I need help budgeting

nicetomeetyou

I’m really rubbish with money, I spend too much on eating out, coffee shops, takeaways. I suffer from schizophrenia induced anhedonia,

I have a budget from appointee at social services who manages my money, he pays £125 a week (£500 a month), he pays all my other bills his end…

My outgoings are per month…

£100 to £120 on food shopping
£250 a month savings
£117 to £137 eating out/coffees/takeaways /amazon prime/Netflix
£13 a month bank account fees

I seem to spend all £500 without savings anything in a month and then go into my overdraft… How can I learn to be more responsible with my money and sticky to my plans? I get bored easy and spend spend spend... I do spend a lot of time in coffee shops and alcohol (cans) I don't have much willpower if I want to spend money...

I have just implemented paying £62.50 a week into a separate current account. This gives me £59.25 a week to live off.

sal_III

You might try something like Starling bank spaces - where you ring fence money in various "virtual accounts" via the app and can't spend them via the card, so next time your impulse buy will bounce, until you manually transfer money from the spaces to your main account for spending, which is a barrier to impulse purchases. But if you can't control your self enough to get this to work you are indeed better off by someone drip feeding you money.

Stop using overdraft.

Neil_Jones

nicetomeetyou wrote: »

I’m really rubbish with money, I spend too much on eating out, coffee shops, takeaways. I suffer from schizophrenia induced anhedonia,

I have a budget from appointee at social services who manages my money, he pays £125 a week (£500 a month), he pays all my other bills his end…

My outgoings are per month…

£100 to £120 on food shopping
£250 a month savings
£117 to £137 eating out/coffees/takeaways /amazon prime/Netflix
£13 a month bank account fees

I seem to spend all £500 without savings anything in a month and then go into my overdraft… How can I learn to be more responsible with my money and sticky to my plans? I get bored easy and spend spend spend... I do spend a lot of time in coffee shops and alcohol (cans) I don't have much willpower if I want to spend money...

I have just implemented paying £62.50 a week into a separate current account. This gives me £59.25 a week to live off.

Food shopping switch down a "tier" - ie from premium to branded to own brand to value as here:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/cheap-supermarket-shopping/

Or failing that just go go to Lidl, Aldi, Farmfoods, the pound shop, those sort of places for cheap food that is value.

Takeaways are fine on occasion but they are expensive because you pay for the convenience of not having to a) make and then b) cook. If you like Pizzas and you've seen the price of Pizza on its own at Dominos and Pizza hut, consider Lidl knock pepperoni pizzas out at just 79p. If you like takeaway fish and chips you can buy four pieces of cod/haddock/plaice/whatever for about £2.50 and a big bag of chips for less than a quid again at Lidl, get four meals out of it for about 75p a go. The chip shop probably charges you, what, £5 to £7 and have done nothing you can't do yourself (you can also buy a small pack of potatoes, chop them up and deep fry them yourself).

Re: Bank account fees, check you need all the benefits that the account in question gives you, that sounds like one of the Nationwide ones?