Help budgeting & spreadsheet templates

MovingForwards

I run a basic spreadsheet for the year.
Along the top is each month, down the side are the outgoings, I have it set to auto-calculate, under that figure I have my current account balance.

The cost of takeaways comes out my food budget.

I also have a miscellaneous section.

If I need a new fridge, item of furniture etc that comes out of a dedicated account. Same if there's an emergency or home repair. Each holds £1k.  I even have a float.  

blue.peter

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

A suggestion for occasions like this: perhaps you could find a few recipes that only use canned and/or dried foods and/or things that you always have in the house anyway (e.g., onions?). If you then keep a supply of the necessary foodstuffs in the larder, you could produce a relatively cheap meal at very short notice.

So, for example, if I was in that position, I could produce a filling and nutritious meal using only:

• dried wholewheat spaghetti, with a sauce made of
• red lentils
• a can of chopped tomatoes
• onion
• garlic
• water
• a little olive oil
  
• ground cinnamon
• salt and pepper

I keep all of these ingredients in the house as a matter of course. Cooking the meal, including preparation time, takes under 45 minutes. (As it happens, I cook batches of that sauce, and so there are usually one or two portions of it in the freezer - which is even easier than cooking it from scratch!)

B0bbyEwing

blue.peter said:

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

A suggestion for occasions like this: perhaps you could find a few recipes that only use canned and/or dried foods and/or things that you always have in the house anyway (e.g., onions?). If you then keep a supply of the necessary foodstuffs in the larder, you could produce a relatively cheap meal at very short notice.

So, for example, if I was in that position, I could produce a filling and nutritious meal using only:

• dried wholewheat spaghetti, with a sauce made of
• red lentils
• a can of chopped tomatoes
• onion
• garlic
• water
• a little olive oil
  
• ground cinnamon
• salt and pepper

I keep all of these ingredients in the house as a matter of course. Cooking the meal, including preparation time, takes under 45 minutes. (As it happens, I cook batches of that sauce, and so there are usually one or two portions of it in the freezer - which is even easier than cooking it from scratch!)

This is the frustrating thing because afterwards I'll be so mad at myself for caving in & shelling out £25 through sheer laziness - because the takeaway could've taken 60-90 minutes to arrive. 
And even if I wasn't going to make anything, a 5 minute walk to the chippy would've brought that £25 down to £10 very tops. 

Sometimes the willpower is on point. Other times it's non existent. 

We'll have a day such as today where we'll say RIGHT THEN, THAT'S IT, from now on......... 
and the intentions will be good.
And the next time we're in that situation we may stick to it & feel good that we did.
Equally we may cave again & that just winds me up again. 

I know it sounds ridiculous - because it is. 


What I think is also a problem is not knowing what can and can't be used from frozen. I know some stuff can be cooked direct from frozen but other stuff needs defrosting first. 
But some stuff I hate speed-defrosting. Such as frozen chicken in the microwave - because it starts cooking it, turning it white in parts & making it tough. Horrible.

But yeah, it'd be helpful if I found out what could & couldn't be done.

RG2015

It has suddenly struck me that the majority of your expenditure is regular and essential. In fact you said this in your first post. Your concerns are about the variable amount.

It should be quite easy to identify and record essential costs.

Mortgage
Council tax
Energy
Water
Phone & broadband
Motoring costs
Insurance
Maintenance contracts
Food and household costs
etc

Some of these costs will be fixed and others will vary. The frequency will also vary from weekly to monthly and annual. The point is that these costs are unavoidable, at least in the short term.

You will need to monitor your essential costs and if possible find ways to reduce them.

Your remaining costs are discretionary. These need to be identified and treated differently to your essential costs. For example you find that you spent £100 in August on non-essentials. Are you happy with this? Are you happy to repeat this in September?

Did you buy on impulse? Do you regret? etc.

Only you and your wife can answer these questions.

Most of us will be facing a crunch in the coming months. Many will be shocked. At least you have taken the first step towards taking control.

Jami74

B0bbyEwing said:

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. 

