Squeaky spreadsheet diary

Tiglath

Not my finest evening tonight. Visit to the local Hindu temple as part of Interfaith Week; interfaith and community relations is DH's passion via the local SACRE, whereas I think all forms of communal religion are guff, but I thought I'd show willing and keep him company for once. Lovely welcoming people, interesting colourful building, the most dreadful out of tune chanting for an hour, with a drummer playing at a different tempo and possibly even in a different dimension to everyone else. I gritted my teeth and put up with it for as long as as I could, but nothing puts me in a foul temper like badly-done music. A hasty retreat as soon as I could get away, and an emergency stop for chicken and chips because I was expecting to be fed and had nothing prepared at home. Oh well - onwards and upwards.

lurvlyloz

that doesnt sound like my kind of fun either! untilthe chicken and chips!

Tiglath

It hasn't been the best of days - something I ate yesterday disagreed with me and I've hardly left the bathroom since last night. Tired. Lots of work to catch up on tomorrow.

The shower hose has bust - the plastic bit still works but the metal spiral has corroded and slides down so it needs replacing. £14.99 in Homebase, £5.70 in Wilko, but on my way up on Saturday I'll look in a homecraft-type store to see if they're cheaper than Wilko. Whichever is cheaper for the same product gets my pennies

Minimal food shopping over this next week - plenty in the freezers and cupboards to make meals. Mum arrives tomorrow night for the weekend so I'm making fishermans pie with tinned salmon, leeks, carrots, spinach and green beans. She'll only eat soft food now so it's a bit of a challenge. I'll also make a jelly we can have with the remains of some ice-cream, and Sunday is a mini-roast with pork loin steaks. I'll make a cake but I'm definitely not buying biscuits, sweets and wordsearch books like I usually do. I've found a plastic jar with some powdered mango drink I got a couple of years ago from a Chinese supermarket so if it's still drinkable, it'll get drunk instead of buying other soft drinks. Not buying any more mint jelly when I have 4 jars of mint sauce in stock to use up. I normally treat myself to a bottle of Advocaat and Baileys at Christmas but I'm not doing it this year - I don't need it or particularly want it this time.

Still on track with the bank account. Gotta shell out for my last private prescription for thyroxine - as it's only 1 month's worth, I'm not sure of the cost. Might be 2 x NHS prescriptions, might be less hopefully. Sadly can't wing it until my next GP visit and I can't risk going without for a week, but from then on it'll be free with my medical exemption certificate.

DH sprung on me that he needs £260 in January for road tax and £500 in July for MOT & service & new tyres. Apparently it's my responsibility to magically pay for this even though I don't drive and am only a passenger in the car once or twice a month - he won't plan ahead. Not biting on the road tax - he can pay that, and lowering my overdraft is more important to me - but I'll put aside the July amount. I've told him to open a savings account and put a bit aside each month for annual car costs, but no go so far. In that case, he can give me cash and I'll put it into my savings account + transfer it out when he needs it.

Christmas is sorted, to my surprise - I'm normally going frantic on Christmas Eve but it's all prepared. So battening down the hatches, scowling and waiting for the hell of Christmas to be over. My friend says when she wins the lottery, she's going to buy an island with two caves so we can have one each.

So that's my rock and roll life at the moment. It's been a bit of a drain today so I'm not bouncy. Tomorrow will be better, and over the weekend I'll start sorting through CDs for musicmagpie to go in January.

lurvlyloz

sorry you've not been well lovely. hopefully tday you've got your bounce back.

bit cheeky of you r OH. good on you teaching some rules regarding the Tax. you dont have a magic wand.

could you ask your friend for an extra cave? i'm only little so i'd only need a small one

glad the bank account it still going well but the prescription parts a bit rubbish.

Hope you have a nice weekend with your mum visting x

Tiglath

A fairly good day although I ended up working overtime. Resisted the temptation to try a salted caramel latte. I joined the Sealed Pot Challenge and the £2 Savers Club. Treated myself to a reduced pizza in Mr T on the way home, but their milk has gone up to £1.29 - that's outrageous. It's still £1 in Farmfoods so top-ups will be done there instead and I'll benefit from the extra exercise. Managed to top up my Oyster card at the station after a woman took pity on my ineptitude - she probably thought 'Silly old bat.'

Explained the intricacies of my spreadsheet and my new frugality to my boss - she's a DFW as well (further ahead than me) and a great friend. Love her to bits. We've decided not to do Xmas pressies amongst our team, and she's going to take us out for a Xmas drink instead, so that's £40 off the Xmas budget for me.

Fudgefund

Tiglath wrote: »

A fairly good day although I ended up working overtime. Resisted the temptation to try a salted caramel latte.

I too have been eyeing up the salted caramel latte in Costa. However, I was once bought what were apparently good quality salted caramels dusted in cocoa powder and they were absolutely foul, so I'm hesitant.

I've enjoyed reading your diary, good work!

Tiglath

I've had baked cheesecake with salted caramel sauce (recipe courtesy of a New York-Italian Nonna - we sometimes do charity bake-offs at work) so I'm guessing it will be similar. I might allow myself just the one latte in the run-up to Christmas, but today wasn't the day. I'm saving it for when I feel I really really deserve a special treat during a hard day.

digging

What a fab thread! and I thought I was organised.

