Help budgeting & spreadsheet templates

blue.peter

B0bbyEwing said:

We also discussed having a total re-jig of our bank/savings accounts so that everything was easier to follow. Right now I keep a spreadsheet tallying our accounts to get a grand total but oh boy do we have so many accounts. That's not to say we have so much money, just a lot of accounts.

This is where AceMoney (or similar) excels (pun not intended). It has no trouble coping with a large number of accounts. The home page is a list of accounts, grouped as you wish, with a subtotal for each group and a grand total. The groups that I currently use are Bank Accounts, Credit Cards and Savings, but it's easy to create whatever groups you like and allocate accounts to those groups.

Clicking on any account on the home page takes you through to the transactions page for that account.

Closed accounts can be either shown or hidden, as you choose. I hide mine, but it's a trivial matter to display them if I want to look back and check something in one.

B0bbyEwing said:

So you would just handle these random pop up occurences (the offer of a drink or buying something unexpected while out) from just your general banking account if using my example above?

I would. That's the sort of thing for which I hold a bit back in my current account. But how you handle it is very much up to you: what suits me might or might not suit you. All I can do is offer suggestions, usually based on my own practices. If you choose not to follow my approach, or to take a bit of mine and a bit of someone else's, that's still fine. You need to find a method that works for you.

B0bbyEwing said:

However regards whatever we use, it would be really beneficial if we could both access it on the go. Can AceMoney do that?

It depends what you mean. It's possible to store the AceMoney data file in the cloud (say, in a free Dropbox or Google Drive space). If the AceMoney program is installed on multiple computers, they can all access the one data file. However, AceMoney is only available in Windows and MacOS flavours, so it won't run on anything smaller than a laptop computer. You can't, for example, use it on a mobile phone.

If you want to access stuff on a phone, there might be a suitable app. However, if there is, I'm not aware of it. I think that your mooted spreadsheet is what I'd suggest.

Maybe a compromise would work? How about using AceMoney (or similar) for managing your bank accounts, whilst keeping budget records (with the amounts available being constantly updated) on a spreadsheet? That'd allow a train of thought like "oh, that's a nice top - is there enough in the clothing budget to allow me to buy it? [looks at spreadsheet on phone] - yes - jolly good - I'll buy it".

I agree with you wholeheartedly about subscription software!

blue.peter

PS - you don't appear to have the difficulties experienced by the poster who started this thread, but you might still find some suggestions made in it helpful.

Rich1976

I created my own budget spreadsheet and works well for us.
both incomes go right at the top
then I list all the fixed and variable expenses. Absolutely everything, even stuff that is only paid once a year
then the savings and various savings pots for annual expenses
and finally all the fun money and Spotify subscription, gym membership, Netflix etc

income less all of this expenditure equals zero.

it’s not advanced by any means but works for what we need .
I then also keep a separate tab to log savings balances

Rich1976

B0bbyEwing said:

Dobbibill said:

The link blue.peter has shared tells you about planning for one off purchases. 

It depends on your approach but if you are going down the piggy-banking route then you would have spending money for spontaneous spends like coffees, or an emergency fund for emergencies, house fund for purchases to the house so really does depend on how you approach this. 

Do not mistake a budget for being tight and not having what you want......it's about giving every penny a job so you can plan for  what you want. 

Yeah that's what I'm trying to figure out.

I know what I'm wondering & lost with in my head but I re-read my OP & I certainly struggled putting it in to words for others to understand.

I know what I want to do - it started out as tallying what pennies go where to see what we may be spending too much on, but then the realisation set in with what's the point in that - we may as well set limits for things & go from there. 

I think my wife at first was worried that it'll mean no enjoyment, but that's the default reaction for anyone who's not "in to" this - to take it to the extreme. It doesn't mean we can't go to a coffee shop, it just means we can't go 2-3 times per week every week. It doesn't mean we can't have a takeaway, it just means we can't have 5 takeaways in a month. 

The only area I think what I want to do is different to others is I'd like to break supermarket spends down to split off junk food spending as that's an area I want us to not spend so much on. 


