Piggy Banking...

OLDBILL_2

Does anyone here 'piggy bank'?

I am due on maternity leave next week and will shortly feel the pinch with my drop in pay.

I have been very organised and don't have to worry about Christmas.. mainly thanks to the grabbit board and starting way back in June!

According to my statement of accounts we should be really well off... ie £600 over each month while Im on statutory maternity pay. This sounds wrong to me! But heres roughly what we spend:

Mortgage £506
TV Licence £12.12
BT phone and broadband £26
Water £27.95
Tesco credit card £25
Southern Electric £50
Council Tax £131
Tax credit overpayment (GRRR) £50 until Nov 2013
O2 mobile x2 £20
Car Tax / Insurance x2 £75
Presents (birthday and xmas) £85
Preschool Lunch club £21
Swimming lessons £25
Home Insurance £12.50
Petrol £200
Food £200

TOTAL OUTGOINGS £1516.50

OH Pay £1400
CSA £120
Child Benefit £81
Stat Mat Pay £540

TOTAL INCOMING £2140

£623.50 left over

There must be something I am missing?!!

I have bulk bought in sales all our toiletries for the best part of the year and got dishwasher tablets while they were cheap (have a good years worth!)... we have about 3 months of washing powder stocked up too so £200 on the food should be about right.

To be fair... I havent budgeted for car maintenance and I havent included pocket money or clothes for any of us BUT I buy 2nd hand for little one (and often myself) and everything OH wears is from the sales! We rarely spend on ourselves!

What I would really like to do is piggy bank. But OH just doesnt like it. It really frustrates me. He says he doesn't like having accounts all over the place. He wants to write it all down in an account book. I don't agree with that though. I really think that we risk forgetting to write down some expenditure... or not being entirely honest (ie with the tuck shop at work!). He can't give me a valid reason for not liking it though... I don't want to fall out with him over it but I dont feel like we're on the same page!

Does anyone else piggy bank using an account book?

Any tips?!

sufisu

I don't want to burst your bubble but £50 for electricity seems very low given that winter is approaching, prices are going up and there's no mention of gas!

rising_from_the_ashes

Not quite sure what you mean?

I have 5 accounts:

Main account - salary goes in, transfer to various other accounts, pay cc bill and spending money

Household account - transfer set amount in on payday, all d/debits come out of here & never touch it for anything else

Budgeting pot accounts (are these the piggybanks?) for:

House & Car (House: Insurance, Emergency Fund and Landline advance rental payment and Car: Insurance, Tax & Maintenance/Service). Transfer set amount in on payday & let build up over the year so it's there when needed

Others (Hair, Dentist, Presents, Glasses, Clothes). As per House & Car account (just getting this one off the ground!)

Pets - Transfer set amount on payday and transfer amount back each month to main account to cover any spends on c/card

I keep track of what belongs to each little pot in the big pot (IYSWIM) on a very simple spreadsheet:



I used to have pots for each individual thing but I got to having loads of accounts and, this way, I can borrow within the big pot if needed (eg above, car insurance is negative as just renewed but plenty of money to cover it & other things like car tax not due for ages).

So - I guess I might be 1/2 way between you & your DH? (Having the accounts but keeping track on paper?) Hope that makes some sort of sense?:o

OLDBILL_2

Thank you Rising from the ashes... that's fab! Exactly what I meant. This is what I want to do.

I would like my main account (all bills come out between the 1st and 3trd of the month) but the danger is we forget about the annual costs so I would like another account for the cars - tax insurance and maintenance and prob lump the home ins in there too - and thanks for reminding me about advance yearly line rental... forgot that one!

Then I'd like another for food and another for petrol.

OH says this is too much and food and petrol should come out fo the main account with us just keeping receipts to keep tabs on how much we spend.