So how I do it, all of the income for one month gets immediately moved into a separate account and is used to pay myself the following month. So even though my current job pays me on the 20th of the month, that money gets hidden away and I consider the first of the month as my payday. This really helped me when I was on variable weekly pay. By the end of each month, I know exactly how much I need for the next month. My formulas in Excel are mostly just adding up columns.

blue.peter

B0bbyEwing said:

This is the frustrating thing because afterwards I'll be so mad at myself for caving in & shelling out £25 through sheer laziness - because the takeaway could've taken 60-90 minutes to arrive. 
And even if I wasn't going to make anything, a 5 minute walk to the chippy would've brought that £25 down to £10 very tops. 

Sometimes the willpower is on point. Other times it's non existent.

I wonder if you and your wife can support one another in these circumstances? It might be worth talking to her about it.

I'm thinking that instead of just saying words to the effect of "I don't feel like cooking this evening", she might say "I don't feel like cooking this evening. Do you think that you could make [insert name of simple dish] that we both enjoy?". In other words, can she turn a negative into a positive by offering a nudge towards something cheaper instead of your default easy option of a takeaway?

If there's a list of simple dishes that you make somewhere handy (on the kitchen whiteboard, say, if you have one, or maybe with your takeaway menus), you can both quickly look at that for ideas in this situation.

Another thing that might be helpful is to plan the next week's meals before your weekly supermarket trip. Just planning ahead a bit can make meal preparation easier. I find that if I know in advance what I'm going to cook, it becomes easier - I almost go into autopilot.

Incidentally, how wedded are you to having meat as part of every meal? Vegetarian meals are often cheaper. A book of quick and easy vegetarian recipes might be a good investment. (Declaration of interest: I haven't eaten meat in 35 years.)

B0bbyEwing

blue.peter said:

If there's a list of simple dishes that you make somewhere handy (on the kitchen whiteboard, say, if you have one, or maybe with your takeaway menus), you can both quickly look at that for ideas in this situation.

Another thing that might be helpful is to plan the next week's meals before your weekly supermarket trip. Just planning ahead a bit can make meal preparation easier. I find that if I know in advance what I'm going to cook, it becomes easier - I almost go into autopilot.

Incidentally, how wedded are you to having meat as part of every meal? Vegetarian meals are often cheaper. A book of quick and easy vegetarian recipes might be a good investment. (Declaration of interest: I haven't eaten meat in 35 years.)

This made me laugh - because it's relevant to us.

We have the whiteboard.
We decide meals in advance.
My wife has turned veggie.

Just made me chuckle how you're hitting nails on heads. To respond in order: 

We don't have a list of simple dishes no but we do have a whiteboard (those cork/whiteboard half n halfs). Also have a sort of whiteboard on the fridge too - one just a small blank magnet which I use to put dates of certain foods as I got sick of food being wasted due to expired dates (I don't mean where something is a day past & it could still be used, I mean where you just wouldn't eat it) and we have another magnet whiteboard where a section of it has the days on which my wife uses to list what meals are on those days for tea.

Which brings us in to the middle section of your post. I'm very easy. I can eat the same thing (within reason) day after day so long as it's filling & nutritious. If it's just junk then I can't. My wife is like the reverse of that.
Anyway, lately the list has been going out of the window. I forever forget to look so I'll text & say what's for tea but then when it's tea time it's totally changed to (lately) baked potato and whatever filling you want, which I've got tired of fast. The change comes from my wife not wanting to make what was on the board. Which in part kind of stems from a separate issue which is a little more complex.

Now some would say - well you make tea then. And I would. It's just I would like advance notice if I have to so I can plan something (usually a stir fry of some description is what I make - quick & easy, but I need the stuff in). Like I said earlier, it's just the loose agreement that my wife makes the tea & work-dinners and I clean the house & do the washing up. It's not a set in stone rule. 

