Can anyone help me budget?

joflakes

I've been keeping my receipts all month to analyse my spending and therefore come up with a reasonable budget. Can anyone help me to come up with one? Here's a list of my spending:

Starting balance: 1270.00 (average monthly pay)

Savings 2 513.07
Personal Care 7 142.37
Leisure 6 115.95
Debt repayment 2 70.00
Miscellaneous 2 70.00
Eating out 5 66.45
Trains 2 65.20
Money owed 1 55.00
Clothing 4 47.10
Groceries 2 29.69
Taxi 1 20.00
Mobile phone 1 16.00
Gifts 1 9.99

Income 1 +20.00

Total 37 1,220.82


The numbers next to each category and before the money are how many transactions make up each total.

I have only £50 left for 10 days until I get paid again and I was wondering what you all think about how I can budget better? I am better as I am saving some cash now but I know I can help myself more,

Thanks
Jo

Crixus00

is this just for yourself or with partner, child or a.n.other??

what is the Miscellaneous item(s), what would the leisure be? can you not cut that down with eating out that much to?

joflakes

Crixus00 wrote: »

is this just for yourself or with partner, child or a.n.other??

what is the Miscellaneous item(s), what would the leisure be? can you not cut that down with eating out that much to?

Just for me.

Miscellaneous is where I've taken money out of an ATM and I have either just kept it in my purse as cash, a couple of train tickets and maybe some groceries. I'm not sure to be honest.

Leisure is theatre, pub, sightseeing etc.

It'd make sense to cut those down, yes. The personal care section to me seems a little high as well. I paid for a couple things this month that pushed it up like tattoo appointment deposit, laser tattoo removal consultation and a new perfume so that shouldn't be the same each month.

getmore4less

A budget is a plan for how you want to alloocate your income.

This needs to be at least a year ahead to make sure all bills are covered.

Some months you will spend more on some thing less other months so you need a buffer for cash flow.

look at a full 12 months and do a plan and make it ballance.

then try to keep on track, if you overspend on one catagory you need to underspend elsewhere. (spend include money into savings).

what are the savings for?

might help to use one of the more standard templates
http://www.makesenseofcards.co.uk/soacalc.html
add catagories to match your pattern.

joflakes

getmore4less wrote: »

A budget is a plan for how you want to alloocate your income.

This needs to be at least a year ahead to make sure all bills are covered.

Some months you will spend more on some thing less other months so you need a buffer for cash flow.

look at a full 12 months and do a plan and make it ballance.

then try to keep on track, if you overspend on one catagory you need to underspend elsewhere. (spend include money into savings).

what are the savings for?

might help to use one of the more standard templates
http://www.makesenseofcards.co.uk/soacalc.html
add catagories to match your pattern.

Thanks, that makes sense.

The savings are for holidays mainly. I have £600 saved but I'll be taking them out to pay for flights in the next week or so. I'll then be putting £500 aside each month to pay off the rest of the flights and cover costs whilst away.

When you say a year away I don't know what my situation will be. At the moment I am living rent free but chances are that will change.

getmore4less

joflakes wrote: »

Thanks, that makes sense.

The savings are for holidays mainly. I have £600 saved but I'll be taking them out to pay for flights in the next week or so. I'll then be putting £500 aside each month to pay off the rest of the flights and cover costs whilst away.

so it's not savings it's holidays

When you say a year away I don't know what my situation will be. At the moment I am living rent free but chances are that will change.

All the more reason to look a year ahead and longer,

If you are spending all your money now how will you afford rent?


Remember a budget is a forward looking plan,, a lot of things you will be able to plan in detail some might be gueses but they need to be guesses within a ballanced plan.

you may even need two plans one for the cuurent rent free situation and one for the none rent free.

if you can live on the seccond while rent free you have savings and know you can afford rent.

joflakes

getmore4less wrote: »

All the more reason to look a year ahead and longer,

If you are spending all your money now how will you afford rent?