Sufisu - we live in a mid terrace which is very well insulated. We have a multi-fuel burner which OH has been collecting old pallets for so have been heating our home for free! We only have electric, no gas and have economy 7 . LO is due in a week so although we will be using the washing machine more often and heating water more, I will be up in the night with babe so can turn on the washing and the dishwasher at night on the cheaper rate. £50 should be plenty as long as we keep finding pallets!

rising_from_the_ashes

Glad I'd picked you up right!:)

OLDBILL wrote: »

Then I'd like another for food and another for petrol.

OH says this is too much and food and petrol should come out fo the main account with us just keeping receipts to keep tabs on how much we spend.

Petrol & Groceries just come from my main account.

Plan is/was for these to go into the Others pot as well - but struggling to get everything to a point where everything is in advance as I currently buy everything on the cc & clear each month.

Great - but I'm technically a month in arrears eg Sept spends on cc bill are paid for out of Sept pay at month end - so nothing left to put aside in advance for October as well. Def a work in progress I think!

I do keep track of petrol / grocery spends in a spreadsheet though - as soon as I get a receipt I enter it when I get home and it does become habit fairly quickly.

I found a fantastic spreadsheet on one of the other boards - figures out of date as took this snapshot a while ago but should give you an idea:



It looks complicated but all the "regular" payments like mortgage, insurances etc are on one tab of the spreadsheet and you can just copy this over each month - you can also add extra things into this and adapt to your own needs (eg I've added things like massage, dentist, clothes etc as have budgets for these).

Then you have tabs to keep track of grocery spends and a couple of others (which I've altered from the original it to suit my own needs as I like to keep track of my dog & cat costs separately).

Spreadsheet available here https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3612005 under the links bit as "my free spreadsheet" and easily amended to start from Jan 2013.

Thanks as always to Cheryl for producing such a fabulous spreadsheet - it's really made a huge difference to my budgeting (which has never been one of my strong points!):o

Pink.

As your thread has dropped down the Old Style board I've moved it over to the budgeting board to see if you can get more replies.

Pink

Chrisblue1962

Hi Oldbill

Today, I opened an eSaver online savings account with the Principality Building Society.

The main reason I chose it is that the account can be "split" into upto five virtual "savings pots", which can be named for different uses.

To help with budgeting, I also have a main account (YSB Cash Transactor) for bills into which my salary is paid, a Co-op Cashminder account (for personal spending) and a Lloyds TSB Cash account (for petrol).

Hope this helps.

madgagoo

Have a look at http://www.ynab.com

Does what you want but it works with just one account, if you want it to.

OLDBILL_2

Thank you for all your help people!

I will look at the esaver account but am a little hesitant purely because I have not heard of Principality Building Society before... Im sure its fine but would rather a high street bank / building society (bit backwards and old fashioned like that!)

I love the spreadsheet... I have been trying to fill it in but cannot make sense of the Budget and budget to date columns?? I've filled out my monthly expenditure though. Can't really figure out the grocery or what TC stands for for each month? Very new to spreadsheets... they are SO useful though!

YNAB sounds like a food concept but am I right in thinking you have to pay?

Thank you everyone

Spamtastic

I use YNAB and think its ace! You can use it for free for a trial period to see if you like it.

flutterbyuk25

The Principality has been around for longer than I have, and I'm 30!

What I do is have 2 main bank accounts - Halifax and HSBC. Wages get paid into Halifax (so I get the £5/month reward. All direct debits come out of this account, as these are all roughly the same amount per month (bar the credit card) I leave a set amount in this account plus £40 just in case. I don't use the debit card on this account.

I then transfer my spending money to the HSBC account, this includes money for food and petrol. No DD's come out of this account.

I also have e-savings accounts with both banks which show on my online banking. I transfer £100/mth to the Halifax one, which covers all non-monthly DD's and payments (car ins, car tax, MOT, contents ins etc) . I can then transfer this money to the bank account as and when required.

The 2nd savings account is with HSBC and I put any spare money leftover each month here, even if it's only £20 or so and this is like an emergency fund just in case.

I get paid on the 21st of a month, and it takes all of a few minutes to transfer the amounts over via online banking. It took a few months to get into the swing of it when I started, but once you've worked out your budget, the amounts will be pretty much the same each month so it gets easier.

HTH