£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

JoJoC

Don't weep...I've just spent cash on shoes for both boys too...it's never ending!

It's just one of those things - onwards and upwards!

Think of the positives - it means he shouldn't need new football boots for a while

Bobarella

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

SIgh. New football boots for DC1. If you need me I'll be over here weeping over my budget.

I had a real Mum guilt moment (seems a theme across the boards today) when DS was like, Mum all my jogging bottoms are a bit tight. So I sighed and went to check them over. I found 2 of his 6 pairs were for age 6...he will be 9 in November...:eek: anyway the universe answered sending me a lovely Nectar voucher for £15 spent. So I bought him a new England fleece reduced from £20 to £10 and two new pairs of joggers.

Dont feel bad. Children grow. It is the way of the world.

Treadingonplaymobil

It's fine really. I'm just relieved DH is getting a small extra bit in his salary tomorrow - I think it will just about cover the boots and the food budget overspend for the month!

Have had a nice slow couple of days - went for a really long walk with DC3 today while the other two were at school, it was nice to get away from all the endless chores for a few hours. NSD, although only because I failed to get a couple of bits I was meant to - I'll need to get them tomorrow.

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 11: Day 5

Woohoo, DH got paid this morning! He got paid an extra £150, so I have covered all our overspends in YNAB and left a bit of a cushion for the weekend, and have made a small debt overpayment of £20. Still over £100 from getting into the £64k bracket, but maybe I'll be able to bring us a little closer if we have a good frugal weekend.

One of our 0% deals expires at the end of this month so we are (somewhat belatedly) investigating new 0% offers. DH has found a 33 month one with only 0.59% balance transfer rate, so I think we'll go for that, assuming we're accepted. The snowball calculator is set up on the basis of starting to pay interest on this balance now, and on the other CC balance next year, so it will be interesting to see how getting a new 0% affects the repayment schedule.

To do today:
1. 10,000 steps.
2. social media while working.
3. post office for work posting.
4. make spinach lasagne for dinner
5. keep it to a low spend day - although am meeting a friend for coffee who has recently had brain surgery so I will treat her to coffee and a slice of cake if I get the opportunity! I think she's earned a fiver of my budget. :cool:

To do this week:
1. help DC1 finish an optional piece of homework he's been banging on about for a week or more. How did I produce a child who volunteers for optional homework?!
2. make a batch of humous for snacks using the chickpeas I cooked and froze a few weeks back.
3. lose 1kg (am aiming to lose 1kg a week for a couple of weeks, then down to 0.5kg a week until I am back to my 'fighting' weight - i.e. the one where all my clothes fit!). I was 0.3kg lighter this morning than yesterday. Hopefully it will keep going in the right direction.
4. plan next month's budgets once DH gets paid - he will get a small pay rise backdated for a month or two, so we may be able to make a little extra debt payment before the end of the month, but sadly I don't think we'll get the debt into the £64k bracket this months thanks to my budgeting fails using up all the surplus.

Treadingonplaymobil

April round up

Finally, the end of the month is nigh.

Always interesting to look back at YNAB and see what the successes and failures (mostly failures) were.

Clothes
Of course, it's safe to say that my personal clothing spends were the most spectacular failure of the month. I'm not going to get my knickers any more in a twist about this - after much soul searching I'm actually fairly accepting of the fact that I need to spend more than the bare minimum in order to continue getting work in, and instead of pretending otherwise, I have redone my business account budget to carve off a slice of income for work clothing. I'm hoping this will prevent the binge/fast clothing cycle, and get me into the habit of planning and shopping more thoughtfully.

Food
EVERY MONTH. This is such a weak area for us. Our average food shopping spend was well over £600 before we started YNAB, and since LBM it has been:
Feb £395
Mar £530 (this was the month of birthday parties)
Apr £465 (visiting relatives for several days bumped this up significantly)
I think I need to accept that actually there will be something most months (birthdays, holidays, relatives visiting or whatever) that will give us one expensive week, so I need to try to drop our average weekly spend down a little further to allow for those overspends. Ideally our food budget would come in at well under £350, which we are currently miles off.

Diesel
Not a lot to be done about this, as it's 95% commuting costs, but having budgeted £225 for 6 months or more, I think we need to accept that isn't enough and make it £250.

Unexpected expenses
Not 'emergencies' as such, but things that I hadn't budgeted for. DS1 randomly decided to start football recently, and I didn't feel able to say no as I've been trying to get him to do more sport for years, but it meant new football boots and shin pads. Also we are still spending on parking etc on days out, which is adding up to an extra few quid every week, and is sending us over on our entertainment budget every month. These unplanned spends are adding up to at least £100 every month I think, although they are always across several budget categories so I haven't added up the exact total.

