How do you budget and save or money?

[Becca xo]

Everyone knows that money can be tight sometimes so how do you keep your monthly outgoings down? How do you budget do you have a plan on what needs to be paid & when? Also do you receive any benefits that top up on money you already have?

 

[StarBound]

We earn £17,000 a year between the 2 of us ;
we also get £20 a week child benefit & £222 a month CTC & £25.00 a week WTC
My partner also does side jobs for his brothers business etc

Savings wise; we save ALL our change under £1. this saves £200-300 over 15 months.
But we also set aside money for date nights etc. If we don't go one week the money goes straight to our savings I.e we were going to go to the cinema this week but my babysitter is ill so we are having a nice meal at home and the £35 we set aside goes into the wedding fund xD
other than that we also sell on eBay , any profit goes into wedding fund

 

[discoclare]

Everyone knows that money can be tight sometimes so how do you keep your monthly outgoings down?
I work 5 days a week and I try to take my lunch in with me at least half the time to save money. I also use an Oyster card for reduced fares on tube, bus etc. We do not have a car as I think they are an expensive luxury for people who live in London and can manage fine with public transport. I use cloth nappies (though the financial benefits are not the main reason that I use them). OH works from our bedroom so he doesn't have to pay desk fees to rent a desk in London!

How do you budget do you have a plan on what needs to be paid & when?
I don't really budget TBH. I'm just naturally someone who's a bit careful with money (maybe it was all those years as a poor student!). At the beginning of each month myself and OH both put money into the joint account to pay bills, rent, food etc and then I just pay bills when the bill comes. At the end of the month I see how much there is left in my personal current account and transfer it to savings. Oh, also OH and I each put some money into DD's account each month (50 quid each).

Also do you receive any benefits that top up on money you already have?

I was going to answer no, but then I remembered that I get child benefit. So yes, 80 pounds a month (same as everyone else I guess). When they bring in the means testing we will lose it, so we won't be receiving any benefits then.

 

[ttcmikeandme]

I don't necessarily budget, but I do transfer money to savings twice per month. My husband and I have separate accounts, a joint checking account which we only use to transfer money back and forth, and an ING account for savings. I Really like having a separate savings account from our checking account for 2 reasons. The first is ING's interest rate is better than a typical bank savings. Also it takes 3 days to transfer money out of the account, so it will never be used for spontaneous spending, so we rarely have taken out of it & so save an lot more.

When we got married we did do an excel spreadsheet of our bills & expected expenses & our income, and went from there.

 

[topsy]

We budget we have to. I have been on SSP since June and will be on MA soon and I am not sure how much we will get.

I have found meal planning cuts down on the cost of our food shopping bill for the month, we spend about £160 for 2 of us and we normally have about £20 left which gets put in a pot to cover the cats food ( she eats hills biscuits, which we only buy when on offer!) and yearly vet jabs! We have also cut down so much on take aways from meal planning.

At the mo, we each save £50 a month ( not sure how much longer I can do this for!) for house insurance, car tax, car service,MOT, pet insurance etc then when it comes round we pay it off in 1 go ( normally on tesco credit card then we get clubcard points which we exchange for deals) as for our car insurance in June it was going to be £7 more each month if we paid it monthly! Before we renew each year we go on money supermarket, or similar to see the cheapest and then i get DH to ring up and see if they will match it!

The electric/Gas company we are with (would have to ask DH which one!) give us £50 in credit back for each year we pay by Direct debit, so that helps a little!

Both our mob phones are old, but we pay £15 a month for each. We never go over our mins. I would love a new phone but we cant justify it!

We did have virgin, TV, Internet and phone, we canceled the TV when we found out i was pregnant and now just have the phone and TV-we would get arid of the phone- but apparently its not cheaper, as you have to pay for line rental for Internet anyway!

All money goes into DH current account, ( I pay money into his account by standing order around the 1st of each month) and all the bills come out of there, so it all comes out between 1-10th of the month, so any money after that is ours. Any spare money we have (haha!) at the end of the month get put into our offset mortgage account and instead of interest being paid it get taken off our mortgage.

At the mo we get no benefits ( unless my Sick pay counts? which i think is about £70 a week), Know we will get £20 child benefit a week, not sure if we will once LO is born, I don't understand WTC or CTC! DH earns about £16600, so not sure if we will be entitled to anything!

xxxx

 

[toffee87]

I like starbounds idea!

 

[nickibrum]

Our outgoings are 1400 a month, so all the bills go out at the beginning of the month so they are paid straight away. Then we try to save about 800 a month. My OH gets paid weekly so its easier for us to put 200 away and then whatever is left over we divide between the two of us to live on- sometimes thats 50 for the week, sometimes 200 for the week. just depends on his shifts.

