How do you manage your finances?

supermassive

My partner pays the rent, he is on slightly lower income than I am, and I pay everything else.

I think I got a bum deal, though.

Electricity, water, council tax, food, drinks, car repairs, petrol, car tax, car insurance, clothing, gas, dog food, dog training, etc etc

He just pays the rent (which I top up anyway)...

MrsSave

What works for us is that all our wages go into one account. The last day of each month the money then gets split between our different accounts:
1. Bills
2. Food and petrol
3. Emergency Fund
4. Savings
5. Holiday
6. Entertainment
7. Day to day spends
8. Personal accounts
9. Celebrations (Christmas/birthdays etc)
10. Car things/life insurance (annual).

Anything that's left over gets split between building the emergency fund up and paying off our debts.

Clothes - my ds's clothes and shoes come from the day to day spends. Our clothes come from our personal accounts.

I use an app on the ipad called Account Tracker. I find it brilliant, and perfect for what I want. I think it was free, though if I did pay it was only around £1.

For annual things such as our life insurance, car tax, mot etc I have worked out roughly what the cost if over the year and divided by 12. That amount goes into a separate account each month.

For Christmas/birthdays I've done something similar. Roughly worked out our annual spends, divided by 12 and that amount goes into a separate account each month.

We've been working this way since our lbm 1/9/14, and so far it is working well for us. We stick to our food and petrol budget each month and always have money for little things. At the end of each month we have had money left over in each 'pot', which never happened when it was all in one account. We haven't touched a credit card since September, have eaten out, my son has had brand new Clarks shoes and a brand new coat, etc etc. I have no idea where our money went before but I can now account for each and every penny!

Gavin83

xXMessedUpXx wrote: »

Regarding spreadsheets, i am absolutely clueless as to how to use them, though think it might be useful (currently i just have all my incomings and outcomings written down on a sheet of paper ), if anyone can point me in the direction of explaining how to use them i'd be most grateful

If you message me your email address I'm happy to send you a copy of the one I created if it'll help.

loopyloouk

this is a fab ideas thread.

Do you think its easier with two bank accounts instead?

I have one and use a spreadsheet but its not the best. :rotfl:

peachyprice

I have spread sheets.

One for every month with all the DDs, savings and other bills detailed with the amount and in date order. I have the amount in one column in red then another coloum where I put the amount in green when its been paid.

Our basic income is the same every month more or less, we do both get ovetime occasionally but I don't include that in our budget.

I start the month with our income less the total of the DD & bill column, the bit left over is divided by 4 (DH is paid 4 weekly, so i do a 4 week budget) which is our spends for the month, I do the same every Friday so I know how much we have to spend for the week.

DDs like water rates and council tax which are only 8/10 times per year still get left on the monthly budget but the money gets skimmed into my savings account.

For quarterly DDs I just put them on the month they are due, but I think that's only TV licence now. Things like car tax, clothes, days out etc are easily covered by the weekly spends amount.

anotheruser

1: I get paid to a personal account.
2: A set amount (usually about 80%) goes to a joint account every month.
3: Anything that is left builds up for me to get presents or things for me. If it builds up too much, I transfer an extra payment to the joint account.

Usually, all spending goes from joint account (even if it's clothes just for me).
I don't budget for clothes or car MOT as that happens as and when it needs to. All DDs come out of the joint account and I know what I put in covers those fine so anything extra is just extra spending money.

We don't have a budget for food either; we aim for about £1 per meal but don't have a set amount and when it's gone it's gone or anything like that. It's just however much we need to spend, we do.

But we're pretty frugal with funds.
We take full advantage of the Santander 123 account and CC, heating DD is more than they want us to pay as it all gets used over winter. Heating isn't on all day every day either.

Seems to work for us so far.

tea_lover

I love a good spreadsheet

torbrex

I still use Microsoft Money, although there are no updates, the programme still works perfectly well as a money and account manager.

marvin

loopyloouk wrote: »

this is a fab ideas thread.

Do you think its easier with two bank accounts instead?

I have one and use a spreadsheet but its not the best. :rotfl:

I think at least 2 current accounts is best one for incoming and one for outgoing however as I have said earlier currently have 4 making use of freebies.

gayleygoo

My actual budgeting went to hell during the summer and I haven't caught up since, but I was working to a "zero budget" before that and intend to start that again, which works roughly like this:

List of usual costs (rent, electric and fuel, car costs, etc, averaged out over the year, charity giving), add a food budget, an amount to save for general savings, and another to save for replacing things as they wear out or break. Things like school uniforms and work clothes get accounted for. I currently have a dentist savings pot so it's hopefully not too much of a shock once my teeth start falling out. I need to get DH to start a "car" savings pot for repairs/replacement if needed, as it's an oldish car. Once all the necessities and savings are down, whatever is left is split between budgets for hobbies, treats, clothes etc.

A spending diary is a must. That's where I fell down months ago, when I stopped using it and now I'm back to having no money in my account several times a month, with still Christmas and birthdays to pay for, and was supposed to be planning a wee getaway after Christmas (may not happen now), and have a couple of baby things to buy before the little one is born. If I'd kept up with my budgeting this would all be fine!