Budget Nightmare!

DCFC79

datlex wrote: »

I think things are being over complicated. Pop on Tesco.com and pretend to do a shop as if you had used up everything in your cupboards and needed a total restock. Allow for toiletries, kitchen rolls, loo rolls and nappies. That is your worst case scenario for a grocery shop. Then cross check with other websites where you actually shop to see if you would pay more or less for the items to get a more accurate figure.
Do same with clothes for your family.

Or use mysupermarket to get see if Asda is cheaper.

Linton

Why do you have to go to that level of detail? What I do is to pay for everything above £10 by debit card. Then its simply a matter of downloading a bank statement every week and automatically assigning a general category based on who was paid, for example "Groceries", which includes cleaning products, for Tesco. Any large unusual items can be assigned by hand. There is another category, "cash" which is simply the total of all cash withdrawals which covers all minor cash expenditures.

It doesnt make sense to me to split out "luxury" components from "essentials". You are used to a standard of living, what you spend is what you spend. If you need to cut down you can work in detail trying reduce the largest categories.

No_6

You obviously don't budget with a spread sheet,
as all of the above can be broken down to where it has been spent.

but if you don't want to know data ?

Anthorn

CHlHlRO wrote: »

Trying to draw up our budget but it’s turning out to be a complete nightmare! The issue is mainly that we go to several different shops for our supplies of food/drink/toiletries etc, so separating out our spending is impossible because we haven’t got receipts! I’m trying to go from our last three months bank statements but a £50-odd spend in Tesco might also include clothing, or Christmas presents. A fiver in Aldi could be hubby grabbing lunch or a bag of nappies, I just don’t know! Obviously if I add it all up it’s going to make our food/household essential spending look far too high, and it’s inaccurate because it includes some “luxury” spending, like lunchtime meal deals, clothing and gifts. Any advice? I need to give figures to our mortgage advisor but I just don’t know where to start! Help, please!

Money Dashboard - if they support the bank and/or credit card you use for spending. They support a lot of U.K. providers but not all of them. For example they don't support Starling Bank which is my main bank account. Basically it's a free personal finance manager. You give them your login details for your bank(s) and credit card(s) and they track your spending and aggregate it. There's also a mobile app on Android and iOS which can be used for planning spending.

Here's a couple of links which might help:
Supported providers: https://help.moneydashboard.com/hc/en-us/articles/215853983-Supported-Providers
Home page: https://www.moneydashboard.com

suki1964

My own bank app allows me to assign categories to spends. If I draw out cash I can manually break that down into spends I don't need to see how much I spend on loo roll or shampoo, but I do need to know how much is being spent on household shopping as a whole

No_6

There is still nothing that will tell you !
what YOU want,
unless,,,,, YOU enter all your data.

IMHO

No_6

@ c-o

how's the budget going ?
always nice to get a update.

CHlHlRO

Thanks for all the tips everyone!!!8212;it turned out I was completely overthinking it! My rough figures were fine. I suppose it!!!8217;s because the last budget I did was when I was trying to negotiate with creditors, so I did have to account for every penny!!!8212;every takeaway latte, every newspaper, every little luxury so I could see exactly what I could afford to repay. I guess that mentality hasn!!!8217;t left me, and the fact I have money to spend still hasn!!!8217;t sunk in! I do appreciate the advice though

Bravepants

Yes, don't worry about so much detail for a mortgage application.