Our SOA...

enthusiasticsaver

JamesEmma wrote: »

That all sounds really good..

We each have our own bank accounts with First direct into which our respective salaries are paid and from these we now feed two other accounts - the first pays our unsecured debts the second we will send everything else from our SOA monthly expenses to. I'm thinking that second account has a hell of a lot going into it and wonder if it might be worth separating out into another account certain categories such as holidays / Christmas / car Maintanace etc...?

I am a great believer in keeping things simple for budgeting purposes particularly if you have never done it before.

I would suggest the following:

Your two personal first direct accounts receive your salaries. Decide on personal spending money you will both get each month (this can be variable depending on income so in a good month you could get more?) This covers haircuts, clothing, personal entertainment or hobbies etc. If not spent one month it can carry forward. I suggest you transfer the money for unsecured debt to the one account you have set up for that, transfer the groceries, fuel and entertainment money to the second account plus money for your childminder and clothing etc for baby and open up a third internet saver or a current account paying interest for savings for birthdays, Christmas, car maintenance, holidays, annual insurances etc. Maybe open a separate isa or something for emergency moneys and any left over after the transfers to the four accounts either keep as a buffer in one of the other accounts or overpay on the debt.


So in summary you will have


Two personal accounts receiving salaries and keeping personal spends in.

One joint account for unsecured debt repayments and overpayments. You can also have this account for fixed direct debits like council tax, utilities.

One joint account for groceries, family entertainment costs, fuel, childcare costs etc. That should go to nil at the end of each month with maybe any surplus going to emergency savings or debt overpayments.


One joint savings account for annual expenses for holidays, car maintenance, Christmas, annual insurances, birthdays.


One emergency savings account only to be used in absolute emergency if something needed before the account above has a chance to build up. You could combine the last two accounts initially as just a savings account for everything.

kindofagilr

JamesEmma wrote: »

Professional advice such as? And why so?

I personally don’t think you do, you have a very good income and not the biggest debt I’ve seen, so I think you can self manage it once you get a budget under control

getmore4less

Having been a msmoney(free) user I found YNAB far to basic and focused on monthly cashflow.

When what people need is a 5 year plan that ballances fully featured tools are much more useful.

I monitored traffic on YNAB and people seem to need workarounds to do basic stuff and have things off budget to make it work

MsMoney models the real world way money works.

kindofagilr

I don’t know what you mean about needing workarounds for it to work? It’s working s treat for me.

Any budget that is helping people is a good one surely, no matter which one it is

JamesEmma

Hi all,

Just a quick update to let you all know that we are still on this and getting to grips with YNAB. It does take a bit of getting used to but I'm confident it's all ready working and for the first time in my life I can actually see what we need to do with our £s to stay on track, paying down the debt and not spending more than we earn.

I've also been listening to a lot of Dave Ramsey podcasts which has helped immensely with motivation. He takes a bit of getting used to but I'm confident he really does make a lot of sense and has helped a lot of people make their money work for them...

Once again cheers for all the help and advice to you all..

MallyGirl

Thanks for coming back with an update

JamesEmma

Hey all,

Just diving in to give you a quick update and motivate anyone where we were 6 months ago.

Since January we've been YNAB'ing and 6 pay days later we've cleared £10k of our £52k debt... still some way to go but, thanks to a change of fortune, from September will be able to hit the debt more than twice as hard and we 'should' clear the remaining £42k in 9 to 12 months...

Big shout out to everyone who gave advice back in January. YNAB and Dave Ramsey were the way forward !!

JayRitchie

Thats some change in fortune! Well done!

enthusiasticsaver

That sounds brilliant. Good luck

Drawingaline

Fantastic! I too adore ynab.