Learning to budget to make future adventures happen

crunch_time

Morning all

Husband took the day off yesterday to rotivate the garden. He hired one for £30. He saw some sleepers in Mr M for the drop at the end which he reckons will be about £60 and then turf for the lawn obs will be about £200. We also need some trellis panels and posts for the area near the patio which we havent costed up yet. And then we have done the bare minimum to get a lawn and part of a fence this summer!!!

At the moment we have the following costs on the husbands Sains credit card...

£340 - New house materials - wood to board the loft
£150 - Chest freezer
£300 - Next - curtains and curtain poles and a duvet
£250 - washing machine - -from when the old one blew up last summer.

The dresser and the chairs and table have been paid off!!!

The following is not at 0% at the moment. Once we have finished the bits to the garden we will get a balance transfer card for the following and the new bits.

£331 - house stuff - little bits that have added up that we needed e.g. coat hooks etc - to make us a bit more organised.
£121 - the dogs castration

Then we will stop doing big bits to the house until this is paid down a significant amount

So it will be about £2000 on it from house stuff overall. Then we are going to start painting and I will adjust our budget to allow for this.

Id better go - husband wants to know what Ive done on YNAB! I cant miss theis opportunity

Crunchy x

crunch_time

emoticons work on my new laptop!!

:beer::rotfl::A:T

Seasidegal58

Hi crunchy - just to say I've been using YNAB for a couple of years now and personally find it invaluable. A lot of folk don't get on with it though - you've got to find the method that suits you. Hope it helps hubby though - it's useful for couples because you can sync it to all your accounts and see what one another is spending so can keep tabs. Of course it'll only work if both of you are totally honest on what you're spending.

Your garden will look good for the summer and it'll be nice for the children so worth the spends I think.

crunch_time

It!!!8217;s really pouring now!........

- cost to repair camera £132
- cost to remove petrol from my diesel car £150 ish

Gah (currently waiting on the forecourt for a man to come and sort out the latter)

There have been tears.

I have already bought some wine for later

abba1772

Oh no don't cry it's a easy mistake to make xx

Seasidegal58

Oh no to the diesel!:eek: Wine will help make you feel better!:D

crunch_time

Thanks for the kind messages! Car is fine and I used my savings to pay for the man to fix it - £170. At least I had it there and didnt use it to pay off the Overdraft!

Payday today and all money is where it should be.

Now I have 'more money' - I've used some of the excesses from the pots to pay for my min credit card payment so I can save the £84 towards a buffer which is a great start. I also have £80 sitting in a savings account ready to buy oil.

We have £134 ready for the next swimming bill and £48 ready to pay for nursery bill on Tuesday - but I don't think we will need to so that can go in the pot too.

We have about £1000 of house costs to merge with the £4177 but will have to wait a few months for the £4177 to go down as I don't think husband will get enough credit limit until then. I shall investigate.

But that's it! Not doing anything else to the house that's big and costs £100's until we have paid off whats currently sitting on credit cards. I know I have listed it above but for reference again for me, this is what is...

£340 - Building materials - loft etc.
£150 - Chest Freezer
£300 - New curtains, poles etc for new house
£170 - Washing machine (what the min payment is currently tackling)
£56 - Dogs castration
£311 - stuff to orgnaise house like - a small bookcase and coat hooks
£86 - sleepers for the garden
£37 - wheelbarrow
£204 - Turf
£66 - Wickes

Total - £2412 - In theory this could take 2 years to pay off which is fine and gives us more incentive to save up for the next rooms.

In other news, husband got paid £153 more this month. I suspect it is for expenses owed (currently about £350) but if its a bonus of sorts I shall use it to pay off some of the stuff above.

Right! Envelopes are ready for when I take out the food money later for each week and we are also going to take our £25 per week spending money out too.

Ive decided to keep a buffer or overdraft of £100 for each month so once I have met that, any extra money is going to go towards the debt according to the categories.

So we are all organised and ready to go - lets do this!!

Crunchy xx

Seasidegal58

You are indeed very organised - go you!

Everything sounding very positive and doable!:j

crunch_time

Afternoon all!

So on Friday we got out £100 cash for food for the week and £100 out cash for spending money for the month.

£100 cash for food has been spent and we have enough food until Friday!!

The £100 for spending has been split into £25 amounts for the month at £25 per weekend with the idea of having NSDs during the week. We blew the £25 this gone weekend on two bottles of wine, pocket money for the children and snacks for us. Such a massive lesson. Aside from pocket money for the kids I don't want to do that again. Think what it could have gone towards!! Husband and I think this is the making of us.

Once its cash in your hand its so hard to want to spend it.

We had a NSD yesterday but I had to get calpol today for a poorly child so that is allowed. Hoping for a NSD tomorrow and again on Thursday. We haven't got any plans for the weekend yet but Im definatley not going to buy two bottles of wine again!!

Crunchy xx

JoJoC

It's interesting how cash makes people think more about spending - I've not attempted this method because I've not found a way that would work for my husband and I but I can see the temptation.

You may already be on to this one, but remember Aldi does some really lovely wines for a really low price. I like a malbec out of there and I think it's around £4 so wine as a treat doesn't have to blow your weekly budget if you're smart about it.