Meat - no meat, I don't generally care so long as 1) it's tasty 2) it's filling 3) it's nutritious (which is why I'm getting sick of baked potato, cheese & baked beans). 
My wife has turned veggie on grounds of being an animal lover (to the point she can't kill a fly - everything deserves to live). For a thing to have died for her to eat doesn't sit well with her any more. 
Now me personally, I don't care. I'll still eat meat but equally as I told her, if it's a nice veggie dish then I'll have it as it'll make things easier. She did some kind of bean dish the other week which cost sod all to make & carried over to the next day as there was loads. The price of meat is becoming shocking.

What I have also discovered is that people who go veggie or specifically vegan, seem to get penalised massively on pricing. I can't believe how dear some of the stuff is.

But she loaned a veggie book off my mother and has also been on pintrest for ideas. She's just concerned as a lot of her meals seem to be full of cheese for flavour and she's also concerned about lacking in certain vitamins through having no meat. 

blue.peter

B0bbyEwing said:

This made me laugh - because it's relevant to us.

We have the whiteboard.
We decide meals in advance.
My wife has turned veggie.

Just made me chuckle how you're hitting nails on heads.

More by luck than judgement!

B0bbyEwing said:

She's just concerned as a lot of her meals seem to be full of cheese for flavour and she's also concerned about lacking in certain vitamins through having no meat. 

Protein is a bigger issue than vitamins. The necessary vitamins and minerals can generally be found in vegetables. I don't know if it's still the case, but vegetarian cookbooks often used to have sections that dealt with nutrition, including vitamins and minerals as well as protein. (I'm talking about the 1980s here.)

Broadly speaking, you're fine if you either:

1. have dairy products; or
2. mix nuts/grains (cashews or wholewheat, say) and pulses (beans, lentils etc).

So my lentil sauce has pulses. Add the wholewheat spaghetti, and you've got a good mix. Similarly, baked beans on wholewheat toast is pretty basic, but also ticks the right boxes from that perspective.

Your wife might find it helpful to join the Vegetarian Society for a year or two - it's a good source of practical information on the subject.

My favourite cookbook is Rose Elliot's Vegetarian Cookery. That has a decent section on nutrition as well as some of my favourite recipes. It's long been out of print, but you might find a secondhand copy on AbeBooks or Biblio if you want it.

By the way, there's no need to address everything I say. I'm trying to give you things to think about, not get answers from you for myself. Obviously, though, if I raise more questions, it makes sense to ask them.

Rich1976

B0bbyEwing said:

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.

Absolutely it’s all about balance and priorities and I do agree to some extent. It’s only when you sit down and write down everything you want to save up for. You’ve identified a list of wants. So need to identify how much each thing is going to cost and then how long it will take to save up. 

You say it took years to save up 10k for an emergency fund but how much is a new roof and how long will that take?
it really did blow my mind when I did it for our circumstances as there is  never enough money and many of our wants may well just remain as a want.
I don’t like debt and don’t ever want to be in a position where a car has to be paid for on finance or we can’t afford to replace the windows because we have a debt payment to make. So my attitude is everything has to be saved for and paid that way. But that does mean less goes into our pensions 

Rich1976

I would also add, having re-read your opening post is get there should be no unexpected expense because every pound is given a job if you do your budget properly.
so your comment about what if your wife wanted to go for a last minute drink, well she can because hopefully you will allocate a certain proportion of your take home pay as fun money. So this is an agreed sum of money which you can both use throughout the month on guilt free spending which can cover absolutely anything like drinks or meals out, takeaways, clothes, going to the cinema. Anything really, and as long as you don’t go mad and spend it all in one weekend then she can go for a night out or you can have that takeaway if you don’t feel like cooking.
so have a line on your budget for fun money . If you spend it all in a month well that’s fine as that’s what it’s for. It does take a while to find the number you are both happy with.

also get into the habit of paying yourself first. So instead of saving what’s left, save the day after you both get paid. So again on my spreadsheet we have all the essentials, all the monthly variable expenses, then the savings and pensions and finally the fun stuff. The money to savings is moved before either of us has chance to spend it because believe me it will get spent and then you get used to living on what’s left. As long as you don’t choose an unrealistically low figure as fun money but an amount which allows you to enjoy your life to a certain extent throughout the month then you do get used to the routine.