what needs to go into the budget

ska1982

Hello all! I need a bit of help. I've pretty much have the DDs and groceries, childcare, entertainment under control in the spreadsheet.

I do need some help with the big one offs throughout the year. What are they?? I'm trying to list them to work out what we can put towards these as hating the big bills.

- birthday presents (children) 20/child
- christmas ??
- mini break ??
- mot 40??
- service 200??
- tax 100

What am I forgetting about? + I've included the mini break as sick of having a hangover from holidays. We did a staycation this year but because we had nothing set aside for it we're still covering it this month.

Any help greatly appreciated!!

Ska

R_P_W

How do we know what you spend money on?

unimaginative_user_name

ska1982 wrote: »

Hello all! I need a bit of help. I've pretty much have the DDs and groceries, childcare, entertainment under control in the spreadsheet.

I do need some help with the big one offs throughout the year. What are they?? I'm trying to list them to work out what we can put towards these as hating the big bills.

- birthday presents (children) 20/child
- christmas ??
- mini break ??
- mot 40??
- service 200??
- tax 100

What am I forgetting about? + I've included the mini break as sick of having a hangover from holidays. We did a staycation this year but because we had nothing set aside for it we're still covering it this month.

Any help greatly appreciated!!

Ska

Probably the best place to start is to look over your bank and credit card statements over the past year and find out where your money has gone.

For the big one offs I have four savings accounts for car expenses, Christmas, holidays and child related stuff where I put my child benefit every month. I have a spreadsheet for each account and a target amount to reach as well, based on known future expenditure and past expenditure.

Within the car account I aim to save enough to pay my car insurance up front as this tends to be cheaper if paid in one go rather than monthly. The child related expenses account covers pocket money, school trips, uniform, dancing lessons, music lessons and a bit extra to cover school holiday days out. With the Christmas one I list what my expenses are likely to be in terms of presents, cards, stamps and food/drink and divide that by 12 and try to spread the cost out over the year.

I don't always manage to put aside enough to cover all these big expenses but it helps even if I've only managed to save half of what I need. I could also do with an appliance fund for when my washing machine breaks down!

I hope this helps. There are online budget tools but I can't post links to them I'm afraid.

Tixy

As you run a car - tyres? if you do a fair miles that cost can mount up. Any other car costs in addition to servicing?

You've mentioned birthdays and christmas - also think about whether you need to budget for other events/spends. So if you tend to have weddings to attend/presents to buy, or presents for new babies, or engagements or present contributions at work etc
If you have children then is there a big spend on uniforms etc in August?

Anything like a boiler service at home, other home maintenance costs that are to be expected (chimney sweeping or gutter clearing or along those lines).

ska1982

Thank you, that's been really helpful already!
I'm new to the whole having a child at school thing, my boy has just started pre-school (no uniforms yet, phew!), but yes I can see that probably would need a separate budget.

Unimaginative - I was wondering about separating it all out in to different accounts. It must be clearer that way...
Chimney sweep, forgot about that one! Haven't done it yet for this coming winter.

We only have the one car and I walk to and from work.

RWP - not asking for amounts. Just trying to work out what I might have overlooked.

Tixy - good point.. new babies, weddings etc. & eek - boiler services?? We've just put a boiler in and got rid of the storage heaters. Are boiler services a yearly thing?

Thank you all !

unimaginative_user_name

In my experience the real problem with school uniform expenditure comes at secondary school where there is often only one supplier and therefore no competition to bring prices down. At least the supermarkets and high street retailers tend to compete with each other so there are bargains to be had. It depends on the school and when you are looking around for infant schools it's worth checking whether an ordinary sweat shirt will do or if it has to have the school logo in which case it will be more expensive. I'm not suggesting you choose a school according to the cost of the uniform but it helps with budgeting if you have an idea of the requirements in advance.

The other thing about uniform though is that is cuts down on other clothing costs!

Suziebabe

Hi! I've just gone through this for us, having set up savings pots in the past but regularly raided them for all the things I hadn't budgeted for!

I've gone for quite a few pots, so I can micro-control what we're doing to get started, mine are:
- Christmas
- Birthdays (extended family plus ours, including anniversaries & any other non-festive occasions like Halloween, Easter etc)
- Summer (hope one day to have enough for a proper holiday, but at the moment this will cover days out only while DS is off school)
- Car (service, mot, breakdown, insurance)
- Clothes (school uniform & token amount to try and allow for buying decent work clothes in Jan/summer sales)
- Medical & Vet (dentists, opticians, dog's injections etc)
- Household (token amount for sales, fire/boiler servicing, plus allowance for seeds/compost in garden & hopefully enough to decorate one room each year)

For each category, I wrote down the full 12 months in one column, and alongside set up 2 columns - amount out and amount in. I then tried to guess what we might spend in any particular month e.g. Gardening things in spring, sales opportunities in January etc - and then divided up the total by 12 and try to put that amount in each month. It took a bit of fiddling, but I managed to get it so I can see each month if the amount I've got in each one is 'on track' & change plans ahead of time.

At least that's the plan!

I found keeping a spending diary helped enormously in working out what I needed to save for each month, as it threw up all the spending I hadn't planned for.

Hope that helps!

ska1982

Thank you!
Hoping to maybe buy some uniform of a friend of a friend... Hadn't really realised about the logo, something to ask them about!

And boooooo, am adding dentists to my list. Thanks Suzie! That's exactly what's happening here! All fine until one of those bigger bills crops up and throws things out! Hope it works for you, I might try something very similar

Sarah

determined_new_ms

I have loads of savings "pots" Really they are in one account with a spreadsheet that breaks it all down. I have

Car - repairs, servicing, mot, ins, tax
* Christmas
* Birthday's
* holidays
* VSP - I round down my bank account each Friday to the nearest 10. I use this for Christmas as well as the above, and any unplanned expenses throughout the year. I have been doing this for several years now so last year I had quite a bit left. I treated myself to something and then rollled it over to this year. I'll treat myself at Christmas and put the rest into an isa
* house renovations - we have a project house
* emergencies

With school uniform. I used to buy sweatshirts/brazer etc from somewhere that sold the colour and then buy the badge from the approved shop & sew it in

Bublin1

I too have a few savings accounts for different expenses.

Current Account where monies are paid in and bills are paid from.
Every Day Spending Account
Car/tax/mot Fund
Holiday Fund
Household Items/Repairs
Christmas Presents
Emergency Fund

For the kids I don't have a seperate account but will now be considering this. Although spends for them come out of my every day spending account. i have no clue how much I actually spend on them as it's so sporadic - when they need stuff.

I'd like to ask for ideas on how to save up for big ticket items such as a car. Every penny is already budgeted for for every day life. I was thinking thw only way is to have a limit on some of my pots and when it's reached switch the money to my car fund. That will take ages!! I guess that's the reason why we take out credit!!

Suziebabe

Bublin1 wrote: »

I'd like to ask for ideas on how to save up for big ticket items such as a car. Every penny is already budgeted for for every day life. I was thinking thw only way is to have a limit on some of my pots and when it's reached switch the money to my car fund. That will take ages!! I guess that's the reason why we take out credit!!

Ooo yes, me too! I'm sort of praying my car can last til the debts are gone, but have a worry that it won't! I guess that if the worst happens, I'll end up having to get a loan again, but having just paid off the last one, I want a few years grace! And it feels wrong to put money in savings when they could go towards reducing our debts ... Is there an alternative to crossing my fingers and hoping?