Help with budgetting - please??

Crap_with_money.com

Hi all,

I'm really looking for some suggestions on how best to manage our money. Currently we have 2 current accounts. Our wages are both paid into the same account (I'm paid 4 weekly, and my husband monthly), our bills all come out of this account too.

I have set up a standing order to transfer our weekly personal spends into our other account (£50/week).

I would really like to somehow separate the money we budget for fuel and food out from our main bills account too. I want to be able to see at a glance how much we have left for both without having to sit down at the laptop and do another spreadsheet.

I'm not sure if 4 current accounts is a bit ridiculous? I also don't think we can be trusted to use credit cards for it.

Are there any other apps/tools/ideas out there that I haven't thought of?

Thanks so much in advance for any help!

Xx

Sparx

Me and the wife have our own bank accounts with our own salaries going in each. From our own accounts we have our own personal bills come out i.e. mobile phone, life insurance, credit card payments etc.

Then we have a joint account which we both transfer money in to cover all of the household bills and the varied bills such as food and petrol etc we budget an amount for (i.e. £400pm including nights out and £100-150 fuel). The joint account covers mortgage, council tax, gas/electric, water, car insurance, broadband - you get the idea!

Then whatever is left in our own accounts, you can decide yourself if you put some aside into a savings account, pay off other debts or have it as your own personal spend etc.

Simple and works for us - your own personal accounts each, then a joint account for the household / joint spends.

colsten

You can't really use current accounts as budgeting tools as they weren't designed for that. To get a proper overview of what is due in and what is due out, you really need a proper personal finance manager.

YNAB is (was?) quite popular amongst MSEers but I think it costs quite a bit now. There's a special YNAB thread somewhere on the forum.

The old hares on this board use an unsupported tool called MS Money, which is still the most solid of all. Not overly pretty, and there is no app - but it gives you a solid handle on your money. I think the free download is here.

A supported alternative is AceMoney (I have been using that for the last couple of years). There's also a thing called BankTree which is a bit more modern than MS Money and AceMoney but I haven't used it myself so can't vouch for it.

Some people mention Money Dashboard. I tried that a couple of years ago and found it clunky and unusable, and under-functional for my needs.

It takes a little effort to enter all your bills, and to reconcile your bank accounts with the finance manager. Worth every minute though, as you can be in total control of every last penny.

Good luck!

robatwork

Acemoney is obviously a US product. Can you confirm it's 100% OK with UK£ accounts and copes with any peculiarities of our banking systems eg. our sort codes etc?

msallen

Personally I just use a spreadsheet. I've looked at MS Money a couple of times in the past because it always gets such good reviews on here, but it does loads that I don't want, and doesn't do some things I do want.

I started with a very basic spreadsheet years ago, and this is constantly getting tweaked to the stage now where it is extremely fine tuned to exactly what I want it for. It would probably seem ludicrously complex to anyone else seeing it for the first time, but it tells me everything I need to know at a glance and makes modelling future options very easy too - from the balance in my main current account to the average interest earned from a particular P2P platform over a given period.

colsten

robatwork wrote: »

Acemoney is obviously a US product. Can you confirm it's 100% OK with UK£ accounts and copes with any peculiarities of our banking systems eg. our sort codes etc?

Like MS Money, it's a sophisticated spreadsheet. You set the currency for your accounts, and you can have accounts in different currencies alongside each other. Sort codes and account numbers are simply bits of text that you may or may not want to record. If you want to, you can import transaction data from current and credit card accounts - there are international standards for such files. I don't use this particular functionality myself but I have seen it working.

No_6

MS money for UK, use what bits you want from it.
it's just a simple spread sheet / data form to use how you want.
Add more data and you get more info back !
Just use what you want and be happy with YOUR feedback.

getmore4less

Budgeting is all about planning in advance what you want to spend your money on.

Glancing at accounts and just spending what's there is never going to work.

Most people can estimate there a annual spend on fuel quite close
Xper week for the regular trips + a bit extra for the one offs holidays etc. You should always have enough if the plan is working.

Once you have a decent plan that covers everything it does not matter where the money is.

Nothing gets spent if it is not in the plan, you can add things but the plan needs rebalancing.

Best free tool out there MSMoney.

getmore4less

The good thing about MSMoney is it models money very close to real life.
A single transaction like adding a supermarket bill to a cc can be itemised into categories.

The rest is done for you.

Sea_Shell

We use Excel spreadsheets too. Income and expenditure all noted and tallied, with filters on each column. With a click I can tell you how much we've spent on groceries, and with whom. (took a little while to set up and get working just as I want)

wullie

Having 4 current accounts is not ridiculous . I have more than that , one for holidays, one for emergencies , one for visiting elderly mum , one for long term savings, one for certain annual bills, and more. It suits me fine. I put a set amount in each one every week . Perfect for me.