Bit if advice. Trying to budget.

emzky

Hi there. I'm hoping someone can help. I'm finding it hard to budget at the moment. I recently did a soa and found that after bills and food we should have ;£881 a month left over. The trouble is we never seem to see it. Ideally I'd like to save 500 and use 300 on anything we might want throughout the month. If it stays in the bank it just gets spent so wondering if anyone here had any idea what I could do with it to try make this work!

spend_or_save

emzky wrote: »

Hi there. I'm hoping someone can help. I'm finding it hard to budget at the moment. I recently did a soa and found that after bills and food we should have ;£881 a month left over. The trouble is we never seem to see it. Ideally I'd like to save 500 and use 300 on anything we might want throughout the month. If it stays in the bank it just gets spent so wondering if anyone here had any idea what I could do with it to try make this work!

i would check your figures again just to be sure, then open up a seperate account (have a look at best buys (Santander 123, TSB may be suitable) and set up a standing order to take the £500 out every month into the new account. This will at least remove it from your active current account and reduce the temptation to spend it.

knack92

Open a separate account for your savings and transfer the amount you want to save as soon as you're paid?

grumbler

emzky wrote: »

Ideally I'd like to save 500 and use 300 on anything we might want throughout the month. If it stays in the bank it just gets spent so wondering if anyone here had any idea what I could do with it to try make this work!

Don't spend more than £300?

eskbanker

emzky wrote: »

I recently did a soa and found that after bills and food we should have ;£881 a month left over. The trouble is we never seem to see it.

Without knowing what the gross starting figures are, a monthly gap of £881 sounds pretty sizable - in order to get control of your finances it would be worth tracking your spend much more closely for a month or two. Write absolutely everything down - bus fares, cups of coffee, buying the Big Issue or whatever, and then once you've identified where that £881 goes, you can update your SOA to be more accurate and then start to think about what you want to cut down on to achieve your savings goals.

CLAPTON

emzky wrote: »

Hi there. I'm hoping someone can help. I'm finding it hard to budget at the moment. I recently did a soa and found that after bills and food we should have ;£881 a month left over. The trouble is we never seem to see it. Ideally I'd like to save 500 and use 300 on anything we might want throughout the month. If it stays in the bank it just gets spent so wondering if anyone here had any idea what I could do with it to try make this work!

post up the SOA on the debt free wannabe board (they are very friendly and are good at looking at SOA

as already said : write down absolutely everything you spend every single day no matter how small

after a month all will be revealed