But I came here to see what others did as when my wife asked - what do I do if the girls ask me out, I said we cna put that under socialising. 
She then said well what do I do if I see something when I'm out - garden stuff, clothes stuff, house stuff, that we wouldn't normally buy. She didn't want to restrict herself just because computer-says-no (there's no category for that) - and I didn't really have an answer. 

My answer wasn't no. It was just that I wanted to see what others did. Not others who wing-it, because we've been winging it since day 1 so we know how to do that, but others who budget & allocate pennies to things.

I don’t think you can ever have too much in savings , especially if you own your own home and run a car or two. There is always stuff that needs to be saved for in addition to an emergency fund such as holidays or home improvements and then if you do run a car it will need replacing at some point so that will need saving for instead of getting into debt. For years we had the mindset of keeping very little in cash and invest the rest but unless you are on big salaries it isn’t really doable as saving for the car as an example takes a long time . So don’t assume 10k is enough.
you need to plan what you want to save for and how much it will cost and then investments need to come after that

B0bbyEwing

cheerfulcat said:

cheerfulcat said:

Make a category! It’s not that you don’t normally buy these things, you just don’t buy them regularly. 

I work out how much I want to spend per year on, for example, little things for the house. I divide that number by 12 and that gives me a monthly amount; anything not spent gets rolled over and added to next month’s budgeted amount. 

For things like drinks with friends, a monthly spending money allowance each might work for you?

Yes we could make a category. I'll give you some examples though which put uncertainty in my mind:

out for drinks (socialising) & buying clothes - couple of categories that I suspect most people have to put a figure to each month. Truth be told, I'm a hermit & don't socialise at all and my wife does it only occasionally. Not even enough to be called once a month - that's why I mentioned it as an unexpected event. Same with clothes - I suspect most people need some kind of allowance. I buy clothes maybe once per year if that and that's not a spending spree, it's probably like one item. My wife buys more than I do but even then not a lot. 

You say "I work out how much I want to spend per year on things for the house". There's the difference with us. I don't want to spend anything. I have what I want. If the TV goes bust then ok I'll need to. 

I can't really think of anything we need (beyond a new kitchen, new bathroom), but as far as singular items go - no.

Garden is an ongoing thing where singulars can be bought but that's the wife's domain. It's got to the point where it's going to have to have its own category as she can go out with the intention of spending £5-£10 on plants yet ends up spending £50 because that's nice, that's nice, that's nice.

And in case anyone thinks it's a bash the wife post, not at all. I have my own things. Randomly browsing eBay can be a problem at times where I'll buy crap I don't need. Gizmos & gadgets. That's going to have to get stopped/cut back because energy / fuel / food is going up, a LOT, so that extra cash has to come from somewhere & it's not going to be from the sky.

B0bbyEwing

blue.peter said:

PS - you don't appear to have the difficulties experienced by the poster who started this thread, but you might still find some suggestions made in it helpful.

Read their opening post. Thanks for that link.

While not on an exact par with them, I do sympathise with their situation. We could go a month without a takeaway, but I also remember times where we've had 4 in 1 week through pure laziness.

My wife will do the cooking you see. Something she gets cranky about from time to time & I will occasionally cook too but then I do other things - I do the house cleaning, hoovering, I do the washing up of the pots for example. Some times she'll just say she can't be bothered making tea so that's it - takeaway. If I had advance notice then I'd get something sorted but when it's lastminute.com I also can't be bothered then thinking what can we do.

So that's how it starts. A chippy will be £5-£10 depending but the standard takeaway is approx. £25. That's £100 in that week I mentioned. 

Now it's not £100 every week or even every month. My point is it can happen though. I already know we spend too much in that area, same with coffee shops & junk food. They're the 3 categories where I already know we can free up some cash.

But that thread looks like it'll be a good read. Thanks.

