Do Personal Budgeting Experts / Freelancers exist in the UK

nkcoll

Hi,

I would like to hire someone on a one off basis to review our household spending, our utility contracts and analyse or suggest better deals with other providers and suggest other ways of cutting costs. My husband and I make half hearted attempts to do this all the time using all kinds of online tools such as Money Dashboard, Compare The Market etc but simply run out of time. I looked on freelancer sites and there seems to be lots of these individuals in the US but for the UK, it only seems to be Investment Advisors. Sadly we have no funds to invest, hence the need for the a Budgeting Expert :-)

Does anyone know if such a person exists and if so, what should I be searching for?
Thank you

ForumUser7

Have you contacted providers you have finances with? I think previously some of them were offering budgeting type video calls, to help with the cost of living crisis - usually offered through their financial support team

nkcoll

Thank you @ForumUser7 - we would hate to use up the time of anyone there to support in the cost of living crisis as we're, thankfully, not struggling. This is just a straight up hire of someone to review our spend and suggest ways to save. 

RG2015

I do my own budget planning and frankly wouldn't trust a "budget expert", but that is just me. Unfortunately, I do not have an answer to your question as I have not looked into the topic.

What I can say is that Money Dashboard and Compare the Market may not be the right tools to use as a starting point.

Have you tried the budget planners on the links links below? The Money Saving Expert one also gives you a very good overview. Once you have a good handle on how much you are spending and where, you should be in a better position to compare your data on comparison sites.

PS: Here is a quote from Martin Lewis on the Money Makeover page.

Can I get someone to do this for me?

Aaaarghhh! People ask this all the time, and I hate this question. Asking it means you've missed the whole point of MoneySaving.

The process doesn't just save you cash, it empowers you to understand how companies will take your cash through ignorance, apathy and inertia. Yet even if that wasn't the case, there aren't any MoneySaving advisers, the service doesn't exist, and even if it did, their cost would eat up much of the gain.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/

https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/everyday-money/budgeting/budget-planner

https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/everyday-money/budgeting/how-to-save-money-on-household-bills

eskbanker

You could do worse than categorising your spend and sharing details on here, where posters can probably offer thoughts on areas for improvement - there are templates at sites like https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

Growingold

nkcoll said:

Hi,

I would like to hire someone on a one off basis to review our household spending, our utility contracts and analyse or suggest better deals with other providers and suggest other ways of cutting costs. My husband and I make half hearted attempts to do this all the time using all kinds of online tools such as Money Dashboard, Compare The Market etc but simply run out of time. I looked on freelancer sites and there seems to be lots of these individuals in the US but for the UK, it only seems to be Investment Advisors. Sadly we have no funds to invest, hence the need for the a Budgeting Expert :-)

Does anyone know if such a person exists and if so, what should I be searching for?
Thank you

From reading your post you are looking for someone who has financial knowledge and also time to suggest ways of cutting your costs and to suggest better deals to the ones you have that may be available. Ultimately you would be the ones to decide which suggestion if any to follow.   There are a lot of financially aware people out there , you don't have to have a qualification to be financially aware and to make suggestions.  Are  any of your friends or friends of your friends able to help you?  

nkcoll

Thank you everyone for taking the time to answer. I completely understand Martin's comment about hiring budgeting experts but as with anything, budgeting, spreadsheets, online tools, they all require the time put in upfront. I have used the MSE budget sheet before (it's excellent) and have categorised spend, but as is often the case for these kind of fiscal projects, they fall behind the priorities of full time work, kids, kids activities, life etc, etc! I was hoping there may be someone who could beaver away at it for me!
Thanks again for your responses. 

RG2015

nkcoll said:

Thank you everyone for taking the time to answer. I completely understand Martin's comment about hiring budgeting experts but as with anything, budgeting, spreadsheets, online tools, they all require the time put in upfront. I have used the MSE budget sheet before (it's excellent) and have categorised spend, but as is often the case for these kind of fiscal projects, they fall behind the priorities of full time work, kids, kids activities, life etc, etc! I was hoping there may be someone who could beaver away at it for me!
Thanks again for your responses. 

Thanks for your response and I understand completely. I actually spent much of my working life doing my company's multi-million budgets. Not surprisingly my personal budget took a back seat!

Now I am retired I am able to apply my experience to my personal finances. Whilst I have no regrets, I do wish I had spent a little more time on my finances when I was younger. I could have saved a ton of money.

My final thought is even if you don't examine all of your expenditure, look at 1 or 2 big items.

I got stung for hundreds on home insurance before I moved insurers in 2011. My renewal quote was 20% up at £750 so I shopped around and got a quote of £282. Twelve years on and it is still only just over half of that quote that stung me into action.

TheBanker

There are a few problems with paying someone to do this for you.

Firstly, they wouldn't be able to open accounts or move money, so even if they made good suggestions you'd still need to do most of the work.

Secondly, its not a one odd exercise, and needs to be reviewed as both your circumstances and available products change. So you'd need to pay an ongoing servicing fee.

Thirdly, some of the biggest savings come from rearanging mortgages and insurance policies, which is straying into regulated activity.

And finally, they might rip you off. There is (or was) an energy company that relied on its customers to act as salesmen. They got a bounty for everyone they signed up. How would you know the person you've hired isn't doing that, unless you research everything yourself...

If I was you, I'd start by making a note of when anything that runs for a fixed term ends. So your mortgage fixed rate, any fixed rate savings, any car or home insurance, mobile and brocontacts btracts. Don't miss these dates because they represent a good opportunity to either reduce costs, or avoid increased costs. And for some of them you can end up auto-renewing if you don't act.

Then look at your cash. If you've a large sum in a current account or instant access savings earning less than 3.5% it needs moving. Some people will tell you to set up multiple Regular Savers to maximise interest, but if you don't want to commit to managing them, just put the whole lot in the best paying instant access account. 

eskbanker

If you're seeing it as a massive project, then don't let the scale of the whole thing overwhelm you, just break it down into more manageable chunks and set aside half an hour (or whatever) to do one thing per week.

Run your numbers through comparison sites in advance of any contracts/policies/terms expiring, for the likes of mortgage, car insurance, home insurance, energy, broadband, TV, mobiles, etc, and in other weeks in between those, look at other categories such as food shopping.

Personally I've found it quite helpful to analyse spend from the bottom up rather than the top down, in that it's usually pretty straightforward to quantify all the big ticket items, but if you add them all together and compare with income, there'll probably be a huge gap between what ought to be left over and what actually is, so dig deeper into everything at transaction level and see just how much gets spent on small items that accumulate to substantial expenditure, whether that's takeaways, coffees, or zillions of other things that can easily be overlooked....

RG2015

Also worth looking at regular monthly payments as these also add up very quickly.

And if you have ever seen Eat Well for Less on the BBC there are amazing supermarket savings possible. I know the families tend to be incredibly unaware of their actual spend, but the principles of swapping are absolutely solid.