Would you say you do better with your spreadsheet as a guidance? I thought about doing a spreadsheet but didn't know what to put in each column. Could you share what you have on yours?

Keep going...you seem right on track:T

Tiglath

I'll happily post the details of my spreadsheet structure over the weekend - I'm just off to watch The Walking Dead now. Need my zombie fix

Tiglath

My Google spreadsheet has the following sheets:

- Budget
- Current
- Debt
- Mint card
- Barclaycard
- Amex
- Savings

You need to know some basic spreadsheet formulae to replicate this. There are probably more elegant ways to do it all, but this works for me.

1. Budget is set up to tally what regular payments come out of my current account each month, what comes out of DH's account, our net incomes added together, how much the total outgoings are, and how much he transfers to me automatically so we have equal leftover money each month. My own current account is our main household account, whereas his account handles his personal stuff, his car and our charity donations. This doesn't change very often, only when a direct debit changes.

2. Current is set out like a bank statement: columns called Date, Item, In, Out, Balance. Balance is calculated by cell references. The reference for a new balance in a new row in cell E5 might look something like B4(previous balance)+C5(In)-D5(Out), and is copied down the column. This repeats sequentially every row to the end of 2015, so I have a pretty specific spending plan for the next 3 years. This obviously presupposes my salary stays the same, but allows for changes as they occur eg. a direct debit gets increased or decreased, a bonus comes in. It's all subject to change, but if say BT goes up, I have to go through and update the BT DD for every subsequent month.

It includes incoming salary, all direct debits, the February and March months when I don't pay council tax and water rates, debt payments, projected cashpoint withdrawals for groceries per week, extras like birthdays, and the running total updates at the end of each row. I check my online banking each day and colour in green on my spreadsheet as an item comes in or goes out online, plus check that my spreadsheet balance is the same as my online balance. I aim to always know to the penny where I stand. Current is the sheet where I vary debt repayment according to how much I expect to have left by the day before each payday, so I don't run out of money. If I can see an expensive month coming in 2 months, I can cut back accordingly.

3. Debt sheet is my debt portrait and has a month per row. Each debt has 2 columns (statement closing balance + monthly repayment), a column totalling all outstanding debt per month, % paid off since my LBM, and an accumulating total reduction of outstanding debt each month as I'm in POAMAYC 2013. I've set cells here to reference cells on the Current sheet - if I increase a Mint payment one month in Current, it automatically increases the same Mint payment on the Debt sheet and recalculates the outstanding balance. The cell formula in Debt is something like ='Current'!H21. The statement closing balance for each debt is calculated by taking a reference from for example the Mint sheet, where I detail per month the opening balance, interest added, payment made last month, closing balance appearing on statement, projected interest next month. I either take this projected interest from what it says on the official statement or I calculate it as a monthly % of the outstanding balance. The formula if calculating is something like = (previous opening balance - payment made + added interest)/100*2.11, where 2.11 is the monthly % interest charged. This gives me an approximate projected interest for each month but I always overwrite with the exact interest from the statement. As I finish paying off one debt completely, I increase the monthly payments on the next credit card in the relevant cells in Current and allow myself a £50 buffer zone each month. Debt sheet shows me which debts I'm focusing on in turn and which month I start really overpaying each card.

3. The Mint sheet etc (one per card) is where I add exact figures as statements come in, and it updates the Debt sheet accordingly as per cell references. So the Debt sheet is my 'source of truth' at any given time but I make changes on the Current and each of the creditcard sheets to recalculate the Debt sheet.

4. Savings is for the future when I'm debtfree - I have monthly rows with cell references from the Current sheet for the exact amount I intend to transfer on payday, as well as an end of the month sweep the day before payday, so I will start each month just with the incoming salary (I'll do the actual transfers manually through online banking). These 2 savings figures per month are totalled in a 3rd column, and it accumulates month per month; I place a marker for when I expect to have a 3 months + 6 months emergency fund.

5. I'm working on a mortgage sheet in terms of when I will start to overpay it and how the total outstanding mortgage will reduce, but this is only in the beginning stages and there are too many variables right now to really make it work.

6. I also have a stocktaking sheet where I list everything in the fridge, freezers and pantry. I change this as I use or add items, and use it for weekly meal planning.

7. I have a Monthly Shopping sheet where I list every penny I spend in 1 of 4 columns - Essentials, Household, Cats, Luxuries. A row across the bottom calculates the increasing totals per month, copies to a monthly grand total at the top and calculates what % of the budget I've spent on each of the 4 categories. I also calculate how much I've gone under or over the monthly budget I've set.

8. The Mega Plan sheet has planned monthly deadlines for paying off each debt, getting a new fixed rate for the mortgage, starting to save for an emergency fund, saving for a holiday at the end of it all, overpaying the mortgage etc.

9. At some point I need to get to grips with 4 different pensions from companies where I've worked, but I have to sort through the paperwork first.

So that's it. It took a while to set up, and even longer as I scratched my head to remind myself of the formulae but it seems to work, and I'd be lost without it. I tinker with it every day. Hope someone finds this helpful, or at least thinks pityingly of me as a total nerd