B0bbyEwing

Rich1976 said:

I don’t think you can ever have too much in savings , especially if you own your own home and run a car or two. There is always stuff that needs to be saved for in addition to an emergency fund such as holidays or home improvements and then if you do run a car it will need replacing at some point so that will need saving for instead of getting into debt. For years we had the mindset of keeping very little in cash and invest the rest but unless you are on big salaries it isn’t really doable as saving for the car as an example takes a long time . So don’t assume 10k is enough.
you need to plan what you want to save for and how much it will cost and then investments need to come after that

See here's the problem:

You're right (in bold). I can't say you're not.
BUT you need a balance. A number needs to be decided upon & stuck to.
£10k is better than £5k but £20k is better than £10k & £40k is better than £20k .. but where do you stop? To have such money just sat in a cash saving account 'just in case' makes little sense to me.

When I say it makes little sense, I mean when our long term goal is retiring ASAP. So at some point we need to look at investing, not cash saving.

You say you kept "very little" in cash. I don't think it has to be at either end of the scale (very little or megamoney), which is why I've looked at a sensible figure as you can't just keep putting in to a cash savings account & ignore investing.

I agree with you on the salary comment as it takes too long.We're not huge earners. I'm around 27k gross & wife is around 23-24k gross. We put away each month to build an emergency pot of 6 months & that took us a good few years to complete (with all other things being paid for - as if we just wanted to do a 6 month pot & ignore all else then it could've been done very quickly but then we'd have been pretty hungry & cold for example.

Looking at my account spreadsheet, with our wages, last year we saved about £2.5k over the year, 2020 we saved nearly £10k, 2019 was nearly £5k saved, 2018 was £2k saved.

So it fluctuates quite a bit. Some would say on our wage we should be saving much more & I would agree - that's one of the reasons I'm here making this thread.



I've had to edit the above. I've no idea why it said we're huge earners. That was supposed to be a we're not huge earners lol. I'll rectify that now.

Hmm that's weird, when I read this post back it said that I typed we're huge earners but as I've hit edit it says correctly that we're not huge earners. Wonder why the difference when I click edit.

baldeagle09

Microsoft Money is an old program that I use which helps to track income and expenditure. Not perfect but useful, especially if you have a number of accounts. You can compare budget and actual income and expenditure.

Jami74

B0bbyEwing said:

Just looking for a bit of advice as not too sure where to start. What do you do when something throws a spanner in the works? Surely there has to be a degree of flexibility. I wouldn't want to make a bad choice just because computer-says-no or rather computer hasn't been programmed to say yes yet.

Yeah, I never quite worked out how to explicitly budget for the random spendings. I can't budget for occasional coffees with friends/take-aways/treats/hospital parking, months might go buy without any of those things and then I might have them all in one go. Because the spending is done on credit cards I know before the first of the month (when I pay myself and do all my banking) how much is needed and if one month I've spent more, then less goes into savings and S&S ISA. I'm very lucky that we are now in a position that an unexpected spend is not likely to push us into debt, it just means less into savings that month.

I think you posted that you have £10k sat in cash savings plus six months wages. That's a lot of money. If you wanted to allocate a particular amount of money for random spends, could you ringfence eg £1500 and see if it lasts a year? To keep it separate you could put it in a Chase savings account (earning 1.5%) and transfer it as when needed to the current account (earns 1% cashback), adjust it or top it up as appropriate. Although would your wife think you were trying to put a cap on her spending if you did that? And if you are not, then why does it matter how you 'budget' for it? I think the people who need to strictly budget for those little random spends are the ones who are either really struggling with debt and cashflow or the ones who are intentionally trying to live extremely frugally for eg fire. 

My spreadsheet has multiple tabs having evolved over years. I have one where I record all of the spends under categories, this is so I can look back and compare months and years and consider where savings might be made. I have a tab which mimic my accounts so I can futuristically plant figures in, this has helped where I get monthly income but partner gets four weekly income and for when monthly bills increase. I have a tab which is just a list of accounts and their balances so I know exactly where my money is and how much I've got. Every so often I search for something better but I haven't found anything that does what I want better than the spreadsheet I designed for me.

B0bbyEwing

Jami74 said:

Yeah, I never quite worked out how to explicitly budget for the random spendings. I can't budget for occasional coffees with friends/take-aways/treats/hospital parking, months might go buy without any of those things and then I might have them all in one go. Because the spending is done on credit cards I know before the first of the month (when I pay myself and do all my banking) how much is needed and if one month I've spent more, then less goes into savings and S&S ISA. I'm very lucky that we are now in a position that an unexpected spend is not likely to push us into debt, it just means less into savings that month.

