10 years to go .... maybe, with a fair wind

bricoleur

Lauraebrad said:
The basic principle is that every £ has a job, and therefore there is money for everything necessary ...... 

Usually (when not zero basing) I just have incomes and outgoings (i.e direct debits for utilities etc) showing on my spreadsheet - and then £xx left over that gets spent on everything else.  What that means though is that extra savings tend to get pushed off the end and only made if there's any pennies left at the end of the month.
With a zero based budget every £ is allocated, so once I'd shown my income and fixed expenses, I then allocated a budget to all other categories I expected to spend.  I then had to shift some around a little (i.e. decide where to make savings ) to make it work.  Example below.  I expect there are many many people would could explain it better than this!!

Thanks, that sounds a bit complicated to me, and not sure how accurate, if I did that I always had to adjust it later. It's hard to budget discretionary budget in advance - there is always something coming up. I'm the other type, I budget all regular stuff - bills, DDs, SOs, anything that I know the amount for... then whatever is left I try not to exceed. Maybe not the best approach but it's worked for the most part. 

Lauraebrad

So March continues.  I'd forgotten I'd sold my last £200 of premium bonds, and as it looks like I didn't win the million I'll be splitting them between overpaying the mortgage, and the holiday fund.
I'm still working on adjusting my attempt at March's zero based budget after finding some more categories I'd failed to account for (replacement kids swimming goggles ... ) but hoping that this will help me be more accurate next month as I get the hang of it.  
Not much coming up on prolific or bemyeye at the moment.

savingholmes

You will get better at budgeting. I can't remember whether you have an emergency fund in place. If not I'd try to sell stuff to get one.

Lauraebrad

So March came to a bit of a bumpy end all round, gradually getting more anti social from the 14th ish, and limping away with unexpected homeschooling, homeworking and empty pasta shelves by the end.  However, it did the budget a world of good.  I massively over spent on items (mostly childcare!) relating to my little boy which I'd forgotten about, and went a little over the food budget - probably due to having to buy what there was in the shops rather than the things I actually wanted.  But this was more than balanced out by significant under spends in diesel, public transport, eating and drinking out and not going to the dentist!  SO another £50 paid off - that's a total of £785 overpayments this year.

So..... I'm giving this zero based budget another go for April - this time remembering to factor in lockdown, and Easter.....
Food - 200
Diesel - 40
Public transport/parking - 20 (in case I get redeployed back in to the office)
Eating out - 20 (maybe a delivery treat?)
Small boy - 25 (books and pocket money I expect)
Gifts - 10
Misc - 20
Entertainment - 20 (e.g. online donations for streaming theatre shows)
Holidays - 150 - saving towards the summer if we ever get one
Repay a stoozed credit card - 111.05
Dentist - 25 (if they open up again) 
Home/garden - 20 (thinking compost/seeds/fence paint)
Giving - 20 - as the rest of the budget is so reduced thought it best to redistribute some

As with everyone I guess, there are are a lot of variables here.  I'm assuming we remain in lockdown for the whole of April, but during that time my work circumstances could potentially change ..... so best guesses only on the budget.

Grogged

I think we're all going to be in lockdown heaven this month and probably restrictions carrying on in May and June.
Some solid progress on the overpayments there.
Good luck with the zero budgeting and hope you have a nice Easter.

longway2go

Hi Lauraebrad, just read your diary and wanted to pop in and wish you luck. Have you heard of Ynab, it a great budgeting app and think they do a 60 day free trial. They have some really good stuff of you tube and talk about giving every dollar/pound a job and also the fact that changes in your budget don't meant you budgeted wrong but just that you reprioritise and make conscious decisions. I have been using the app for a while and it completely changed my attitude to money and Ops have increased and I do budget better.
I was in serveral overdrafts continuously but have budgeted to get out of them and make Ops at the same time.
Hope you and your little one are OK in this strange time. 

Lauraebrad

longway2go said:

Have you heard of Ynab, it a great budgeting app and think they do a 60 day free trial. 

Thanks @longway2go I haven't tried it but I do follow them on Instagram and find the tutorials really useful - in fact that was one of the things that got me started on zero based budgeting!

savingholmes

All the best with budgeting for April. We are all in slightly uncharted waters currently with some areas of the budget potentially better and others worse.

Lauraebrad

Thanks @savingholmes
I cashed in a couple more times from prolific this week, so scratched together another £25 to pay off - hurrah,

savingholmes

Brilliant news - shows it can be done. I did surveys at one point but kept getting screened out so gave up. I got a couple of free holidays through it (timeshares).