Would love to be debt free but budget is a nightmare

mildredalien

worried48 wrote: »

What the thread title says is the issue. I am self employed, as is my husband, therefore we don't know from one week's end (even one DAY'S end) to the next what is coming in. No-one has yet made any suggestions of any way I might work out any sort of budget given that difficulty. It may be that there is no answer, in which case, fair enough.

I think this is the crux of the issue - it is difficult for anyone in your financial situation to budget effectively. It seems what has happened though is that as you have posted and responded to others in this thread, other issues have come to light which people have offered advice on. The advice may have helped you to reduce your outgoings, improve your business or improve your relationship but I don't think you want that advice and it isn't really what you came here for is it?

Everyone's life is more complicated than an internet forum post can convey I'm sure. You are clearly aware of the issues within your life and relationship, although it's interesting what you choose to respond to here and what you choose not to in terms of people's advice, questions and concerns.

Anyway, in terms of the original question you asked the only thing I can think of is to perhaps look at your annual finances and see if you can work out a budget from that? The main things that I'd think are important are to have a clear idea of your income and outgoings. However from what you have said, this may be difficult as your husband is... vague with finances, and you for some reason aren't able to access the data yourself. Perhaps you should take over that side of things?

The issue with any advice about budgeting to be that while you truly believe that you cannot 'dominate' your husband or change anything about your relationship (or by the sounds of it even the business you run together), it is going to be incredibly difficult to budget effectively. How can you when you don't know what's spent and are wasting money every month? So, I think you're stuck. Sorry! Hopefully you'll keep plodding on and won't end up in serious financial trouble.

lionheartedgirl

I'm terrible with my own money but have successfully dealt with that of others (in very large quantities and very successfully!) for many years.

Your original question seemed to be about estimating your business's income. There are several methods you could use.

Do you have a business plan at all?

Do you know what last month's income was? Last year's?

A good place to start, if you don't know for sure, is by making some assumptions.

E.g. Last year's income plus inflation. Last year's income reduced by 5/10/15(etc) % for the effects of the recession/industry factors.

If you don't know, and can't estimate, your income, do you at least know your costs? Personal as well as business?

You can set these out monthly, either on a spreadsheet or a bit if paper, it really doesn't matter.

Once you have these costs/outgoings, you should start to see what you need in cash terms each week/month.

In business terms, it's important to think in terms of cash-flow as well as what your sales/income may be in terms of what you are invoicing for. I don't know what your industry is but have tried to keep things general. I hope that makes sense.

Sometimes things are a bit out of step, e.g more bills in the winter, more income in the summer.

This is where some business planning/ what if planning will help you, you don't have to be an accountant to do this. You could do the same kind of thing say to plan for a holiday or another big purchase.

heartbreak_star

Ice_baby wrote: »

Possibly Christians have the most to be offended about as you are stating your religion is one of the reasons you are allowing both you and your husband to be miserable.

If you wont take action on your own behalf, can't you take steps in order to help your husband? One of the main points of Jesus' message is that love is important than the letter of the law. Wouldn't Jesus consider loving your husband to be more important than submitting to him? (I'm talking in the agape not the erotic sense). Loving comes first in the bible I read, and it it is not love to allow your husband to degenerate into an angry, crabbed, hurting thing.

You are enabling him to act as he does and it is doing him damage on a spiritual, mental and probably physical level. Yes, it is almost impossible to help somebody who does not want to be helped, and certainly nagging/bossing wont get you very far, but in preventing him from reaching rock bottom (eg. letting him run out of money, have to deal with bank himself, asking him to leave temporarily, or any other way of facing the consquences of his actions) you are allowing him to continue on a course that is ruining him and preventing him from reaching a point where he might realize he needs to reach out for help. As well as 'obey' a woman's marriage vows include 'love' and 'honour'. There is no love or honour in standing by while your husband turns into the sort person who would have horrified him back when you were first married.

Please, please try and break through the stalemate you and your husband have reached. It is doing neither of you any good in this world or the next.

Gruss Gott

Apparently she's not miserable, she's quite happy - I enquired about that earlier.

Really like this post though. I'm not Christian but agree that their God would like to see all His (or Her) subjects happy and comfortable.

HBS x

fallen121

Worried, have we scared you off? Notice you HAVE been posting on other threads so know you are around.

Did you have a nice Xmas?!!