Yeah I think that might be how we're going to have to do it, unless anyone can suggest (or preferably show) something different.

Some things are just spoken for (fixed: mortgage, energy etc, variable: fuel, food etc). Whatever if anything that is left over at that month end will get dumped in to some kind of savings, be it cash to top up the 10k or investing or whatever. 

I've said to my wife (who for a long time didn't like spending under £5 on a card) that we need to use a card wherever possible (for tracking purposes). What I can do is when a non-categorised spend is made, I can edit the spreadsheet to include that spend for that one month.

Like your example of parking - we don't pay for parking. My wife does the food shop in Aldi which doesn't charge & when she needs to go to Sainsbury's she's in & out within 30mins so it's free. Everything else we just walk as we're that close to the town. We only drive when we're picking up something that we can't carry. Even in rain. Parking charges are obscene. BUT there are times where we do need to pay (sent to a hospital out of the area for e.g.). No point in making an allowance for it each month as can count on 1 hand the amount of times it happens in a year, but can edit that 1 month so it's entered. 

Jami74 said:

I think you posted that you have £10k sat in cash savings plus six months wages. That's a lot of money. If you wanted to allocate a particular amount of money for random spends, could you ringfence eg £1500 and see if it lasts a year? To keep it separate you could put it in a Chase savings account (earning 1.5%) and transfer it as when needed to the current account (earns 1% cashback), adjust it or top it up as appropriate. Although would your wife think you were trying to put a cap on her spending if you did that? And if you are not, then why does it matter how you 'budget' for it? I think the people who need to strictly budget for those little random spends are the ones who are either really struggling with debt and cashflow or the ones who are intentionally trying to live extremely frugally for eg fire. 

That is an idea, yes.
On the one hand I'm not comfortable with 10k sat around in cash savings, even in a Chase 1.5% - it's still a poor rate even if it is the best / one of the best but on the other hand I know how long it takes to build these numbers. We're not an 80k, 100k+ household. I know the bathroom needs doing, we want the kitchen done, I wouldn't mind the roof doing & then stuff always just happens. 
At the end of the day you need to pick a figure else you'll be sat there undecided all day long. 1k isn't enough, 100k is ridiculous. I think/hope 10k is a decent balance. It may not be but I hope it is. 
At the end of the day, if we need more, we could always pull from the S&S ISA that excess (left over) money would be put in to.

And no she doesn't think I'm trying to cap (control) her. I did wonder if she'd think that but no. She gets where I'm coming from. She can't get "in to" it but she just lets me get on with it (her words). Anything that needs discussing (like this) I discuss with her. Anything that doesn't (like opening a new account) I don't bother.Jami74 said:

B0bbyEwing said:

My spreadsheet has multiple tabs having evolved over years. I have one where I record all of the spends under categories, this is so I can look back and compare months and years and consider where savings might be made. I have a tab which mimic my accounts so I can futuristically plant figures in, this has helped where I get monthly income but partner gets four weekly income and for when monthly bills increase. I have a tab which is just a list of accounts and their balances so I know exactly where my money is and how much I've got. Every so often I search for something better but I haven't found anything that does what I want better than the spreadsheet I designed for me.

Yeah I wondered about that also. My wife gets paid the same amount every month on the same date every month. 

I get paid on the same date every month, however 1) my pay varies and 2) some times that is for a 4 week payment but occasionally it's for a 5 week payment, so I get a bit extra on those months.

So what I thought was rather than waiting on seeing what the income numbers are going to be, August for example would run off July's income numbers. August's income (to our bank) will show as September's income (in the spreadsheet). Otherwise we'd have no numbers to work off until part way through the month.

And yeah, I feel in my head I could roughly visualise a suitable spreadsheet - it's just getting it down on one and those flipping formulas. 


Off topic : And no idea what is going on with those quotes. I just can't get to grips with this forum & the quoting system. It's not like any other forum I've been on in 20 years. Maybe everyone else is on vBulletin forums. Whatever it is, I have no problem everywhere else. Here I just can't.