

So we think we have for example £500 spare a month... when infact it's more like £200 after all the yearly on-offs!!! Which causes you to overspend by £300 a month!

I found this tool very helpful... which tells me that once this job is finished and I am unemployed once again... my Husband and I will need £120 a year more then we have coming in!!!!

Lucky my mobile contract is up for renewal at the same time and that'll save us £15 a month (£90 a year) so we should be fine!

Try it and see if it makes a difference to your leftover 'budget'

minnie2

maggiecon wrote: »

So my new years resolution is to sort my fianances out once and for all. I do be on this site every now and then and take little bits of advice from it and have reduced my spending significantly. I even managed to get rid of a £6k credit card debt last year

However, I just used the budget planner on here and have noticed that I should have 46% of my income left after all my bills etc. So can someone explain to me why I am always broke. I havent bought new clothes for over a year. I never go out, I dont drink or smoke, and according to the budgeting tool I should have over £1000 in spare cash every month!! :eek: yet when I check my bank balance yes you guessed it £200 overdrawn.

Does anyone else have this problem of unexplained disappearing money.

To sort the problem out I have decided to keep a money diary and see if that will shed any new light for me. I have also started doing a menu planner to help reduce my grocery bill.

I am also selling my car. I only travel 1 mile to work everyday. so I dont need a fancy car. this will save me £250 a month, and it should leave me with 3K to buy a nice wee run around.

So my goal is to be able to go shopping at Easter and buy some new clothes - without feeling guilty.

2011 is the year I will sort myself

i am doing similar this year - as when i done the budget plan we have an over spend of £867 a month!

a lot of ours is going on petrol and shopping grocery etc and things for the house!

its when you break a note and bam the money is gone id check receipts or for next month keep receipts and study them at end of month!

Penelope_Penguin

maggiecon wrote: »

To sort the problem out I have decided to keep a money diary and see if that will shed any new light for me.

Well done with what you've achieved :T I'll move this to the Budgeting Board once you get some more OS input.

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere (please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].