But we know we can survive with puitting 800 away. We havent been on holiday this year because we are saving for our house deposit. To me its about having a goal- working out how much you need to reach it and then being realistic.

Im also very hot on swaping gas and electric suppliers, negiotiating with sky to get better deals etc.

 

[can2012]

My fiance has a budget application on his IPod, and it has helped us quite a bit. Whenever we go out or spend even a penny he puts it in the budget and it calculates everything for us.

 

[x0emz0x]

I dont usually budget. But I have just started to now..I have got a bill reminder application on my phone, which tells me when my bills are due and I can tick them off once they are paid. It also tells me how much I have left from my wage once all the bill money has been deducted. I'm also going to have a look for a decent budgeting app, so I can find out where I spend my money and where I can cut back. When I get in from work today I am going to start cancelling pointleas direct debits (LoveFilm, Lottery) etc

 

[NDH]

Our income is sporadic at best (DH had been unemployed for 5 months until recently so things got quite bad, but now is making good money but only casual so we don't know how much he'll make from week to week). We also get paid weekly. What I've done is gone through and tallied up all our annual expenses that I can think of, and then divide them into weekly amounts that I set aside from every paycheque so those one off expenses are covered if we have a bad month when the come due.

Then I looked at what we were spending on food and challenged myself to shop smarter and reduce our spending, then set a reasonable budget amount from there - and I take it out as cash every week and that's all I get until the next week which forces me to spend it wisely.

So our budget is essentially a basic "this is what we need to bring in for the week" overview. Additional expenses we try to plan for as far in advance as possible so we can budget them in, but we do have a small emergency fund for unexpected things that come up that are actual emergencies (that we make replacing a priority).

Weekly when DH gets paid we sit down together and do our actual budget for the week and see how we did the previous one (truthfully it's me that does most of it, but inalwYs give DH the option to add his input).

Normally after divving up out normal living expenses we'd then send most of the remainder to debt payoff and a little to savings (until our emergency fund is capped and then it all goes to debt til it's paid off), but after so long without income we have some big expenses coming due that we have to save for, and baby things to buy so nothing extra is going to our debt at the moment.

The key though is to be intentional with your money. Rather than sitting back at the end of the month wondering where it all went, sit down at the beginning of the month and tell it all where to go.

 

[xxembobxx]

The key though is to be intentional with your money. Rather than sitting back at the end of the month wondering where it all went, sit down at the beginning of the month and tell it all where to go.

I love that thought

Like StarBound we have a savings tin which we put £1 and £2 coins into. The tin holds about £500 and we will fill it within a year. We save coppers and 5p's and this goes straight into the savings account. I have only recently started an ISA account which I have a DD going into.
I have a savings account attached to my regular bank account but while it's great being able to transfer money across in an instant I can also get it out in an instant and I prefer not being able to access the savings quite so easily (too tempting!)
My goal is to have savings equal to 3 times OH's monthly wage as we have been caught out before when our situation changed suddenly. I also want to pay off the last of our debts.

 

[bambinoccino]

What budget planner are people using on their phones? I could really do with one!

At the moment I don't budget at all and my finances are in a terrible mess, I've just become single so have no idea what is what at the moment. Need to wait untill I have figures to work out what is going on!

 

[NDH]

I have one called Spend and one called Ace Budget lite. I've tried all the free ones and liked those best, but tbh I prefer paper and pencil.

 

[bambinoccino]

I want one where I can write down the amount of money I have coming in as it comes in and the amount I'm spending out on various things but the one i've downloaded doesnt let me put in how much i'm actually getting from different sources!

 

[NDH]

Ace Budget lite lets you do that - I have three income streams set up, none of them recurring as we don't have a fixed salary, and just fill in the amount as it comes in. I think you do have to put in a number when you set it up, but the actual amount doesn't have to match the estimated amount, if that makes sense?

 

[Mrs_Random]

I find pen and paper works best.

I wrote down all our bills and when they were paid and then worked out how much me and hubby would get paid each month, based on my mat pay and we could see what we had left each month.

I put £25 a month aside for Xmas, so I know that I have £300 towards gifts and going out and it doesn't all come out of one wage.

We also save £100 a month to cover car ins - we have a car each - and if we're lucky we have enough to cover at least one lot of car tax from that as well.

I used to save loads for holidays and going etc but we can't afford to do that now, maybe a little once I go back to work.

I get £80 child benefit and £43 a month child tax credit but that's all.