We've basically been able to manage all these overspends (which added up to a good few hundred pounds over our original budget for both March and April) because I've been insanely busy with work, so have been able to cover the shortfall, but work has been absolutely dead for the last fortnight, and if something doesn't come in soon there's not going to be any flex in the budget for May and June, so I really need to address this. I'm just not really sure how. I feel like we've made huge cutbacks to our lifestyles over the past couple of months, and we've removed all the low hanging fruit in budgetary terms, and now any further savings are going to be significantly harder work.

Some reality-facing, planning and budgeting going on at TOPM Towers today.

armchairexpert

Your end of month summary reminds me of mine! I think we go into this mindset with the idea that there are just hundreds and thousands of spare pounds in the budget if we really put our minds to it, but in fact once you count in emergencies, special occasions and the random small indulgence there just isn't. If there were, we'd have already been rich I suppose. Your plans to budget differently all sound very good, especially with regards to clothes.

But when it's not enough - and it's not for me either - yes, the choice becomes about how much you actually want to scale back your standard of living once the painless cuts have been made. Remember you started with an SOA that was in the negative, so even keeping on an even keel in the lean-income months is a HUGE step forward. As long as you're not going backwards, you could choose to accept that and pay back debt more aggressively in the more profitable months. Otherwise, it's slash-and-burn time!

Treadingonplaymobil

armchairexpert wrote: »

Your end of month summary reminds me of mine! I think we go into this mindset with the idea that there are just hundreds and thousands of spare pounds in the budget if we really put our minds to it, but in fact once you count in emergencies, special occasions and the random small indulgence there just isn't. If there were, we'd have already been rich I suppose. Your plans to budget differently all sound very good, especially with regards to clothes.

But when it's not enough - and it's not for me either - yes, the choice becomes about how much you actually want to scale back your standard of living once the painless cuts have been made. Remember you started with an SOA that was in the negative, so even keeping on an even keel in the lean-income months is a HUGE step forward. As long as you're not going backwards, you could choose to accept that and pay back debt more aggressively in the more profitable months. Otherwise, it's slash-and-burn time!

You're absolutely right here, it's given me some food for thought.

debtfreeoneday

So close to hitting the £64k's - well done!

Suffolk_lass

Have you checked out the first few posts in the monthly Grocery Challenge (in old-style money-saving)? You don't have to join in but there are some excellent tips for reducing your monthly grocery bill, depending on how much time and effort you put into it. Mine is around £200 now where I started at over £700, some years ago. Just the different ways to plan and shop made a 50% difference to me. May's thread is up and running.

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 12: Day 2

New month! Such potential! Fingers crossed for a more level month, financially and emotionally - every month since LBM has been a bit of a roller coaster for one reason or another. I feel like we’re still very much finding our feet at the beginning of an incredibly long MS marathon, and each month is throwing a new challenge at us to figure out in the context of our new MS lifestyle.

As discussed in recent posts, it has become clear that there is always going to be 'something' that comes up that messes with our budget. These 'somethings' have been stressing me out no end as I feel like a bit of a failure when I see others around me making huge overpayments to debt or savings pots, when we're not and instead spending money on the Somethings, and I feel like I shouldn't be buying clothes or having family days out because all the money should be going towards a worthier cause (i.e. debt). Well, it turns out that we're not other people, and we aren't going to make this journey by making the extreme cut backs that others manage to. Ours is the marathon, not the sprint, and even our marathon time is going to be less impressive than those around us who have different priorities and commitments and, to be honest, willpower. From here on in, I'm going to be more generous with our spare money than I have been rather than trying to throw every last bit at debt.

I’m not going to be too ambitious for May, in the hope of keeping things steady...

May goals
Just one goal. Make debt repayments of £700 (slightly above the minimum required, but not ridiculously so). Any spare money to be sensibly divided up according to our ‘priority percentages’:
50% towards holiday savings (we need to pay the balance in June, and are currently a bit short)
10% DC1 new bike
5% debt overpayment
5% birthdays
15% emergency fund
10% entertainment
5% food budget

Once we've covered the holiday, I'm going to come up with a new division that swipes more money into a 'unexpected expenses' fund - things that aren't proper emergencies but still can't be avoided.

To do today:
1. batch cook kitchari for lunches (rice and mung bean dish).
2. batch cook columbian black bean stew.
3. make flapjacks for next week’s snacks.
4. make flatbreads. Already done!
5. make sourdough. Dough rising.
6. laundry washed and out on airers (horrible weather forecast). Washed, need to hang on airers now. Hate hanging laundry out inside.
7. plan outfits and pack - I’m going away for work for 3 days from tomorrow. Only 2 days paid, the other is training (but free).
8. clear ironing mountain, which is back to everest-esque proportions.
9. plan out entertainment budget to try to make it last a little more effectively.
10. NSD.

To do this week:
Such a busy week with work ahead that I’m not setting any goals here, I’ll take each day as it comes. Main aim is to keep spends to a minimum while I'm away from home.