The Edcawber Principle

ZoPig2016

Hi Ed

I too have had these feelings of regret over past dealings with money, but have come to the view that there is little to be done about the past now.

We have had a personal finance revolution in our home this last year, triggered by being unable to pay a credit card bill and having to ask my Mum for help. At 31, this rang alarm bells with me, I should have been doing much better.

Three things jump out at me from your post.

First, Mrs E must get involved and get on board. I was you, dealing with all of the finances, my husband was just happy to leave it with me. However, it just doesn’t work. When you get on the same page, suddenly it all makes sense. We set shared goals and we work on them together now. It’s our life, so we discuss and agree on what we want and what we need to do to make this happen.

Second, the budget. We now sit down every month to agree a bespoke monthly budget. Start with the total income coming in, that month. Then plan what you will do for every penny of it, that month. Next month we do it again. The problem with having a roll over budget is that anomalies throw it out of whack, then when you get behind, you can’t recover and you give up. So we plan for all expenses, then with the spare, we decide x for entertainment and the rest for savings or debts as applicable. If you don’t plan where the pounds go, they just disappear.

Third, the dribs and drabs approach and a little payment on this or that is demotivating. You never make a big lurch in the right direction so you don’t feel the needle moving. You need to feel some wins to keep going. I would suggest agreeing with Mrs E to focus on one CC (probably the smallest balance) and smash it out, making one big payment when the budget is agreed. Suddenly, there is progress and you feel like you can do it.

I hope this helps you Ed. Your diary has helped me.

I have been following Dave Ramsey on YouTube. You need to get past the initial culture shock of the evangelical southern American viewpoint, but the underlying financial advice is very good indeed. It’s not just maths, it’s motivation.

Greying_Pilgrim

edinburgher wrote: »

Greying - I'd never accuse you of spouting feel good nonsense - you just think about things on a deeper level than most of us I think I do too- and sometimes, I wish I was a bit more of a lightweight, deep thinking ain't always the way to go........

.......I suppose we're just waiting for our friends to realise that they like us for ourselves as opposed to the fact that we accompany them to restaurants far too often

I think it will happen - maybe not with this 'particular' set of friends, but it will happen. We stopped trying to 'accommodate' one set of friends, who would only ever suggest meeting in a pub. We were bored with that, and it's become impossible (and undesirable) to consider with a small child. We kept saying 'no'. We were delighted (and secretly amazed) to entertain them with tea and chat in our own home during the Christmas holidays, and they had a lovely time 'playing' with BG. I thought we'd lost these people in our lives......

I sometimes wonder if it's 'just us'. We have a lot of interests. We discuss the world, politics, society, ethics and science at home. We enjoy a documentary as much as a crappy sci-fi movie. We cook (well) for ourselves and love trying new food and new experiences. We look outwards and can't really be arsed talking about work, cars and shiny !!!!. We both feel (to quote Frank Turner before he got vaguely famous) that "the air-conditioned life has left me gasping for some real conversation". Just waiting for the conversation to begin.

Ed - chat to us! We like 'real' conversation I can't tell you how many times in RL I've started a convo, with the words 'I was chatting about that only the other day......' to realise that it was a convo on here I was referring to!


I do feel like a good Dad most of the time, that is my single biggest positive takeaway from the last couple of years. I have been fearless in protecting family time and our life together and while I rarely feel like a parenting guru, I know what good looks like and our family is doing well :T

Agree 100%


Tuesday feels a bit brighter than Monday did.

YAY!! :j:j


I am sorry for being overly upbeat No you ain't :rotfl:

Have a great Tuesday.

Greying X

Karmacat

:j:j:j

:bdaycake: Have some cake. It's home made, and gluten free.

You pushed a little bit of a re-set button yesterday, and whaddaya know, it looked good.
:A

edinburgher

ZoPig - Glad to have been of some assistance

I think you're 100% right about Mrs E. She does understand all this stuff, she's just been lazy and I've enabled her in avoiding a topic that she finds to be quite dry. Tough! I will drag her back in and I'm sure that she will make great contributions to the plan.