Remember a budget is a forward looking plan,, a lot of things you will be able to plan in detail some might be gueses but they need to be guesses within a ballanced plan.

you may even need two plans one for the current rent free situation and one for the none rent free.

if you can live on the second while rent free you have savings and know you can afford rent.

The thing is I don't know how much the rent would be, I'd guess around £200 a month. Do you think that I should save that each month so I have it when/if the situation arises when I need to pay? I could open another account for this...or just use my Lloyds ISA allowance.

Yeah I guess the savings are actually holidays! Oops.

getmore4less

joflakes wrote: »

The thing is I don't know how much the rent would be, I'd guess around £200 a month. Do you think that I should save that each month so I have it when/if the situation arises when I need to pay? I could open another account for this...or just use my Lloyds ISA allowance.

Yeah I guess the savings are actually holidays! Oops.

it's the other way round, how much rent can I afford.
(£200pm sounds very cheap)

Why not do a "what if".

if you had to move today, what would the rent and bills look like, then do a budget for 12 month,, ho much is there for food, going out,holidays, clothes etc.

The advantage of living to a potential future budget where costs will be higher saving the difference is you are prepared or realise that you need to keep the rent free situation sweet.

joflakes

getmore4less wrote: »

it's the other way round, how much rent can I afford.
(£200pm sounds very cheap)

Why not do a "what if".

if you had to move today, what would the rent and bills look like, then do a budget for 12 month,, ho much is there for food, going out,holidays, clothes etc.

The advantage of living to a potential future budget where costs will be higher saving the difference is you are prepared or realise that you need to keep the rent free situation sweet.

I would most likely move back in with my parents who would charge me that. It'd include most food, all bills etc.

It does make sense but in reality totally baffles me...how can I know if I need to spend an extra £100 one month for a reason unknown?

getmore4less

joflakes wrote: »

I would most likely move back in with my parents who would charge me that. It'd include most food, all bills etc.

It does make sense but in reality totally baffles me...how can I know if I need to spend an extra £100 one month for a reason unknown?

You allocate some money to an emergency fund.

As life goes on you learn the sort of things that come up and can plan for them better, emergencies/unknown should only happen once.

think about all the things that kind of fell under emergency/unplanned in the last 12 months,

OK you might not get the timing 100%, and you hope that multiple things don't happen at the same time but you can get an idea of what size an emergency fund needs to be to cover most things, then if something happens you can carry on as normal and not find yourself so short you have to stop doing stuff.

The idea is to try to think of everything that might need money and make sure you have something available if something comes up.

The more stuff you have the more you need to think about things going wrong
House and car can be the big ones.

One example we have is, one of our parents lives in America, we need £500+ availbale to make an emergency trip. we had one a few years back and now only need to plan for one more.

A smaller example, if you have a computer that will need replacing, say it was £300 and will last 5 years thats £5pm that needs putting away, the older it gets the more likely it will break so at least you have some money ready to repair or replace. you only need a few things and the numbers add up.

It's all about planning.

Next come the longer term goals, try a 5 year plan, daily spends become aproximations based on cuurent spends, but longer term larger spends need saving for.

Some people prefer the pay yourself first method, decide what you think you need to save and just spend the rest.

Derivative

The reality is that you don't know if you'll "need" £100 one month or the other.

"Unforeseen" circumstances are just that - you can't predict them.
But with a bit of common sense you know something will pop up at some point, and if you have (as you say) £50 to your name you'll be in trouble.

I can't comment too much on the budget because at the end of the day, everyone spends money on different things. Personally spending anything over £100 on a holiday when you have no emergency savings seems mental, but that's my viewpoint.

The best place to start in my view is by realising that savings are not 'taking money away' from you. Saving money gives you the freedom to choose what you want to spend it on (or indeed not to spend it) - rather than shoehorning yourself into boxes like 'holiday' or 'leisure' before you even get the money.