How do people stick to their budget?

opinions4u

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Interesting idea. E.g. £86 spend at Tescos is noted down as £90, meaning we have £50 left. Which means if we take £2.50 from the cupboard we'll still be ok.

It applies to all bills, mortgage, power, TV licence, the lot.

But how do you (between you) ensure that it isn't excessive? She could buy reasonable "miscellaneous rubbish" throughout the week and it would become excessive.

I think it goes back to being really skint at a point in the past. We both learned not to be wasteful in order to survive. In fact I do recall a short period of time where every purchase was itemised and we jointly agreed what not to buy in future.

You could just hand over the cash for the miscellaneous rubbish and say make sure we're fed and I don't care where the rest goes. Make sure there's something in the pot for you though!

pelirocco

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Hi,

I'm not asking how to lower my bills.
I'm not asking how to work out how much we've got to spend each week.
I'm not even asking how do people manage to shop for a family of x with just £y a week, or how you have the willpower not to buy a drink / snack / etc when out.

What I'm asking is what practical things do people do to ensure they stick within the budget.

So we're happy with our SOA. Gives us £140 a week to cover petrol/car parking/bus fares (not including commuting), food (2 adults, 4 children (including specific dietary requirements) and various animals), household stuff (washing powder, etc), clothes (mainly second hand through Facebook groups) as well as treats and extras (school trips, birthdays).
We find it very difficult to keep to this, but we know that it is possible and, as I say above, how to get everything for our weekly money isn't really what I'm asking here.

The touble is that every month (the day before payday) I do our money spreadsheet and we've always spent more than we should have.
The question is, how can we ensure we only spend what we have each week.
We have an account for spending money which we pay £140 in to each week by standing order. We've tried taking this out as cash, which tends to work best but isn't always logistically possible before we need to spend anything in the week - and even when we do that we hit problems.

For example, yesterday my wife needed change for car parking so took £2.50 out of our "pot" which isn't spending money.
Another problem (which I could sort on my monthly statement by reconciling the cheque books) is when cheques have been written (normally to school) and not yet cashed.
Along the same lines, though not quite as easy to deal with, is £11 came out of my credit card today for school photo money when we'd filled in the form over a week ago and had forgotten about it by now.

Because things were particularly bad this month I have decided to update the spreadsheet every evening to see where things are going wrong. This is how I identified the £11 school photo money and the £2.50 for parking.
I can do that and it is working so far, but has been less than a week and am already bored with it. It strikes me as overkill, just to ensure we stick to out budget.

So I wondered what other people do.

I do spreadsheets for my business , write for 1 , 2 or however many weeks
start with bank balance , and then write down everything you expect to come out against the day you expect it to come out , but write it in pencil . Then total everything you need for the period you calculating for , monthly is normally best
ADD everything up you will then know what you need less any balance you have .
As every DD/ standing order , cheque or card payment is presented , then write it in in pen

(Every time you add something , adjust the balance again in pencil)

I clear everything down at the end of the week , ie anything that is still in pencil gets carried over to the following week , so you will always have a true balance of what your account will be if everything was cashed at once .

JimmyTheWig

InsideInsurance wrote: »

You seem to have multiple accounts because you mention about doing an SO to put the money into the daily living/ spending account.

Correct. We've got a few. First Direct because I like them and so have most direct debits there. Halifax for the £5/month reward. Santander 123 (most recently) for the mortgage (and other) cashback. HSBC for convenience for spending money.

The thing with the cheque issue etc is simply to write the cheque out of the another account - it could be the main account or a third account just not the living expenses one. As soon as you write the cheque do a transfer into the account that itll be drawn from and then you can forget about it.

Yes, that's what we do.
Well, what we try to do. It's just a bit of a faff and so sometimes gets forgotten.
I think I've just answered my question - make sure we don't forget!

In general I've always found the best way to budget is by having cold cash as it is much easier to see as it gets used up and adjust spending to ensure it doesnt go too early.

I agree in general. We just hit the odd problem when we're sloppy or have too much going on to keep up with it.

The challenge with budgeting at this sort of level is the larger regular purchases which you will do much better bulk buying but harder to budget for. Selective shopping at Makro can get many things at up to 50% off but you have to buy 6 months supply at a time. Great for the annual budget but makes it difficult for that week. Whilst you could say that 6 months washing powder is £X and so you need to put £Y a week aside but that then becomes even more complex

Oh, you haven't seen my spreadsheet. My latest feature is a week/month adjustment to cope with the fact that some months have 4 weeks and others have 5.
Accruing for washing powder over a number of months wouldn't be a problem. Though withdrawing £138 from the bank would be annoying if we'd already spent £2 on washing powder!

pmduk

It's easier for me as a single person. Every couple of years, I spend a couple of weeks noting everything I spend. It usually highlights areas that need attention. Last time it was newspapers, magazine and books. I then noted everything I spent in that area. It might not work for everybody, but has helped me stay within budget, but also set a realistic budget. ie if you know you're spending £10 a week on coffees make sure that's accounted for when allocating other categories.

writerlilly

I got to be honest with you. 140 pounds a week? I don't know how you do it, but I congratulate you for making the attempt. That's pretty tight. I live in America, and even that sounds pretty tight to me. Even when I used to live in the UK, I still couldn't manage on 140 pounds a week. Wow. Dedicated.

Anyways...

Unfortunately, I don't think you can do much about the car park fee, but you can control the food. Packets of crisps do add up. Buy them in bulk or eat them less frequently.

Have you considered shopping for food online through Amazon instead for your bulk items and perishables? Buy for the month or two months at a time? Maybe? Coffee, sugar, tea, etc. How about stocking up at the Super Tescos?

These may be small ways to cut costs. If you can't, then you'll have to up your budget or find extra ways to make more cash.

ItchyFeet

I've always had a problem sticking to a budget. What i have recently been doing is withdrawing my weekly spends in cash. I allow £100 pw but only withdraw £70 as i spend 30 on petrol and like to pay by card at the pump.

I then have a tiny notepad i carry around with me in which i note any further spending made on my debit card during the week. No great detail, just a brief note of how much and where. When i then come to withdraw the next week's cash i subtract the previous week's card spending from the amount.

It's not perfect and it relies on me having enough buffer in the account to allow me to work a week in hand but it's going well so far. I am only in the third week though.

GooliesOfFire

Me and my wife don't have any problems with paying our bills. We pay bills from a separate joint account only for bills and we always transfer enough money the day after the pay day to ensure we don't spend it for anything else.

The rest of the money we spend from our own sole accounts without worry that we may lose control over our balance. When a cheque is written, the money is sent to the joint account on the same day. We have real peace in mind knowing we don't need to worry about our spending or check our account balance every day. So far it's worked for us perfectly.

My wife often comes to me and ask for some money at the end of the month. But that's a different story Our bills get paid on time.

franklally

Can anyone give me some advice on how I go about starting a spreadsheet I can regularly update?

willo65

I have an app on my phone with separate accounts, 1 for my spending money for the month, 1 for my partner and 1 for joint spending ie petrol/days out. Every time we spend anything I log it on the app and that way we always know how much is left till next payday.

JimmyTheWig

franklally wrote: »

Can anyone give me some advice on how I go about starting a spreadsheet I can regularly update?

Depends what you are trying to achieve.
Trying to work out how much money you have? E.g. various accounts / various pots of money.
How much money you are spending and on what?
How much money you have left for the rest of the week?
Or something else?