Getting a grip!

nicp60

I know what you mean, but to be honest I consider myself one of the lucky ones.

I'm on £40k a year (my takehome pay is quite low due to pension and student loan repayments), we've been able to pay for OH to go back to Uni to get a degree, we run two cars and manage to save every month. I have an excellent pension and am working on putting even more to it in the next 5 years or so. I'm also extremely fortunate to have job security and definite promotion prospects to senior management (I'm very good at what I do ).

I frittered for years, and 7/8 years ago lived with someone else. Our joint income was £70k a year (mid-twenties), but I was sooooo 'poor' compared to now!

The only thing that gets to me a bit is that our friends think we're loaded because I happen to be able to budget very well. They see us go out with them for meals etc, run two cars, rent a large-ish house etc and assume that we're rolling in it because we've no debt and OH only does sporadic cash-in-hand work (trying to break into his industry at the moment). They don't realise that what they spend in a week is my entire month's food budget, that we practice the art of 'banger-nomics' religiously (I LOVE scrapyards and just saved £100 on my MOT by going for a part instead of getting the mechanic to do the job), and that it's 100 small things that we do which keep us out of debt and on the right track.

Oh, that and the fact that even though we're both graduates, OH and I would be financially better off if we both had minimum wage jobs. :eek:

AlexLK

I want some of your positivity.

The budgeting is starting to become addictive to Mrs. K. and I too, no I can't believe I am saying this either ... . We went to Aldi instead of Sainsburys today and one thing on our list of "funny things to do whilst we are paying debts off" is to buy something in Aldi neither of us can pronounce and try it. Well, got to do something to keep smiling, eh?

nicp60

Aldi and Lidl shopping cracks me up. It's like shopping in Russia - you're eating whatever they have in that week! One year for Xmas we found some bouncy castles for £6.99! Actual bouncy castles! We bought them for the kids on our list and they thought we were so cool!

As for the positivity, well OH and I have had a few awful years, and I think it makes you realise that it IS only money, and it is controllable. It's not like an illness, or an accident or some other life-changing event. My little bro has just become a millionaire, but I know for a fact he'd rather be on the breadline and not in a wheelchair.
Sometimes I think that being skint is the best thing that's ever happened to me (OH would disagree!). I pity some of our friends and their pretty shallow views on things to be honest. They turn their noses up at my car (perfectly respectable 04 corsa), and the fact that the baby's pram is 2nd hand. Then they spend £300 a month on a PCP deal for a car that's newer but far less economical than my 'banger'. Constant debt for something they'll never own!
I know we've got it right. I think my positivity is smugness!!!

AlexLK

nic - The middle aisles are indeed hilarious, though there are quite a few nice things for kids to do in there this week. I remember when the Aldi opened here, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) went mad for it! Forgot how much fun going in there is but this week we had a list to stick to. I'm most impressed by their lovely hazelnut chocolate that has many more hazelnuts in for half the price of Cadbury's. Nothing wrong with the chocolate either.

Mrs. K. and I used to be on PCPs, until we literally ran out of money to pay for them (our cars used to be more than £1200 per month alone), they went just under a year ago though. Now, we own (outright) equivalents but they are much older, yet we are still happy with them. I've managed to do a deal on a diesel Discovery, which will save A LOT of money over the petrol version, oddly enough I'm looking forward to picking it up now.

You have a right to be smug, you are doing so well.

nicp60

Soooooo, quite a bit of an update coming up....

It's been bothering me greatly how OH and I deal with our finances. I think it leads to resentment (me) and feelings of failure (him).

When we first moved in together 5 years ago, everything was in my name because he moved in with me. Back then it was a matter of necessity that we keep our finances separate as my credit rating was taking such a battering at the time. As soon as he moved in, he lost his job and so everything remained in my name and as long as he could keep his account ticking over, then it was all fine. There was no way that he could contribute and even though I only took home £1400 a month, we weren't entitled to any help at all.
Anyway, fast forward 5 years and he's completed his degree and is about to register as self employed as he tries to break into the Animation industry in his free time. (He'll be painting and decorating full time)

We are still two very separate financial entities. I pay all the rent, bills food, savings and expenses from my account. He pays for his mobile, car tax and insurance and petrol from any cash jobs he can get. It has bothered me in the last 12 months that even though he does sporadic work, the money ends up in his account (or pocket as it's mainly cash), swallowed by his overdraft. He uses it to live on and will often steadfastly refuse to discuss finances, even when he's obviously struggling.

I managed to convince him last week that it was time for us to become a proper family, and have common financial goals as well as effectively sharing our money.

It's so unfair that he's struggling and feels so crap about money that he won't even discuss it with his wife, and yet at the same time I'm saving my !!!!! off and am sitting on all our assets, feeling smug about my saving & budgeting ability.

What a sh!tty way to treat your husband.