We don't have a rollover budget per se. I'd say our budget is roughly 2/3 fixed expenses and 1/3 things that vary a bit more (say car maintenance, home improvement and groceries). We will shove small expenses between these 'floating' pots because it sometimes feels that it's all swings and roundabouts and it works reasonably well as long as you don't always rob the same pot...

There are 2 schools of thought on dribs and drabs on this board. Some people only believe in the big needle shifts, but others have done very nicely from their 'Tilly tidies' (so good they have their own catchphrase). Little payments can be motivational as they keep you engaged and focused although you're completely correct - they don't move the dial.

I have a balancing act to perform in that we currently spend more than we earn (even with a budget). I have been paying down debt pretty aggressively (I'd estimate £12-13k in less than a year). So I can't use all our savings to whack down a couple of debts as there is still the 'delta' between income and expenditure to consider. As I put it to Mrs E, we either "decide to reduce our spending, or the bank will do it for us"! It's not all doom and gloom - through reduced childcare and pay increases I expect my takehome pay to go up by 14% within the next year and a bit. So I think the dribs and drabs will have to stay for now.

In the context of Dave Ramsey - my debt repayment so far has been classic debt snowball - cleared the day-to-day credit card, then the next few cards from smallest to biggest. My mistake has probably been not increasing the weekly payment to the other cards as the smaller cards dwindle to nothing. I have had some success - 9 cards to 5 (another one gone by March).

My main fear now is being unable to BT the big beasts (3 cards in the region of £7k each) :eek:

AlexLK

Thanks, Ed.

Glad to hear you think you’re navigating parenting well. It’s difficult at the best of times and a certain amount of confidence your doing your best is needed. Far too many people trying to offer unsolicited parenting advice too, imo.

Don't really want to be the one to say this but I think you’re mixing with the wrong type of people if they are the sort to order 4 courses at a 3 course meal because there’s an expectation to split the bill. That’s got nothing to do with their earnings and everything to do with their attitude to others. However, car enthusiasts aren’t all bad! Learning how to run and maintain old cars may not be your cup of tea but it’s an involved hobby with links to engineering and history.

Think about why your wife is not taking on some of the project management re house. Though waiting to move once you’re out of the fix sounds good.

edinburgher

So far, parenting has been a fairly relaxed experience. I hate the sleep deprivation and occasionally tedious aspects of it, but the important stuff (the love and confidence building) seems to come fairly naturally.

Unfortunately I think it's just a case of the tragedy of the commons Alex - nobody realises the effect that their selfish behaviour has when it's a shared resource - or a a shared bill!

Re. Mrs E and house stuff, there are probably two reasons (one good, one bad). I managed more of the arrangements as I had to buy time off work to decorate etc. My time was cheaper than that of a professional. The bad reason is that I have probably infantilised her to a degree by assuming that I'd do a better job of overseeing works. That's not some terrible sexist deficiency on my part, just me being overly confident

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

You are all so helpful and positive that multiquote fails me for the first time ever and were I to respond point by point, I would almost definitely break the internet :coffee:

Hiddenshadow - All for saving money, but it wouldn't really improve the budget as it's personal spends and I think it's fine to have a little walking around money?

Yes, but not when you spend more than you earn! ;-) (Unless you're happy justifying loss of savings to have personal spends, which is OK if you're aware that's the trade-off.)

(I'm not suggesting you never have personal spending money, but clearly you need to scale back some/all expenses until you get back on an even keel, so perhaps it's worth foregoing personal spends for X months until you've got the CCs cleared, or agreeing to limit expensive nights out with Queen Bee to 1x/month or something.)

There are occasional board game nights etc. and they're fab, it's just that our unimaginative group of snowflakes reverts back to posh restaurant 3 minutes later. Which is a PITA with the uneven incomes, as some of the group are the horrible !!!!!! having 4 courses at a 3 course dinner and downing cocktails all night because they're only paying 1/x of the bill :mad:

Yeah that's just rude. Would Mrs E lose it if you said at the next night "hey, Mrs E and I are going to pay for our meal/drinks separately, as we're unable to subsidise the dining choices of the entire group" (or something to that effect). At least then you have more control over how expensive the nights out will be.

Glad you and Mrs E had a good chat - hopefully it can lead to productive budgeting/lifestyle plans going forward.