Mrs.Downie

This thread is crazy, ladies and gents consider your time giving advise well and truly wasted.

andrewt74

Mrs.Downie wrote: »

This thread is crazy, ladies and gents consider your time giving advise well and truly wasted.

Agree with that. Thread created by, to use the techical term, a nutter.

fallen121

The OP is still using MSE and continues to post on the Forums, giving "advice" to others even though she ignores all the advice given to her. She was still posting as recently as yesterday.

Nutter or not, I find the prospect that someone might actually act on this advice somewhat worrying. This person is a heartbeat away from bankruptcy, but is advising others how to behave responsibly with money!

Most of the advice is, I grant you, based on personal experience, but the OP assumes that what holds good for her will stand for others also. Just because I got a 2% mortgage won't mean that you will. Our circumstances may be very different.

AFK_Matrix

I have read this thread and was very worried at the start for the OP but now just find it hilarious. She comes on here asking for advice about budgeting when your self employed, fair enough. Then she bleets on about how her husband is a lazy no good waste of space but she is perfectly happy and ignores all the very helpful advice given to improve her situation.

She then turns around and says she only ever wanted the budgeting advice, well why the HELL mention your husband then!!! Your husband has no relevance to your question yet you bleat of for 8 PAGES about how useless he is yet you don't want to change him!!! To me that screams of you hating the way he is!!! I would advice everyone to ignore her from now on as advice on budgeting while self employed has already been given so thread closed!!

worried48

Well I'm back. Husband and cats are still the same. Got another PPI claim upheld which, once the money has all been moved around, is enough to take me out of personal debt completely (my debts are higher interest than my husband's) and also reduce his personal overdraft to zero. That lot saves us £255 a month in interest alone :eek: but husband's personal debts and the business credit card mean we will still be paying about £375 in interest alone :eek: In other words we were paying around £630 a month just in interest. What a mug's game!

Did an SOA for the bank last time we had to talk to them, and in theory we should have been able to keep our heads above water even with our debts as they were, so we ought to be able to make some headway now.

I still can't get any sense out of my husband as far as the storage unit is concerned. I suggested moving the remaiing stock into the spare room here, it's all low value stuff anyway. No he won't hear of that. I suggested actually using the space, now that we could find a bit of money up front we could actually import some of the thigns we are currently getting from wholesalers directly ourselves - we haven't done that for some years, and it was because we were doing that, that we took out this large storage unit. No, he won't hear of that, he says the quality wasn't good enough last time (there is some truth in that, if you import direct it's not economic to send faulty goods back in the way that you do if dealing with a wholesaler), but it seems to me that since we could import directly comparable goods for half the price we are paying for them at the moment, even if we have to reduce the price on a few of them we will still be getting a better deal. He says we will ask for a smaller unit but so far nothing much seems to be happening on that front. He complains bitterly every time I mention anything to do with money and I still don't know how much he owes on his Barclaycard or what the interest rate is.

Still desperately need to sort out the cat situation and a bit of warmer weather would help enormously in that respect. It's rather a long story. We have something going round that is extremely easy to cure but the medication is very difficult to get into the cats as it is very bitter. The best way of dealing with it (which does work, in fact it works almost like magic) is to break the cats down into small groups, which means outdoor pens, and then clear it one pen at a time by medicating in food (can't do that in the house, just too many cats to get the dosage right). I have a number of pens but unfortunately most are unheated and that means everything is now waiting for some warmer weather. Unfortunately the long delay in being able to deal with this situation has not helped money wise. I determined last year that I would never ever have another year like that as far as the cats were concerned but now it looks as if this year will be as bad. If it begins to look at all likely that I can't solve the problem before next winter, I will have to get heating laid on to the remaining pens and at least stop it for next year.

fallen121

OP, I am glad you are back and think of you often. It is interesting to have an update. It is good to know you seem to be making some headway with the finances.

I would encourage your husband to watch "Storage Wars" on TV. Seeing what utter crap people pay to have stored has motivated me to have a good clearout.

Not sure what business you are in but hope the recent Royal Mail prices increases will not hit you too hard. 136% price hikes for some sizes of parcel. Completely ridiculous.

I think we are not due to have anymore good weather until at least May now, so hope you manage to get your cats sorted. Are you planning to sell more once they are disease free?

Hope HMRC are leaving you well alone. Last month they wrote and threatened baliffs for a bill we had already paid which was not due until a week after the letter was dated. We are managing to put aside £300 a month which is keeping away the baliffs for now!!