So, we decided that at some point (this weekend hopefully), we need to look at our finances and go and get a joint account. I'm going to collapse all my accounts into one, which will give [STRIKE]me[/STRIKE] us , a buffer of well over a month's expenses immediately.
He's also going to transfer his mobile and car direct debits to the new joint account. That means our outgoings will increase, but as long as he also pays in a substantial amount of his earnings from his cash jobs, then we should be in a much better position. I'm hoping to accomplish a couple of things:

1. Better budgeting and more streamlined financial goals.
2. Build a bigger buffer quicker.
3. Get us both using YNAB - this is really essential, especially as all [STRIKE]my [/STRIKE] our cash (xmas, cars, mat leave, house deposit) will be in one account. We need to be governed by our budget on the app, and not by the account balance, which will be something stupid like £4000.
4. Get OH on board with YNAB and using a budget. It'll be his first time ever budgeting, and I need his input. I can't have a situation where we have a 'joint' account, but actually nothing at all has changed.
5. Improve OH's confidence. This is crucial. He's going to be a dad, and has been so amazing throughout the pregnancy that he needs to to realise that money isn't everything. In the last month, he's painted 2 rooms, laid 2 carpets, cleaned out the garage, installed a dishwasher, bought, collected and put together various items of furniture, deep cleaned the grouting in the bathroom, re-done the sealant round the sink, cut down a tree, repaired the garage roof and various other odd jobs.

Then my delicate scheming was all brought to a head when the bank recalled his overdraft yesterday. :eek:
They'll be reducing his limit by £600, but I think it's the beginning of the end. I want to just pay off the whole thing, but it will wipe us out. Argh!!!

nicp60

Urgh, well still here, stupidly pregnant and trying to just will Baby K out but it's not working.

I started my mat leave early, which has cost us about £700, but it's so worth it. I just couldn't have carried on. I'm hoping that OH and I can sort out our money today, as I'm optimistic that the little one will be here next week.

Urgh, I am so over being pregnant.

abba1772

How long do you have left?????

nicp60

Hi Abba,
Another 10 days! I took my mat leave at 37 weeks and I'm 38+4 today.
So ready for this to be over!!
How are you doing???

nicp60

So, we had the great big budget meeting and a few things came of it.

I had a sneaking suspicion that OH had been supplementing his sporadic income by spending on the CC. I was right. He has a total of £3200 of debt. I knew about half of this (his overdraft), and to be honest I think I shut my eyes to the fact that this was probably happening. I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of our conversation, but it was really productive and I hope he feels supported, because I feel terribly guilty that it's come to this.

In the cause of working together and budgeting as a family, we currently stand as follows:

Assets:
Halifax Account (old wedding presents) 1482
Mat leave fund 1744
Xmas and bdays 186
Car Maintenance 112
ISA 213
Premium Bonds (that I forgot I had) 150
Present from relative for baby $1000 (working this out as £400)

Liabilities:
OH's overdraft -1438
OH's Barclaycard -544
OH's Egg Card -1224

Total assets £4137
Total liabilities -£3206 (I really don't want to say debts! )

We have decided on the following plan of action:
- Set up an account with Halifax using their switcher service, and then change it to a joint account
- Pay off OH's overdraft immediately using savings and close the account
- OH to apply for 0% BT card for the other 2 CC debts and close down the existing cards (too much borrowing)

I know that we could pay off the credit cards now, but we absolutely need a buffer for the next 6 months. In Feb and March my income will drop to £600, and that won't even cover half of the bills. We couldn't pay the rent with a credit card, let alone our regular bills, so those CC balances will have to wait until we have a more regular stream of income (ie when I go back to work in April).

The ultimate plan is to just have one account for everything apart from savings for the baby, and possibly house deposit savings.

This will make us much much stricter with budgeting and will mean that we need to spend according to our budget, and not the bank balance.

It will also mean that I will have to go from looking after the house and myself, to effectively sharing my entire income with OH, paying his car tax and insurance, funding his guitar amp addiction, not to mention the smoking :eek:.

Fortunately, the upside of this is that he will finally share some of the burden of being the grown up financially, and all his income will be paid into the same account, meaning that he'll finally be contributing towards the bills and our upkeep. :T

I am very nervous about this, as the last time I had a joint account with anyone I got burned to the tune of £30k. Obviously I trust OH; I think there's more chance of him secretly spending on the CCs again than getting me into debt. But that's also a real possibility - he feels so guilty about his low income that he attempts to supplement it and 'buy us stuff'. Hopefully he'll now see what a false economy that is.

We're having another money meeting this week to discuss our budget categories, using YNAB and setting ground rules for using the joint account. He wants me to have my own account (because I'm the main earner and 'should be entitled' to have my own money, in his words), he doesn't get yet that we have to budget as a whole family unit.

I don't want to be one of those families whose parents 'owe each money' and each pay 'their half' of the bills. Yes, I would have far more disposable income that way, but OH would have practically nothing and that's not fair.
We each contribute to the household in different ways, and a lot of his ways (redecorating, fixing stuff, finding baby bargains, working on his animation in the hope of starting a dream career) aren't paid. That's not his fault, that's the way it is.

I'm sick of attaching emotional wellbeing and self worth to money and income. It's only bl00dy money. I wish I lived on a socialist commune :cool:.

Welshlassie

I love YNAB and have really found it's made a difference to how we work. My DH is a SAHD so has very limited income and certainly not regular, we have going out categories and birthday/xmas money that we get is automatically separated into personal categories so we have some of our own money to spend. Something though, a small amount of personal money can make a difference psychologically and actually reduce overall spending.