I don't sit around on a day to day basis coveting the salaries and lifestyles of our friends and neighbours. When you are dragged along to night out after night out with the same boring bunch of petrolheads and gadget addicts, it's hard to avoid comparions (which I'm reliably informed are odious). Honest to God - all I want is one friend who doesn't give a rat's !!!! about what car they drive :eek:

Sounds like you do need a different group of friends. What does Mrs E think - does she enjoy her Queen Bee circle (enough to stick with them on a more limited scale) or would she prefer more low-key friends as well?

(Also - investigate the board game thing if you like it...we met 2 of our friends via board gaming and all our get-togethers were at one of our houses playing games and getting a takeaway or making spagh bol. It was brilliant.)

Mrs E isn't so keen on moving. I think she feels invested (financially) in the property due to our renovations, that we need to get a certain level of enjoyment of the improvements before we move. Perhaps she would feel differently if she'd spent a year herding contractors?

Perhaps it's a better conversation to have closer to the time. If she agreed to go view houses, she may find that she's quite willing to move in order to have X house specifically, vs the amorphous "I think we should have earned Y in equity before we move" (which is all well and good, but no sense sticking with a house you dislike when you could manage a move to a house you love...life is too short for that). (Obviously that's assuming that in 2019-20 you have enough equity that you could move to a house you do love.)

edinburgher

I hear you re. personal spends HS, honest I do. We have cut from 10% of wages to 8%, but I started budgeting for holidays at the same time, an area where we've been very bad at overspending in the past. I think perhaps we should knock the holiday line on the head after May until the end of the year anyway (+£850).

We will not be able to scale back all personal expenses. If I'm honest, I view this as a debt fire alarm (I'm worried, you've got my attention) as opposed to a debt heart attack (oh God we're flatlining)! Perhaps I'm being naive?

Yes, I think it would be unreasonable to say that to Mrs E's friends. I'm known for being painfully blunt, but even I think that's OTT! I think 'we'd rather get our own bill as we're saving up' would probably go down a bit better.

Regretting that Queen Bee comment now - our friends are fairly normal, pleasant people - it's not Mean Girls! To clarify, Bee is a lovely individual, she's just *very* privileged and used to getting her own way. That, coupled with high income means she's apparently oblivious to the relatively high cost of her lifestyle.

I think nearer the time that we might use @irbnb or similar to try on different locations for size, get to see what life might be like somewhere different. City centre? Semi-rural with ok rail network? Cheap seaside but requiring a drive?

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

I hear you re. personal spends HS, honest I do. We have cut from 10% of wages to 8%, but I started budgeting for holidays at the same time, an area where we've been very bad at overspending in the past. I think perhaps we should knock the holiday line on the head after May until the end of the year anyway (+£850).

We will not be able to scale back all personal expenses. If I'm honest, I view this as a debt fire alarm (I'm worried, you've got my attention) as opposed to a debt heart attack (oh God we're flatlining)! Perhaps I'm being naive?

I'm definitely not trying to dictate what your budget should be! Just...be aware of the trade-offs...is it worth 8% of income as personal spends to potentially pay 20% interest if you don't get a 0% CC deal (or even 3% transfer fee if you have to roll over between 0% deals). Only you and Mrs E can decide that.

(Having said all that, we spend under 3% of income on personal spends, so I'm aware that we're a bit outside the norm on level of comfortable spending.)

Regretting that Queen Bee comment now - our friends are fairly normal, pleasant people - it's not Mean Girls! To clarify, Bee is a lovely individual, she's just *very* privileged and used to getting her own way. That, coupled with high income means she's apparently oblivious to the relatively high cost of her lifestyle.

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting that you didn't enjoy your friends' company, just...if their lifestyle outstrips yours (and they're unwilling to meet you partway), and their conversation is boring re: jobs/cars/etc., then maybe a new friends circle is worth the time investment.

edinburgher

Wow! Unless you a) earn millions b) do nothing and sit around in hair shirts or c) have loads of budget categories that cover things we spend our pocket money on, I don't know how you cope! If we stuck to 3% Mrs E would be allowed £40 a month, myself more like £50 :eek: That wouldn't cover the cost of Mrs E's lunch at work (she refuses to take a packed lunch). Ooh... there's an idea :rotfl: