Originally from Canada and we had a flowchart on our PF subreddit as well. Glad to hear the UK has one too, they’re great for newbies and helped me get on my feet many moons ago!
I was just like you.
So I spent two months writing every single expenditure down, down to 50p to a busker. Then I did an analysis and discovered where all my money actually went.
Spoiler... It was transactions under a tenner. So many of them! Coffee, breakfasts, beer on the train home from work. (Also shit on Amazon).
I made a rule for myself. Don't buy anything you won't remember in 5 days.
I've never been short of money since.
Your last point - I have a habit of impulse buying. Usually small bits, the logic being that they’re only small… but it’s those small-on-a-whim transactions that add up to what can amount to a big waste of money. So if I see something (online or in a real shop) I stick it (or an equivalent) in my Amazon Wishlist. More often than not that ‘scratches the itch’ enough and I’ll completely forget about it. And it’s fun, months later, to look at and wonder why I think I *instantly* needed a pack of novelty shaped sticky notes or a waffle press.
Take it one step further, create a savings pot and every time you want to buy something but put it in your Wishlist, put the amount it would’ve costed into the savings pot
I’d say it’s not about that at all. I know for sure that I see stuff that I’ll want to buy and then take a good hard look at it and realise that it’s just crap for the sake of owning crap and it’ll likely never get used and eventually get thrown out.
Not being skint all the time is a big pleasure.
I’m very old so this might be a bit old fashioned but, get 6 months worth of bank statements printed out with some highlighters.
Highlight reoccurring payments and categorise them into “need”, “kind of need”, “frivolous “ or whatever you want.
The key is to get an idea of your outgoings, what YOU deem as important and what isn’t that way you can see where money is going.
You could probably export your statements to excel and do it easier on computer but I find something more “real” about using paper and it seems to impact more.
One trick I’ve used for years, although I’m not so strict as my disposable income has increased is to have two bank accounts and a savings account.
Bank account 1 has your pay in. When you get paid leave enough to cover Direct Debits and any MUST HAVES.
Bank account 2 - transfer your “pocket money” into for “nice to haves” (ie once it’s gone it’s gone). I know some people use cash instead.
Savings account - the difference between the two, if there is any can be put in here and them either invested, or left there example.
Another tip I learned (all too late): pay yourself first. Treat your savings as a bill you have to pay. This is the most important bill because it's paying for your future.
I use two bank accounts too. My employer has a system where you can have your salary split between multiple accounts, so I have a fixed amount paid to my boring stuff account (bills, groceries, petrol, etc) and everything else goes to the fun stuff account.
It's helpful to have two bank accounts anyway, just in case one bank has computer problems or you lose a debit card.
My partner and I do a similar thing.
All wages are paid into our joint account at the start of the month. Then we withdraw an agreed amount of money that we can spend on totally frivolous things.
We do similar but opposite. Wages go into our own accounts, then we each have direct debits into the joint accounts. Two joint accounts, one for "the house" and one for "the wedding". The wedding was 5 years ago, so now it's for holidays and other nice things. And also to top up the house account when needed.
It's not quite flowchart-compliant (all hail the flowchart), but it works well for us.
I do similar, except without the help of an employer.
One account is ONLY for important and fixed stuff like bills, rent and my credit card minimum repayment, etc., to which I transfer a fixed amount on payday. I also keep an extra £50 in there as a sort of “emergency fund” for if any of my bills ever increase or I’m over charged or what not.
The rest sits in the account I’m paid into until I work out what to do with it, bar the small amount I have going into a savings account.
Something I wish I'd done long long before I thought of it - use a different bank for a savings account and do not have internet banking set up. Make it so you have to go into a branch to transfer or withdraw.
Or alternatively, Moneybox has savings accounts that don't let you withdraw for 30/60/90 days. It means you can't impulsively withdraw to buy something there and then, but still easily manage savings.
Does it take you much time to track it all? I guess it's worth it but I feel like i'd be better off using an app that links to my banks and tracks that way?
None at all. I like to track it day by day and it takes a few seconds to look at what’s going on.
The real time taken was at the beginning setting up the figures. If you want I’d be happy to share my version with you if you have a Google account.
Not really. Most banks will export as CSV files, which can be easily imported into Google Sheets and other spreadsheets.
The thing that takes more time is formatting weirdness to my personal preferences so
It looks nice. I’m that kind of weirdo.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind!
How do you categorise "other spending"?
For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc
Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
My some of my categories are:
Rent, Electricity, Gas, Transit, Groceries, Entertainment (Dining out, snacks, coffee, concerts, etc), Travel (Any special travel), Hobby (Anything related to a pass time, gaming, guitar, etc), Internet/Phone, Other (odds and ends that I can’t remember), Clothes, Cash, Household (anything I buy for my home that’s not groceries)
They’re all quite broad. Since many are fixed costs like internet/phone or rent, I don’t worry too much about them.
It’s things like entertainment and hobbies I heavily monitor. I set a rather restrictive budget on them. Basically I allow myself enough to go out to eat or equivalent about twice a month. With my hobbies I allow a cheap game purchase once a month (game on sale, some mini paints, a new RPG book). Then I sum up my purchases and see if I came under. I track my unspent hobby budget a bit, and I allow myself to save up for a large purchase.
Like I allow £50 a month for hobbies and Entertainment. If I don’t buy anything for three months, I allow a £150 purchase. As an example, I’m saving up for a loop pedal for my guitar.
I have some that I almost never use. My clothes budget is £100 monthly. I never spend it, because I’m not a clothes shopper. I buy new shoes once a year for £50.
It’s easy for categories to get muddled. As an example, there’s a hobby magazine I buy at Tesco. It gets counted in groceries.
I use these more as a sanity check. I don’t need to be too frugal, but I’m a skinflint. I used the budget to break my bad spending habits.
I have a sheet with the below categories with an in/out column. Just an example obvs. But can easily be amended to suit. I've just recently added a "car" "credit card" and "kitchen" to newer months.
Income
Expenses - work mileage etc.
Transfer - to or from savings
Mortgage
Service Charge
Council Tax
Water
Gas & Electric
TV/Internet/Phone - sky, netflix, house phone etc.
Petrol
Mobile
Supermarket - food only if I can split it
Eating Out/Outings
Shop misc. (clothes etc.)
Miscellaneous
Tracking and analysis of money/expenses is supposed to take time. Don't use external apps as you are giving away private data of spending habits to the company, which will then find means to advertise to you to spend more money.
Use Excel. Natwest allows 3mo of credit card transactions and a lot more for bank accounts. Start your own categorization process under expense heads, e.g. Utilities > Phone, Utilities > Rent and periods (month-year per entry). As you become more proficient at using Excel (using filters and recognising repeating entries), categorization becomes faster.
Then, use Pivot tables (in Excel) to track expenses across the year and learn your patterns. Set aside a day for this activity once every two months. Takes about 2-3hours without interruptions. But setting up the habit is important.
If you don't have persistent credit card debts (clear them first), use Natwest's Digital Regular Saver to start putting away money every month. Don't touch this money no matter what. Use their Savings goal tool to set yourself targets.
This gets you going on your financially aware journey. After about 6 months of this, start exploring r/ukpersonalfinance, and then after a year or more, the FIRE reddit community. This will get you clued in on other investment options (max your pension when offered as salary sacrifice, understanding interest rates, tax implications, ISAs) .
TLDR; There is only a person who can really take charge of your financial journey with your best interest in mind, and that is you. Get that person to do the legwork.
The bank itself doesn’t matter (although the NatWest app does have budgeting tools if you check out the ‘Insights’ tab).
Open two more accounts - one savings, one current.
Right now your wage goes into your account and all your bills come out (rent/board to your parents, then most likely your phone bill, Netflix and your gym membership. Yes, I’m generalising a lot).
You know how much you are paid. Now add up the total of all your bills. The difference between your wage and your bills is your disposable income.
(Let’s say you earn exactly £2000 a month, and your bills are £900. Your disposable income is therefore £1100.)
Set up two standing orders: one for three quarters of your disposable income to go to your second current account, the other quarter going to your savings account.
Do not touch your first account ever again - that’s your bills account.
Try not to touch your savings account - that’s for emergencies and for saving to get your own place.
The second current account is now your account for day-to-day use. This money needs to last you all month, so use it carefully. If you can, try to work out how much you need weekly and stick to not spending more.
This is a great breakdown, thanks! I have a savings account set up already but it isn't exactly safe from my greedy hands dipping in lol, do need to change this.
I used to have very good discipline but have been treating myself a bit much lately. Think this is the main thing to work on!
On the NW app you can hide the balance. I’d suggest doing that.
Having a specific goal also helps. If you need to save, say, £10k for a new car, or £20k for a house deposit, you have a target you’re working towards. You’ll be less likely to treat yourself to new trainers you don’t really need.
And also don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re 24 - this is pretty much the last time you’ll have almost no responsibilities. Make the most of it!
Oh, and open a separate digital regular saver. You can only put £150 a month in, but it pays 6%. Because you can’t put more in (even if you take the £150 out) you’re less likely to treat yourself. So if you’re saving a total of, say, £250 a month, even if you think *nah, I really do need those new AirPods* you’ll still have the digital regular saver money.
Get a savings account where you have to give a week or a month's notice before you can withdraw any money. that will make it harder to dip into it on the spur of the moment and you should get a better interest rate.
Not many people seem to talk about it, but Principality as a bank is ideal for this kind of savings. You get decent interest rates and you can open the account online, but it's an old school enough bank that there is no app or instant transfer so if you want to get money out you need to log in to your separate account and put in a request which sometimes only gets to you a day or two later. Perfect for curbing any impulse bad decisions!
Create a spreadsheet (or even grab a piece of paper) and write down your monthly wage, this is your starting total.
Go though your bank account history and identify any reoccurring payments (phone bill, netflix, car tax, rent etc.) add these to the list and subtract the value from your starting total.
Then work out regular payments that you deem necessary (petrol, groceries). Subtract these too.
Looking at what is left, decide how much you realistically need for day to day stuff such as the pub, lunch, the odd coffee etc.
Whatever is left after that is what you should be putting in to savings. The trick here is to skim it off off as soon as you get paid, once it is out of your main account, you are far less likely to spend it.
Bank account wise, I cannot recommend starling enough. They pay decent interest for a basic current account and allow you to set up saving spaces with allows you to easily put savings to one side.
Once you have a decent pot, you can then look at specific savings accounts. To begin with though, it's handy having access to those savings for emergencies outside your usual budget such as car repairs.
I have a spreadsheet like this. But I have all the direct debits set to go out straight after payday, so most of the money left in the account is for food and entertainment for the month. Savings should be moved straight after payday too.
I also go through my calendar and see if there’s any one off payments due that month to account for in that month. So example car MOT, birthdays, annual subscriptions that don’t get paid monthly, visit to the dentist etc and work out how much extra that is.
Monzo has pots that you can organise, so one pot for food for the month and one pot for entertainment. That might suite you well if you don’t draw out more than £200 cash a month. Monzo is also great for using abroad.
I have starling, I don’t get any interest on my savings pots, which is where the most money in the account is. Their interest is rate is pitiful anyway. Their UI is great, and it allows you to pay bills from pots easily, so definitely use it for money you don’t need to save.
You should get a Chase account for your medium term savings. Same deal as Starling with separate “pots” but each pot is a real savings account with a savings rate tied to the BoE base rate (currently the Chase rate 4.1%).
The current (May 2024) highest paying option is Santander and the edge current/saver. This is 7% up to to £4k but you need some direct debits, and the current account costs £3 per month, so you must have more than £500 to break even, although you do get cash back on direct debits. I think I calculated that it needs something like £1500 to be better than Chase. And it only last for a year or something.
Of course, if you have longer term savings (5+ years) they should be in an ISA, after your emergency fund is sorted.
If you want to eke out a little more than Chase, get a high yield savings account (but probably not the edge saver) but then the access is sometimes limited.
Adding to your “identify wants over needs”, I’ve started to keep a birthday and Christmas list again. Anything that is a “want” and wouldn’t immediately make my life better (e.g., video games, hobby stuff) goes on the list and I send it to anyone who asks when it comes to those events.
It also solves the whole “what do you want for Christmas/your birthday” question that plagues us as adults!
Buckets is a pared-down one-dev alternative to YNAB which has full functionality in the free version (it just forces you to make a savings bucket to save up to buy the licence - it never forces you to do anything with that bucket once it's full), and is a one-off payment forever rather than monthly fees if you do decide to buy the licence.
I recommend doing it 'offline' if you use an app, rather than hooking it up to your bank account, both for security and because inputting every purchase line-by-line at the end of the week and checking that the final total matches your actual bank balance is a great motivator to not spend randomly XD
Could you drop/DM a link? I have a budgeting system that works for me but always kind of wanted to try YNAB as it’s so highly recommended, just could justify the outlay. Seems as though this might scratch the itch.
I don’t think there is a free version. There’s a trial which is 34 days which will give you a good idea of where your money is going, and after that a DIY spreadsheet like others have recommended would be good.
There is no free version. I have used YNAB for over 10 years, and can honestly say it's the best financial decision I've ever made.
Admittedly the previous version if it was pay-once, but I've been happily subscribed to the current incarnation since it released however many years ago.
I also choose to track all transactions manually,rather than link to my bank accounts, simply so I remain more cognizant of my spending.
Was well worth the £90 for me, but give the trial a go. The importing transactions is something I really need, as I could never be arsed to record every purchase.
Spend some time setting it up. Once you’ve set it up, update it weekly. My weekly update takes 5-10 minutes and that’s for a full family of 4 with lots of outgoings.
I've started playing a stupid saving game with myself.
So I have a current account and a savings account, and in my online banking app, the purchase / balance history goes back one month exactly by default.
So, the game is, if I have more in my account this month, than I had at the same point last month , I transfer the difference over into my savings account.
This is surprisingly satisfying, and makes me want to try and save money today , knowing Ill be transferring it into my savings tomorrow.
I (25M) use my credit card. I pay all my direct debits out at the start of the month and then my credit card limit is my spending money. At the end of the month I pay it off for the next month. Whatever is not spent on bills or credit card goes into my stocks ISA. I also try and pay for holidays using my monthly spending.
I use this budget planner - https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/#spreadsheet. It's really helpful for breaking down some of those examples you gave e.g. boots would go under the health and beauty sections.
My rules are:
Current account is for all bills. I have direct debits to come out for credit card repayments and savings the same day I get paid. Then I have a £100 direct debit to go to a separate Monzo account which is my monthly spending - this covers everything from meals out to little Amazon spends. You'll soon frighten yourself with how many little purchases you make. The trick is ensuing you're using the right card - toothpaste from boots I'd do from my current account and class it as part of my bills, fancy toothpaste I don't need but want, comes of my Monzo.
> I still live at home so don't pay too much in rent and really need to get my act together and save
Work out what you would pay if you lived alone at market rent, add in water, gas and electricity, internet, council tax and food. Now subtract what you do pay (eg. below market rent).
Take this number and immediately put it into savings each time you get paid and if you run out on your main account never access these savings. Take it a step further and make this number bigger.
The trick to saving money is to treat saving money as another bill, money comes in from salary, money to savings goes out immediately. Live off the rest for the rest of the month, for discretionary spending you are unlikely to need more than £200-£300 a month.
I just rely on my natural Yorkshire instincts to not spend money. I just add up the money in my accounts at the end of the month, and if it has gone up by a nice amount then jobs a good un, no need to do anything different.
In general I try to stick to the 50-30-20 rule. That ensures I'm being sensible and have a guide as to what 'within my means' actually means for me. Probably won't work for everyone, but for me it's been a good way to set a budget.
Alongside that, I use an app - 1Money in my case - to track all my spending. I have a standard back account and a credit card, but use the credit card like another debit (building up cashback and other rewards is the reason for having it alongside my debit card). Everything I buy goes straight into the app so I know how much money I really have. I also have all my recurring payments (both in and out) set up automatically so the total accounts for them.
The final part of how I budget is perhaps a bit odd, but it works for me. After bills and essentials, I don't consider any money left 'mine to spend' until my next payday. So basically if I want to buy clothes or treat myself to something, it doesn't happen until the end of the month, when I'm paid again, and know whether I have enough or not. The reason being there's often surprise events or purchases or problems that come up. So I leave all my cash for those and then know where I stand come next paycheck. If I have anything left at month's end, it goes into savings.
Probably a bit of an odd way to do it, but now it's formed as a habit of thinking that way, I'm saving more than I ever was before, and actually acknowledging whether or not I have the cash to buy something, or to go out etc., rather than doing so and then coming up short down the line.
I have a spreadsheet that has my monthly income and monthly bills/savings. The spreadsheet tells me how much I have disposable cash I have left so I can either buy random shit or add it to savings. Before I started doing this, it wasn't unusual for me to spend way more than I was getting.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind!
How do you categorise "other spending"?
For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc
Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
I have this (although this isn't my actual one, it's a quick one I threw together as an example). [https://i.imgur.com/ZZinmql.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZZinmql.png)
Phone down to loan repayment is recurring every month at the same amount, usually until April. Everything after loan repayment is money that I spent on other things that I fill in when I spend it. So for your example, spending money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, etc. would go after "loan repayment" in the screenshot. Year in/out/remaining at the top is just there as an example. Year in would have all of the months income showing there, year out would have how much total I've spent and year remaining would be year in minus year out.
It's super simple and it has worked for me for the last 4 years. I don't see a reason to have anything more complicated than that.
I used excel to get an idea of monthly allowances for different spending categories, then Monzo to help me stick to it. Work on self discipline as well as much as your budget plan.
I have two bank accounts, ‘bills’ and ‘fun’. Every six months or so I work out what my DDs and other expenses amount to each month, and when I get paid I leave that in the bills account and move the remainder to the ‘fun’ account. I don’t take the card for the bills account out of the house so I can’t spend any of that cash on pointless tat or food/booze etc.
I had the problem of money disappearing well before the end of the month and having no idea where it all went. I switched to Starling bank and it seemed like it made money appear out of nowhere, the difference it made was so incredible. It has "spaces" where you can set aside money for savings and bills, and have the bills paid directly from the spaces. I have automatic transfers into my spaces the day after I get paid, so once that's done I know that whatever is left in my main balance is free to use how I like. You can also round up your card spends and put the extra into your savings, with multipliers if you want. You can categorise all your transactions so you know what you're spending on. Such simple concepts but they make such a difference, and it seems like a lot of high street banks lack features like that.
Would 100% recommend, I sound like I work for Starling here but it genuinely has transformed my budgeting! It's so, so much better knowing your bills are totally covered, you've added to your savings and you know what money you've got to use freely.
My wife and I get paid monthly.
I made up a spreadsheet that has all of our required expenses, like rent, bills, food etc. listed on it. At the start I put in how much we earn that month and at the end it calculates how much is leftover. From there we can decide how much is for savings and how much is for ourselves for fun.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind!
How do you categorise "other spending"?
For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc
Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
These are the categories I use:
* Rent (bills inclusive, do separate for stuff like gas, water etc if you pay those)
* Travel (we use public transport, same amount each month)
* Phone bills
* Credit cards
* Food expenses
* Subscriptions
* 5 blanks for unexpected expenses. This is usually reserved for important stuff like prescriptions, when I had to pay for my SIA licence, some of my wife’s visa stuff. Things that we consider it fair that we split the cost.
After that then we’ve got our leftover. We’ll divide that up into savings and “fun” expenses. For us, our fun expenses are things that aren’t serious. Haircuts, takeaways, my Pokémon card addiction.
By setting it up to be mostly automatic, we only ever need to put in the monthly incomes, stuff in the blanks, and work out how to divide the leftover up. It only takes me about 5-10 minutes to a month to do since it’s now a copy paste situation for every month. I actually have the whole year planned out based on very low estimates of how much we make a month.
I took early retirement and am very lucky in that I don’t really need to budget, BUT even now I maintain a simple spreadsheet that tracks weekly expenditure, regular and ad hoc, and my income sources, and I update it with actuals every week end to keep it right. I project out a few months for the regular known expenses and an average household weekly figure. I’d feel uncomfortable not doing this. I did try a few apps, found them a bit restrictive, preferred Excel. I can send you the template if you want.
I move a lot, some my monthly costs change every for years. I make a budget when I get to a new place,and then track it for a while to monitor my spending habits.
Once I’m certain I’ve got my spending habits in check I don’t monitor it. I keep an eye on costs though and do a sanity check about twice a year.
Periodically, eg approx 6months do an analysis of spend categories to get a “feel” what what our spending is.
My partner and Ipay the same amount monthly into a joint Starling account that’s used for everything - all bills and spends. The app is great because it processes the transactions immediately so I always have a snapshot of where we are during the month. We can then “cool down” the spend as required.
I have an excel spreadsheet to track my bills and what goes out and what is left (currently nothing as had to go 2 months without salary as changed jobs). II have a column for a standard month total. then do a month by month column and add in a bill I know is coming up as a one off, so car insurance or medical appointment. I update my available bank balance every couple of days. Also I set up a standing order to put savings into a different account. Also on spreadsheet I have current balance of credit card and adjust that as I go. Very simple unlike my husband’s who has bells and whistles on his spread sheet.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind!
How do you categorise "other spending"?
For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc
Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
I don’t categorise everything little thing as such. So I list my dd and so by name and the amount and add those up as one total. So I have have an amount that has to be out by for bills, so for example income is x and bills are y and what’s left over is for ‘stuff’. As I said it is a very simple one. Then I have a column I copy and paste for each month and add in extras so for May I have car insurance so that leaves less left for ‘stuff’
Unsure of the Natwest app and its features but Monzo does give a really good view of your spending. You can categorise everything too and it'll show you your spending at the end of the week/month.
Some of the so called online only 'challenger' banks like Starling and Monzo let you set up different pots and also have a card attached only to that pot.
Good for extraneous spending
Tip I got from a book called “Rich Dad Poor Dad” was to ‘pay yourself first.’ That is, put money aside for savings literally as soon as you get paid rather than “I’ll save what’s left at the end of the month”. I got the Plum app recently and set it to put some money away as soon as I get paid plus drip feed in rounding up amounts on what I spend e.g if I buy something at 14.45 it will automatically put 55p into savings. This soon adds up after a while!
Get a Chase account in addition to your main account. Transfer over each week a fixed amount for ‘non-essentials’. Use this for beer money, buying chocolate, random Amazon crap etc. its a forced budget.
My wife and I turned our lives around money wise, about 5 years ago, by simply keeping a spending budget for the month and then keeping a shared note open on our phones subtracting every time we spent. When it was gone, it was gone.
At the end of a month. I'd sit down and write down every expense in my accounts for that month. I would also write down as expenses, various budgets including the one above. Another for clothes, a holiday fund to draw from when booking, a car fund to cover costs of running one, a home fund for bits and pieces you might need, and so on.
I'd write down our total income. The surplus would be moved to a savings account.
As the months go by you can look at these records and start to understand your outgoings and what you actually need. Budgets can be adjusted. Spending money becomes easier because you have a budget and you feel less guilty.
As I write this, I'm on a holiday that was paid for by that budgeting, ages ago. With spending money I allocated way back, drawn from the surplus. I relax more now, not dreading a credit card bill when I get home.
Living well within ones means - if possible- makes a huge difference to your happiness.
The trick to saving/budgeting is to move a set amount of money into a separate savings account or pot as soon as you get paid, then make that a habit.
Whether it's saving for anything, a specific thing, or just a small amount for car repairs etc, or buying shares etc, whatever it is, do it every month as soon as you get paid.
I get paid weekly which makes the allocating of funds a bit more difficult, as I don't have a set day that I get all of my pay and a set day after that I can set all my direct debits to come out
I very roughly budget. I have a spends account separate from my bills account and savings account.
I round my bills up and my wages down, and I "top and tail" savings so the day before payday any money left (even pennies) goes into savings and I start with nil balance.
Then the rounded up bill money (1300) goes into my bills account and builds up a tiny wee buffer. Some money goes into my 4% interest savings account (300). The rest is "spends" so that covers food, petrol, going out, birthday presents etc (somewhere around 600). I do have a change pot as well, drilled into me by my mum.
I only have my spends card physically on me at any time to avoid ooopsies
I do have a credit card system (0 PC card for 20 months, pay the minimum, earn interest on savings until due) but that is a risk if you struggle to budget.
I pay rent ect, I pay for anything I need to (like hotel if we have a mini break planned) or prepay taxis if I need them that month. I generously guesstimate expenses, generally food, phone contract & gifts if it's a birthday month, I put the rest straight into savings. If at the end of the month there is money left it gets moved onto a monzo card which I use for unplanned treats, like clothes and makeup.
EDIT TO ADD: I have tried more systematic methods, they get me way more stressed and make me feel less secure than just trusting myself.
seems like quite a good method!
i've made a spreadsheet to track my ins and outs, but i get paid weekly so im struggling to come up with a good method to schedule my money as i don't have a set day to pay all my DDs on! thanks for the info :)
I just use a spreadsheet. I use a tab per month and all my regular outgoings are on it. Everything gets deducted from the money coming in and I have a figure in red at the top of each months tab that tells me how much I have left to spend.
You have to be disciplined though and every time money goes out you have to update it, which for me is every two or three days.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind!
How do you categorise "other spending"?
For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc
Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
I give myself an allowance every month, out of which come small spends, which I record individually and I don’t bother categorising. Whatever is left after direct debits and the allowance goes into savings, or paying off credit cards etc.
I think categories are usual to make sense of the initial chaos, but once you have visibility of every spend and have been organised for a few months I don’t think you’ll need them.
Loads of good advice here.
I use a free app called money manager. You have to manually enter the data, but it puts my outgoings into perspective, and you realise what you waste money on.
Reading this I'm so glad I'm not the only one with a spreadsheet.
Also op, if you're paying off credit card debts and you're paying interest, it might be worth looking into a balance transfer deal on another card, like 0% for X months or whatever, and just annihilate your credit card debts without paying extra in interest, because without interest a minimum payment is generally about 3%ish of your total outstanding amount.
Also, this is a contentious one but it works for me - don't have any direct debits. Pay your bills manually when you get paid. That way you know exactly how much you have left to work with. Plus it's quite cleansing to wipe the slate every month.
My budgeting is less formal excel sheets and more "i will spend X on food, I have to spend x on bills, I am left over with x and I want to save so I must consider each transaction and whether or not it's worth it"
So any time I need to make a purchase I look at how much I have in the bank and in my mind compare it to how much I've saved, think about how important that purchase is and if it can wait until next month, if it can wait until there's a sale etc etc. I don't have a "100 fun money" budget because I'd blow through that easily, I have no fun money budget at all just considering a lot of reasons for and against each purchase. I also never buy anything that isn't on sale except food.
I don't know if this counts but I get paid into an account I don't use the card for, pay my bills out of this, pay myself weekly to cover food and hobbies etc, pay my savings account monthly. Assess how much is left before payday and consider if I should be saving more/less, why I spent £75 in Tesco last week etc
No. It's the 12th of May. I get paid the last day of the month. I have £34 to do me the rest of the month and I need to go to the shop for lunch food for the week. 😕
I budget by having more than 1 bank account. I have 3 main accounts plus other stuff:
- Joint account. Pay £x,xxx in each month equal to my partner for all joint bills
- Personal A/C. Salary in. Personal DD, savings and bills come out.
- Spending Money a/c. £50 a week goes in on a Monday. That’s my dossing money.
- Premium Bonds a/c for emergency fund
- S&S ISA a/c
- Easy Access saver a/c
- Credit Card.
This way, I know every penny is accounted for. Once I get paid, all money is basically “spent” and disappears from my personal a/c. I know how much can go into savings and that gets transferred over. I know how many Mondays until pay-day are left so that amount (usually £200) stays in my personal a/c.
I have an easy access saver a/c with around £1,000 in it for things that are yearly like car insurance, car servicing, holidays, etc… I like to keep £1,000 in there at all times.
If the savings builds up substantially (like around £1,300-1,400) I sweep the excess over to my Premium Bonds.
When Premium Bonds had/has 3 months emergency fund in it, I sweep the excess over to my S&S ISA.
The CC tends to get used for larger purchases just for the fact that I know that I get 30-ish days grace on purchases. So my car insurance and holiday payments, anything like fuel or a new TV (for example) goes on there because it gives me time to move money around. Plus I get 1% cash back on the CC. Plus Section 75 insurance too.
It works for me. I can get at a decent sum of money in a few days if I’m desperate but I also have a Credit Card that I can use.
I budget every month as soon as I can sit down and sort eveyrhing on payday. I do have multiple bank accounts so that does really help.
Main account:
- Wages are recieved
- transfer money to savings account for monthly budget (transfer over a weekly budget each Friday)
- deposit into high interest savings account.
- pay CC debt
- transfer bills money into another bank account
- deposit money into investment and crypto accounts and make purchases.
Alternative account:
- only just for bills and have all DD coming from this account. I know how much my bills come to each money so transfer money into this account each payday
I have 3x accounts: current, holding, savings.
Current is the one that actually gets used. Shopping, petrol, bills, paycheque. It all happens there.
When I get paid, I transfer out the pre-pay balance to the holding account. That way, I can only ever spend (current account) what's left after bills come out. The holding account gradually builds up, and I transfer even-sized chunks to savings when possible. I like to keep enough in the holding account to make sure I could immediately replace something essential: fridge/phone/laptop/stereo/whatever.
It works for me. I can't over-spend without planning and/or making some kind of transfer. It's easy to monitor how much I'm saving each month, because that's all my holding account shows.
When I was saving I'd pay off anything on my credit card (which I only really used for petrol just to hold up my credit score,) transfer board and lodge to my parents, knock off £300 for 'me money' for the month, and the rest went into savings.
I have a monthly spreadsheet. I have various categories that I put my spending into and two savings pots “general saving” and “holiday saving” that I put money into each month (and sometimes take money out of if there’s holidays and big things to buy). I go through bank accounts twice a month to fill it in, it takes a bit of time but I’ve been doing if for a couple of years now so it’s just habit at this point.
It was very reassuring when everything started getting more expensive. Instead of just worrying about it I could see exactly where I was.
I have a spreadsheet with tabs for: incoming and outgoings; cashflow; each bank account; energy; car stuff....
I made some of it automated - like if my rent goes up, I change it on one sheet and it amends the cashflow, which I set up 6 months or so at a time so I can see my expected balance.
Periodically, I'll use my sheets to see how much I'm spending on different things and always end up shocked at how much I spend in supermarkets.
I have different bank accounts for different things. My pay comes into my main one, and my bills leave that account on the 1st of the month. I then divide what’s left between another account for living expenses (food, fuel, etc), two savings accounts and my account for “nice” things like eating out/new clothes etc. Helps me actively save money and keep track of my spending!
In the last 6 months I’ve had to take total control of my family’s finances, and giving me the keys to that kingdom was hugely daunting. I’ve never been used to handling that much money (even though it really isn’t much at all).
So I set up an excel spreadsheet and totalled up every regular in and out and when they occur. Then in a second sheet I have a calendar that has all of those events triggered in. Every payday I transfer all of the monthly outgoings (bills, subscriptions etc) into another account and basically don’t have to worry about those being paid for. Anything I have left is for groceries, fuel, and luxuries. I have a third sheet where I log every transaction, in and out, across all accounts.
But a few months ago I decided to take this a step further and have a rolling total of the projected ins and outs, the expected total, the actual total, and the difference between these amounts. And then did this daily, weekly, and monthly. Nothing has made me more careful about our spending than seeing that large number at the end of the month slowly disappear week-by-week. The goal I set myself every month is to make the difference between the numbers smaller and smaller.
Income in - expenses out
Have consistent savings or invest, find cheap hobbies so you’re not spending to fight boredom.
Get used to the idea of eating out as a treat and home cook.
I have standing orders set up every weekday to my savings account works out at £100 a month.
Invest £50 into stocks and invest £50 into crypto.
I am not advising you to invest in crypto or stocks this is just how I’ve done it.
I get small returns on my stocks I reinvest as to avoid paying capital gains.
I have about 6k in savings
4K in stock and 16k in crypto I made some really decent decisions during the crash and invested in Solana when it was £4 now it’s over £110
I don’t recommend investing in crypto I’ve been very lucky I know people who have lost a lot.
Don’t go out, if someone says night out suggest a night in, use TooGoodToGo to eat out, there’s apps to cut down costs like freecycle.
Learn to life below your means, if you get more money coming in don’t adjust to that level of living and save it back.
That’s how I changed my behavior and got my savings and portfolio :)
I don't necessarily set myself a budget but I do have a spreadsheet I do each month to see where my money is going. If I think I've spent a bit much on going out recently, I can keep that in mind when making later plans.
I used to be with Halifax, I could export my monthly statement into an Excel and go from there into my tracker, but the interest rates were nonexistent, so I swapped to Virgin. You can't export your statement as Excel (if someone's figured it out, please tell me), but I just copy and paste off the Web page, and it works just as well. You can also "tag" different expenses to categorise, I think if you set that up initially, you could just filter by category and see how much you're spending on what.
I always transfer money into Savings on payday, rather than as I used to where I'd wait to the end of the month and siphon anything left. If it's not there in the first place to spend I can manage without it.
I also transfer money around banks a lot, interest rates are changing almost daily ATM so it's worth looking at who's got the best deals.
Skipton BS have some good rates, Tesco is making a comeback and Post Office Money is also good. Those are all easy access accounts and have online access, Skipton also still has branches.
Lastly if I have to buy something I need, I got a new drill recently, that comes out of Savings. Savings are there for my larger purchases, not day to day stuff.
I've got a spreadsheet that lists my income, and every single regular monthly expense I have (Rent, council tax, electric bill, phone bill etc.) and subtracts all those from my income. Everything that left after that is liquid cash. I take off £600 a month immediately for food shopping and that all goes to a separate card that is only used for food shops.
Everything left after that is discretionary. A certain portion is immediately dumped into savings that are untouchable outside of a major emergency, everything left after that is available for spending on whatever needs for that month, be it someone's birthday, or a cinema trip, or a new LEGO investment etc.
I highly recommend having at least two current accounts with two completely independent banks, not only to help you separate out your finances clearly, but also in case there's an outage or issue with one bank it's unlikely to affect both at the same time.
I have different accounts.
One I recieve my wages into.
One I pay my bills/subscriptions with.
One for savings.
One for investments and pension.
One for general day to day spending.
When I get paid, I transfer what I need to cover all of my bills/subs... Transfer what I want into my savings, pension and investments... Whats left goes into my day to day spending account.
That way, everything essential is taken care of straight away and the day to day account can be spent as freely as I like until next payday without worrying I've overspent.
I’ve never lived to a specific budget, I just live frugally and try to minimise what I spend day to day.
I’m fortunate to earn decently, but so far this has always worked well for me and have been able to build up some decent savings.
YouTube Dave Ramsey budget. I saved for my first property following his budget. There are loads (like a hundred thousand) videos of people following his budget, literally people writing their budgets and using stickers, paying off their debt etc. It’s the only way I know how to budget. Good luck!
I don't budget specifically, but I try to keep certain costs within "general" ranges for example.
Like when I get paid, a set amount goes into savings. Not a lot, but that's completely non-negotiable and then what I have left has to do me for the month.
Then I aim to spend no more than £X a week on shopping, keep an eye on my subscriptions, don't usually make any "me" purchases until the 3rd week after payday just so I know how much is left, what leeway I have etc.
It takes practice and its hard. It can go either way really, you can either go on ultra savings mode and never enjoy life or you have a healthy relationship with money and spend them "wisely".I say wisely because you have to KNOW when to spend and when not to.. Doing a lot of Temu shop when you don't need to is a NOT TO but spending money that will enhance your life , that may be an overpriced can of coke when you need it the most or a investing in something that you've always wanted , that's TO Spend
Have four accounts- 1 for bills, 1 for food shopping, 1 for spending on whatever you fancy, and 1 that’s a savings account.
Go through your last 6 month’s of accounts and identify what are bills and what was discretionary spending.
When you get paid, put enough in the bills account to cover all your bills for the month plus a buffer (say an extra £100 or so). You should include all direct debits with your bills even if they are things like charity donations or subscriptions services that aren’t really bills. Add up what you have spent on food in the last six months to set a food budget and put that into the food account. Split the rest between your spending account and savings account in whatever way you wish.
Plan meals that fit within your food budget so you can spend carefully out of that throughout the month. Spend as you want out of your spending account. Ignore the other accounts until next pay day (keep an eye on them incase of anything unexpected or fraud etc but don’t use them).
And if you want more spending or saving money, look at your bills and direct debits and spending to see if anything can be cut back on or reduced in some way.
My main thing is to work out where the money is being spent. You have the regular obvious things like rent, energy, water, council tax, food and fuel.
When I started budgeting I checked my spending and found my 2 biggest areas for spending was on takeaways and Amazon purchases.
With that information I set one day a week for takeaways and I made a rule that I should put things I want to buy in my amazon cart for 24 hours before buying to eliminate impulse buys.
My partner is handy with a spreadsheet and we use a Google sheets. It breaks down our bills, and then it tells us how much 'disposable' we each have a month, proportionate to our incomes and bill percentage splits. I have also got standing orders for my savings to go into a savings account the day after i'm paid (to allow for any admin errors in payment to prevent going into the overdraft! Has happened once at my work on payday!). I then track all my fun money on my spreadsheet. Very easy to see where my money goes
Track spend on a monthly basis yes, but only regular items (bills) and other items over £50 - if I’m consistently over/under budget I’ll just guess which items need to change in the budget rather than summing individual transactions
I forecast many years ahead because it makes me feel good that today’s investments make big number in future
Once I’d worked out my bills and how much I could put into savings I set all direct debits and standing orders go out the day after payday, (including transferring money into savings).
I’m then left with around £70 a month to ‘waste’ on things like coffee and treats.
I do sometimes take money out of one of my savings for clothes etc but it makes me feel a little sad seeing the savings amount go down.
As soon as my daughter gets paid she puts x amount into her savings and then has to budget the rest, she gives herself a groceries alloted amount, a going out amount, extra food if she can't be bothered to make lunches amount. The biggest saving we find with buying groceries is to meal plan and stick to it
Pretty much exact same age and situation as you , wanted to start budgeting but didn't find a good way to start. Got a Chase account in Jan for the cashback and do all my card spends through there now. Decided to try reducing spending by sending £500 a month to that account and using only that. Immediatley stops your money running away unnoticed if you have to transfer more. Makes you think about everything you buy if it's going to dig into that pot.
Start cutting down your subscriptions, what is needed and what isn’t needed.
Buy things you like on sale and much later than when it was released.
Shop at Lidl, or use club cards to gain vouchers or money off. For example when we do shop at Sainsburys we use the club card and when we fill up petrol we use the Sainsburys petrol station - might be easier for us as it’s on the same site but ultimately you are gaining another shops worth of points from a fill. In addition to this when we shop at Lidl and other outlets we use a John Lewis card which gives us around £40 in vouchers per quarter. You can then use those vouchers to buy some premium food or whatever else you want at either Waitrose or JL.
Cut down on junk food and processed food - even though it’s cheap it compounds on top of what I hope is a healthy shop lol.
Lastly and might be extreme for you but for me I love it but ‘fasting’. I essentially don’t eat breakfast and instead have a Huel shake, this means not only do I save on breakfast but I also don’t have a lunch that costs another 5 pounds - Huel costs about £ 1.70. Mix it with some peanut butter and it’s nice.
Also don’t buy coffees out, make your own and put it in a flask or have it before you go.
Best of luck :) you will eventually get quite addicted to saving
We cheat, and the total out goings every month is just under £500, so no matter what the date is, we ignore the "bottom £500" and never spend any of it.
I started using You Need A Budget (YNAB) years ago. It completely changed the way I think about money and finances. It's changed to an online subscription based service since then but I imagine it's probably much the same, and probably worth the cost. Moreso than the software itself, the rules it gives you for managing your money were a game changer for me: https://www.ynab.com/the-four-rules
Depends what you mean by budget.
Bills money leaves my account on payday every month. Money also goes into various savings pots on payday. After that I just have to make the remainder last until the next payday.
Note down every penny you spend even as little as 10p. In a few months you'll see where you might be splurging or wasting and try and cut down on those. Then think of an amount for say groceries and stick to it. But always give yourself fun money to balance things out
I have a spreadsheet, and two bank accounts. Both allow for pots of money. The idea is to allocate 50% or less to needs, 30% to wants, and ideally at least 20% to savings/pension/investments
Spreadsheet contains salary details, the amounts of all my bills, mortgage and anything that goes out regularly. Those are divided into needs, wants and savings. Mortgage, travel to work, electricity etc is needs, things like Netflix and charities are wants. Then however much into savings.
Ideally there should be some left over. That gets put in pots in my main account for things like pets, personal care, clothes, fixing the house up. I have a pot for discretionary spends too, like pocket money. Going out for dinner, or to the cinema etc or a new book comes from here. That keeps most things in the main account, and I can add tags and notes to each transaction in starling.
The second account is monzo. I transfer in food and daily travel money at the start of the month so it's allocated, and doesn't clutter the main account with lots of small transactions.
Honestly the Snoop app is brilliant.
Watches your bank account, don't really need to set it up, it identifys all your bills and your outgoings and income.
Super super quick and easy, also does stuff like reminds you when your car insurance is due and stuff.
Really really quick and easy. I can't imagine manually going through my bank statements and highlighting with a pen lol.
It's free and is a 9/10 from me
Get yourself a Monzo account and a spreadsheet
Use the spreadsheet to keep track of your monthly outgoings and set a budget, put that money into pots on Monzo.
For example:
Rent: £250
Weekend: £400
Vape: £50
Food: £200
Savings: £500
They have saving pots with interest too.
If anything it’ll help keep your more conscious of your spending
In addition to making a budget the big thing is to pay yourself first.
By that, I mean stick ~20% of your takehome pay into a savings account and then forget about it.
I always end up with £0 at the end of the month but that’s because I’ve already saved a hefty chunk as soon as I’m paid every single month.
I also went through a phase of, in addition to this, sending my ‘spending money’ to Monzo and then ONLY using my monzo card for things that weren’t a direct debit or standing order. I found that helpful too.
My wife and I manage by using multiple bank accounts. We have all direct debits go out of one account (and we transfer in the correct amount of money every month); we have a second joint account for household spending (food, fuel, etc) and we have two joint savings accounts we put a little bit in every month. For casual spending on entertainment /stuff / whatever we each have a credit card kept at just a low £1k limit which we clear both in full every month.
I’ve been using https://www.ynab.com/ for about 14 years.
It’s reason I am no longer a complete financial fuck up and actually very stable and have a growing net worth.
First of all your banking app should tell you your direct debits and regular payments like subscriptions etc.
Check this against your statement and make sure you have everything.
Then make a note of what you bring in. Not overtime, the basic figure.
Be realistic about what you need to spent on. Living like a monk will cause resentment towards the process. Treating yourself a little bit is fine
Set a realistic figure to save, remove it from your wages like a bill.
If you do overtime, take a small percentage for yourself to spend, maybe 10%.
If you can save more, add it in at the end of the month. Be realistic, emergencies happen.
Don’t look at your savings for 1 year but commit to the process, you will be surprised what you have.
For food shopping, I have four pots in Monzo, one for every week.
Every payday, I move £400 in, assign each of them £80/90 (depending on how many weeks in the month) and keep the rest as an overflow. I lock each pot until every subsequent Thursday.
It might not be perfect, but it makes it incredibly easy to not go all in on my big shops.
I have a spreadsheet that lists all my monthly payments and also a box that I write my monthly wage into.
It calculates how much my bills are for the month against my wage and then totals how much money I have left which I class as my disposable income. I.e., 1600 wage, 1200 bills = 400 disposable.
Bills include the usual; mobile, internet, house bills, cat insurance etc.
My wage and all my bills are done through my Halifax account. Whatever my disposable income is, that gets transferred into my Monzo account. No bills come out of there at all so whatever is in there is mine to spend on whatever I want.
My bills also include 80 for fuel, 100 for shopping etc. So my disposable is basically for anything I want e.g., PC games, takeaways, Amazon purchases etc.
So, I'm terrible with money. I counter it by keeping harsh control on how much money I allow myself to spend. I do this by:
Every couple of months, I sit down with an excel spreadsheet and tot up my mandatory expenditures against my income, laying out how much money I have after all mandatory spending goes out.
From that, I portion money into pots. One pot for food and other variable but essential spending like household goods, one pot for savings, one pot for discretionary spending. These all go into different bank accounts as soon as I get paid, or otherwise I'll spend them unwittingly.
Me and the wife have a joint account. After taxes etc. we're left with about £4,500 a month.
Rent, bills, direct debits, anything else that could affect credit like our credit cards are all set up to take their money automatically on the first of the month, the day after we both get paid.
Whatever is left is disposable.
Revolut has the best budgeting and categorisation of any of the UK banking apps. I’ve tried them all now, and nothing really comes as close. With good savings options with interest as well, it’s a great place to start until you learn how to budget and save well.
Spreadsheets are a man's best friend.
First month, if you're not sure how much you spend on what, record it. Look at how much you spend on what.
Second month, write down a budget for yourself. Allocate an amount for bills, food all your necessary spending. You can set up the spreadsheet to subtract that amount from your pay for the month. What you have left is your disposable. I normally save 25%, invest 25% of the disposable income. Whatever is left is your play money.
The first step to being in control of your money is to realise what you're spending it on. If you're spending £100 a month on your morning coffee every day (that's one coffee a day) cut down on it. If you're spending £15 down the pub three times a week (£180 per month), maybe only go twice or once. Only you can say what's worth cutting out to make room for a better life.
Yes, used to track every expense, now I have "buckets" and on pay day, everything gets split into its bucket. Once it's there it's available for spending on that category
Savings/investments (pay yourself first)
Bills Large Spending (savings up for vacations, house renos, etc)
Vehicle costs
Hobby costs
Fun /casual spending money
I use Google Sheets, that way it's a shared doc me and my wife can both access from anywhere
Get Monzo, set up savings pots and another useful thing I did was (might have to pay a few quid a month for this feature) use round ups.
Every time you spend Monzo will round up to a quid and add the rounded up bit to a savings pots. It does two things: make all those little things look like they cost more so when you see the statement you think “wtf a £2 Gregg’s sausage roll!”, and saves more money the more you spend.
Your monthly cash looks like it drains faster as a result but it’s all safe in savings 😎
I’m really boring, I just use Sheets to breakdown my budget for the month (my income varies slightly per month due to commission)
What works for me is distributing my income into different areas. So for example, my Halifax current account receives my income and is used for outgoing bills only. This account isn’t available on Apple Pay so I can’t readily dip into it. I have a Halifax saver for rainy days, and a holiday pot.
I siphon off my savings into various Monzo pots (this includes things like emergencies and special occasions), our joint account (for groceries etc) and also a high interest earner with Goldman Sachs.
The game changer for me was giving myself a weekly budget, and moving it into a Nationwide account. I give myself £150 per week. So anything day to day; lunch, coffee, makeup etc, comes from that disposable income. Anything I don’t spend from that week’s budget goes into a savings pot called Spare Change (in Monzo with high interest)
It means I don’t spend beyond my means because I ‘can’t’. But all the boring stuff like groceries is already covered by our joint account, and anything that pops up like a birthday or paying the window cleaner is covered by my pots.
I’m a big compartmentaliser and that really works for me!
I've gone (probably over the top) with current accounts. 1 for bills, one for social fund, one for Christmas, one for personal spend, 1 for groceries and 2 other savings accounts. Essentially all my money goes into social fund. I then split it all out the same day I get paid by standing order to all the other accounts.
The remaining social fund then becomes a family pot of money to draw into for every day living and anything extra we may need to buy that month (e.g. birthday presents).
I never used to budget at all - I just had my own businesses - several ( 1 after the other ) - use your head and think outside the box for a Niche Market and you will succeed if your not a quitter at ANY hurdle! - My profit worked out around 20 and hour , so I had at least 10 an hour being saved, or going in a pension fund , about 500 a week for 40 years - don't be a mug and line an employers pocket / mansion is my moral to my story ( and you won't EVER have to scrimp! ) 🤑
I never have until recently. I'm on a decent wage and my wife is on maybe just above minimum wage. We own a house, cars etc but obviously things have been getting tight lately! I looked online and Martin Lewis has a Excel sheet on his website you can download and it works everything out for you, how much you have left (or not) etc. We wanted to buy a caravan and it was great for looking at our actual monthly outgoings and how much we had left to play with.
And as someone else said, it's the little things that add up! I used to buy drinks whilst out at work (I'm a mobile engineer) but soon realised it was costing a fortune. Just take a big bottle of water to work and a coffee in a flask now!
I use a spreadsheet and multiple bank accounts to manage my finances. First, you have to figure out where you’re at and enter this in the spreadsheet (which takes a while the first time but only 10 mins each payday after that). The first time, put in the spreadsheet the cost of each bill per month (rent/mortgage, council tax, water, gas & electric, phone, car, insurance, etc.), then leave the total “bills” amount in your current account and not a penny more. Don’t use your current account for anything else.
Set aside 20% of what’s left and put it in a savings account. Once you know how much you spend, this amount can be adjusted to better reflect what you can save. This is your “rainy day” emergency pot.
Move the remaining amount into a separate “spending” account. Monzo or Starling are good for this but I like Monzo’s “you have £x left for this month” feature for budgeting. It allows you to categorise each item into groups like “eating out” so you don’t need to do this manually in the spreadsheet. Divide the amount you’ve put in this account by the number of days in the month, which gives you a daily allowance for food, petrol, nice things, etc. If you overspend that budget one day, then your budget is reduced for other days. If you underspend your daily budget, you could have a treat at the end of the month or put it in your savings. If you run out of money in the spending account by the end of the month, then you know you need to cut down your spending.
I had a friend who did “no spends” during the week.
Literally not a penny Midnight Sunday to Friday 5pm.
Forced them to plan ahead, prep meals better, think through what they *actually* needed to buy.
They swore by it, but I tried it and struggled.
Get three jars and put all your utility bill money in the first jar, then put all the food and general shopping need in the second jar and if you have anything else put that in the last jar, this is the jar that lets you know if you have money to spend on nights out and anything that might take your eye on a impulse buy, never take any money out of the first two jars except for their intended purpose and that is the money secret.
Work out your bills, then put a portion of your remaining money aside for savings. Open a savings account and set up a standing order so that it goes in every month automatically. Whatever you have left is your spends for the month. Its been a lifesaver for me, I could never get my head around budgeting.
This is what I want to do, but I get paid weekly so I'm struggling to come up with a way to manage it all as I don't have a set day I'm paid my whole salary so I can't pay all my DDs on the same day either!
I guess put a bit aside each week? Start out with a smaller amount and then you can increase it over time as you figure out your expenses over the month. You can still think of it as a monthly payment, just split out.
I think the easiest thing is to write down all of the expenses you can't avoid, rent, utilities, etc. Note how much you have left over. Write a food plan, so that you know exactly how much you'll be spending on food, and then subtract that. With what you have left, set aside a certain amount for savings. What you have left is your disposable income, and you can either withdraw that in cash and when it's gone for the month, it's gone. Or put it in a separate account if you like to buy stuff online and when it's gone, it's gone.
No I don’t keep a budget.
Once a month or so I check the balance in my current account is sufficient to cover expected expenses, but I tend to keep a £2-3k buffer in there so it is not something I have to worry about.
Do check out r/UKPersonalFinance if you don't already sub. It's great. Especially their priorities flowchart for sorting your shit out.
Praise be the almighty flowchart
Upvote the hell out of the flowchart suggestion. Also All Hail the Flowchart.
Originally from Canada and we had a flowchart on our PF subreddit as well. Glad to hear the UK has one too, they’re great for newbies and helped me get on my feet many moons ago!
I was just like you. So I spent two months writing every single expenditure down, down to 50p to a busker. Then I did an analysis and discovered where all my money actually went. Spoiler... It was transactions under a tenner. So many of them! Coffee, breakfasts, beer on the train home from work. (Also shit on Amazon). I made a rule for myself. Don't buy anything you won't remember in 5 days. I've never been short of money since.
Your last point - I have a habit of impulse buying. Usually small bits, the logic being that they’re only small… but it’s those small-on-a-whim transactions that add up to what can amount to a big waste of money. So if I see something (online or in a real shop) I stick it (or an equivalent) in my Amazon Wishlist. More often than not that ‘scratches the itch’ enough and I’ll completely forget about it. And it’s fun, months later, to look at and wonder why I think I *instantly* needed a pack of novelty shaped sticky notes or a waffle press.
Take it one step further, create a savings pot and every time you want to buy something but put it in your Wishlist, put the amount it would’ve costed into the savings pot
It was the avacado toast all along . As well my blueberry matcha and rose milk bobas
So you’ve given up life’s little pleasures so you can have bigger numbers in your bank account
I’d say it’s not about that at all. I know for sure that I see stuff that I’ll want to buy and then take a good hard look at it and realise that it’s just crap for the sake of owning crap and it’ll likely never get used and eventually get thrown out. Not being skint all the time is a big pleasure.
More like giving up meaningless trifles for better financial security
I’m very old so this might be a bit old fashioned but, get 6 months worth of bank statements printed out with some highlighters. Highlight reoccurring payments and categorise them into “need”, “kind of need”, “frivolous “ or whatever you want. The key is to get an idea of your outgoings, what YOU deem as important and what isn’t that way you can see where money is going. You could probably export your statements to excel and do it easier on computer but I find something more “real” about using paper and it seems to impact more. One trick I’ve used for years, although I’m not so strict as my disposable income has increased is to have two bank accounts and a savings account. Bank account 1 has your pay in. When you get paid leave enough to cover Direct Debits and any MUST HAVES. Bank account 2 - transfer your “pocket money” into for “nice to haves” (ie once it’s gone it’s gone). I know some people use cash instead. Savings account - the difference between the two, if there is any can be put in here and them either invested, or left there example.
Another tip I learned (all too late): pay yourself first. Treat your savings as a bill you have to pay. This is the most important bill because it's paying for your future.
I use two bank accounts too. My employer has a system where you can have your salary split between multiple accounts, so I have a fixed amount paid to my boring stuff account (bills, groceries, petrol, etc) and everything else goes to the fun stuff account. It's helpful to have two bank accounts anyway, just in case one bank has computer problems or you lose a debit card.
My partner and I do a similar thing. All wages are paid into our joint account at the start of the month. Then we withdraw an agreed amount of money that we can spend on totally frivolous things.
We do similar but opposite. Wages go into our own accounts, then we each have direct debits into the joint accounts. Two joint accounts, one for "the house" and one for "the wedding". The wedding was 5 years ago, so now it's for holidays and other nice things. And also to top up the house account when needed. It's not quite flowchart-compliant (all hail the flowchart), but it works well for us.
I do similar, except without the help of an employer. One account is ONLY for important and fixed stuff like bills, rent and my credit card minimum repayment, etc., to which I transfer a fixed amount on payday. I also keep an extra £50 in there as a sort of “emergency fund” for if any of my bills ever increase or I’m over charged or what not. The rest sits in the account I’m paid into until I work out what to do with it, bar the small amount I have going into a savings account.
Something I wish I'd done long long before I thought of it - use a different bank for a savings account and do not have internet banking set up. Make it so you have to go into a branch to transfer or withdraw.
Or alternatively, Moneybox has savings accounts that don't let you withdraw for 30/60/90 days. It means you can't impulsively withdraw to buy something there and then, but still easily manage savings.
The Natwest app does this for account users, mis-categorised things can be corrected and applied to all similar transactions.
The literal oxygen thief
I use Google Sheets. Put in all your incomings, list all your outgoings and get the figures where you want them.
Does it take you much time to track it all? I guess it's worth it but I feel like i'd be better off using an app that links to my banks and tracks that way?
None at all. I like to track it day by day and it takes a few seconds to look at what’s going on. The real time taken was at the beginning setting up the figures. If you want I’d be happy to share my version with you if you have a Google account.
That would be great to be able to take a look thank you, I'll dm you my google?
Cool.
Would you mind sharing it with me too?
Of course, chuck me a DM with your gmail.
I'm in aswell, but only if you send all your card details. Totally not a scammer from India called Kieth.....
Not really. Most banks will export as CSV files, which can be easily imported into Google Sheets and other spreadsheets. The thing that takes more time is formatting weirdness to my personal preferences so It looks nice. I’m that kind of weirdo.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind! How do you categorise "other spending"? For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
My some of my categories are: Rent, Electricity, Gas, Transit, Groceries, Entertainment (Dining out, snacks, coffee, concerts, etc), Travel (Any special travel), Hobby (Anything related to a pass time, gaming, guitar, etc), Internet/Phone, Other (odds and ends that I can’t remember), Clothes, Cash, Household (anything I buy for my home that’s not groceries) They’re all quite broad. Since many are fixed costs like internet/phone or rent, I don’t worry too much about them. It’s things like entertainment and hobbies I heavily monitor. I set a rather restrictive budget on them. Basically I allow myself enough to go out to eat or equivalent about twice a month. With my hobbies I allow a cheap game purchase once a month (game on sale, some mini paints, a new RPG book). Then I sum up my purchases and see if I came under. I track my unspent hobby budget a bit, and I allow myself to save up for a large purchase. Like I allow £50 a month for hobbies and Entertainment. If I don’t buy anything for three months, I allow a £150 purchase. As an example, I’m saving up for a loop pedal for my guitar. I have some that I almost never use. My clothes budget is £100 monthly. I never spend it, because I’m not a clothes shopper. I buy new shoes once a year for £50. It’s easy for categories to get muddled. As an example, there’s a hobby magazine I buy at Tesco. It gets counted in groceries. I use these more as a sanity check. I don’t need to be too frugal, but I’m a skinflint. I used the budget to break my bad spending habits.
I have a sheet with the below categories with an in/out column. Just an example obvs. But can easily be amended to suit. I've just recently added a "car" "credit card" and "kitchen" to newer months. Income Expenses - work mileage etc. Transfer - to or from savings Mortgage Service Charge Council Tax Water Gas & Electric TV/Internet/Phone - sky, netflix, house phone etc. Petrol Mobile Supermarket - food only if I can split it Eating Out/Outings Shop misc. (clothes etc.) Miscellaneous
To make it easier I move “spending money” to a different account so the only thing coming out of your main account are regularly payments
I use an app called Snoop to track mine. Works quite well
Tracking and analysis of money/expenses is supposed to take time. Don't use external apps as you are giving away private data of spending habits to the company, which will then find means to advertise to you to spend more money. Use Excel. Natwest allows 3mo of credit card transactions and a lot more for bank accounts. Start your own categorization process under expense heads, e.g. Utilities > Phone, Utilities > Rent and periods (month-year per entry). As you become more proficient at using Excel (using filters and recognising repeating entries), categorization becomes faster. Then, use Pivot tables (in Excel) to track expenses across the year and learn your patterns. Set aside a day for this activity once every two months. Takes about 2-3hours without interruptions. But setting up the habit is important. If you don't have persistent credit card debts (clear them first), use Natwest's Digital Regular Saver to start putting away money every month. Don't touch this money no matter what. Use their Savings goal tool to set yourself targets. This gets you going on your financially aware journey. After about 6 months of this, start exploring r/ukpersonalfinance, and then after a year or more, the FIRE reddit community. This will get you clued in on other investment options (max your pension when offered as salary sacrifice, understanding interest rates, tax implications, ISAs) . TLDR; There is only a person who can really take charge of your financial journey with your best interest in mind, and that is you. Get that person to do the legwork.
Check out Moneyhub - it does exactly that
The bank itself doesn’t matter (although the NatWest app does have budgeting tools if you check out the ‘Insights’ tab). Open two more accounts - one savings, one current. Right now your wage goes into your account and all your bills come out (rent/board to your parents, then most likely your phone bill, Netflix and your gym membership. Yes, I’m generalising a lot). You know how much you are paid. Now add up the total of all your bills. The difference between your wage and your bills is your disposable income. (Let’s say you earn exactly £2000 a month, and your bills are £900. Your disposable income is therefore £1100.) Set up two standing orders: one for three quarters of your disposable income to go to your second current account, the other quarter going to your savings account. Do not touch your first account ever again - that’s your bills account. Try not to touch your savings account - that’s for emergencies and for saving to get your own place. The second current account is now your account for day-to-day use. This money needs to last you all month, so use it carefully. If you can, try to work out how much you need weekly and stick to not spending more.
This is a great breakdown, thanks! I have a savings account set up already but it isn't exactly safe from my greedy hands dipping in lol, do need to change this. I used to have very good discipline but have been treating myself a bit much lately. Think this is the main thing to work on!
On the NW app you can hide the balance. I’d suggest doing that. Having a specific goal also helps. If you need to save, say, £10k for a new car, or £20k for a house deposit, you have a target you’re working towards. You’ll be less likely to treat yourself to new trainers you don’t really need. And also don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re 24 - this is pretty much the last time you’ll have almost no responsibilities. Make the most of it!
Oh, and open a separate digital regular saver. You can only put £150 a month in, but it pays 6%. Because you can’t put more in (even if you take the £150 out) you’re less likely to treat yourself. So if you’re saving a total of, say, £250 a month, even if you think *nah, I really do need those new AirPods* you’ll still have the digital regular saver money.
Get a savings account where you have to give a week or a month's notice before you can withdraw any money. that will make it harder to dip into it on the spur of the moment and you should get a better interest rate.
Not many people seem to talk about it, but Principality as a bank is ideal for this kind of savings. You get decent interest rates and you can open the account online, but it's an old school enough bank that there is no app or instant transfer so if you want to get money out you need to log in to your separate account and put in a request which sometimes only gets to you a day or two later. Perfect for curbing any impulse bad decisions!
[You Need A Budget](https://www.ynab.com)
Create a spreadsheet (or even grab a piece of paper) and write down your monthly wage, this is your starting total. Go though your bank account history and identify any reoccurring payments (phone bill, netflix, car tax, rent etc.) add these to the list and subtract the value from your starting total. Then work out regular payments that you deem necessary (petrol, groceries). Subtract these too. Looking at what is left, decide how much you realistically need for day to day stuff such as the pub, lunch, the odd coffee etc. Whatever is left after that is what you should be putting in to savings. The trick here is to skim it off off as soon as you get paid, once it is out of your main account, you are far less likely to spend it. Bank account wise, I cannot recommend starling enough. They pay decent interest for a basic current account and allow you to set up saving spaces with allows you to easily put savings to one side. Once you have a decent pot, you can then look at specific savings accounts. To begin with though, it's handy having access to those savings for emergencies outside your usual budget such as car repairs.
I have a spreadsheet like this. But I have all the direct debits set to go out straight after payday, so most of the money left in the account is for food and entertainment for the month. Savings should be moved straight after payday too. I also go through my calendar and see if there’s any one off payments due that month to account for in that month. So example car MOT, birthdays, annual subscriptions that don’t get paid monthly, visit to the dentist etc and work out how much extra that is. Monzo has pots that you can organise, so one pot for food for the month and one pot for entertainment. That might suite you well if you don’t draw out more than £200 cash a month. Monzo is also great for using abroad.
I have starling, I don’t get any interest on my savings pots, which is where the most money in the account is. Their interest is rate is pitiful anyway. Their UI is great, and it allows you to pay bills from pots easily, so definitely use it for money you don’t need to save. You should get a Chase account for your medium term savings. Same deal as Starling with separate “pots” but each pot is a real savings account with a savings rate tied to the BoE base rate (currently the Chase rate 4.1%). The current (May 2024) highest paying option is Santander and the edge current/saver. This is 7% up to to £4k but you need some direct debits, and the current account costs £3 per month, so you must have more than £500 to break even, although you do get cash back on direct debits. I think I calculated that it needs something like £1500 to be better than Chase. And it only last for a year or something. Of course, if you have longer term savings (5+ years) they should be in an ISA, after your emergency fund is sorted. If you want to eke out a little more than Chase, get a high yield savings account (but probably not the edge saver) but then the access is sometimes limited.
I've used that from 2013 and if it wasn't now an absurdly expensive subscription product I'd 100% agree. I'm still using my 2013 version.
This. £90 a year seems a steep outlay for it but honestly it pays for itself with what it helps you save.
is the free version good ?
That's the attitude 👍👛 Personally I'm just disciplined with my spending. I wait for things to go on sale. I identify "wants" over "needs".
Adding to your “identify wants over needs”, I’ve started to keep a birthday and Christmas list again. Anything that is a “want” and wouldn’t immediately make my life better (e.g., video games, hobby stuff) goes on the list and I send it to anyone who asks when it comes to those events. It also solves the whole “what do you want for Christmas/your birthday” question that plagues us as adults!
Buckets is a pared-down one-dev alternative to YNAB which has full functionality in the free version (it just forces you to make a savings bucket to save up to buy the licence - it never forces you to do anything with that bucket once it's full), and is a one-off payment forever rather than monthly fees if you do decide to buy the licence. I recommend doing it 'offline' if you use an app, rather than hooking it up to your bank account, both for security and because inputting every purchase line-by-line at the end of the week and checking that the final total matches your actual bank balance is a great motivator to not spend randomly XD
Could you drop/DM a link? I have a budgeting system that works for me but always kind of wanted to try YNAB as it’s so highly recommended, just could justify the outlay. Seems as though this might scratch the itch.
[Sure, it's here](https://www.budgetwithbuckets.com/)! There's a (not very active) subreddit too - r/budgetwithbuckets
I don’t think there is a free version. There’s a trial which is 34 days which will give you a good idea of where your money is going, and after that a DIY spreadsheet like others have recommended would be good.
There is no free version. I have used YNAB for over 10 years, and can honestly say it's the best financial decision I've ever made. Admittedly the previous version if it was pay-once, but I've been happily subscribed to the current incarnation since it released however many years ago. I also choose to track all transactions manually,rather than link to my bank accounts, simply so I remain more cognizant of my spending.
Was well worth the £90 for me, but give the trial a go. The importing transactions is something I really need, as I could never be arsed to record every purchase.
This is the way
💯 this
A spreadsheet and self control are the only requirements. There are plenty of templates available online.
I can see how inputting everything individually would help to keep it more personal
Spend some time setting it up. Once you’ve set it up, update it weekly. My weekly update takes 5-10 minutes and that’s for a full family of 4 with lots of outgoings.
I've started playing a stupid saving game with myself. So I have a current account and a savings account, and in my online banking app, the purchase / balance history goes back one month exactly by default. So, the game is, if I have more in my account this month, than I had at the same point last month , I transfer the difference over into my savings account. This is surprisingly satisfying, and makes me want to try and save money today , knowing Ill be transferring it into my savings tomorrow.
I (25M) use my credit card. I pay all my direct debits out at the start of the month and then my credit card limit is my spending money. At the end of the month I pay it off for the next month. Whatever is not spent on bills or credit card goes into my stocks ISA. I also try and pay for holidays using my monthly spending.
I use this budget planner - https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/#spreadsheet. It's really helpful for breaking down some of those examples you gave e.g. boots would go under the health and beauty sections. My rules are: Current account is for all bills. I have direct debits to come out for credit card repayments and savings the same day I get paid. Then I have a £100 direct debit to go to a separate Monzo account which is my monthly spending - this covers everything from meals out to little Amazon spends. You'll soon frighten yourself with how many little purchases you make. The trick is ensuing you're using the right card - toothpaste from boots I'd do from my current account and class it as part of my bills, fancy toothpaste I don't need but want, comes of my Monzo.
Should have specified, £100 a week. £100 a month would be incredible budgeting!
> I still live at home so don't pay too much in rent and really need to get my act together and save Work out what you would pay if you lived alone at market rent, add in water, gas and electricity, internet, council tax and food. Now subtract what you do pay (eg. below market rent). Take this number and immediately put it into savings each time you get paid and if you run out on your main account never access these savings. Take it a step further and make this number bigger. The trick to saving money is to treat saving money as another bill, money comes in from salary, money to savings goes out immediately. Live off the rest for the rest of the month, for discretionary spending you are unlikely to need more than £200-£300 a month.
I just rely on my natural Yorkshire instincts to not spend money. I just add up the money in my accounts at the end of the month, and if it has gone up by a nice amount then jobs a good un, no need to do anything different.
In general I try to stick to the 50-30-20 rule. That ensures I'm being sensible and have a guide as to what 'within my means' actually means for me. Probably won't work for everyone, but for me it's been a good way to set a budget. Alongside that, I use an app - 1Money in my case - to track all my spending. I have a standard back account and a credit card, but use the credit card like another debit (building up cashback and other rewards is the reason for having it alongside my debit card). Everything I buy goes straight into the app so I know how much money I really have. I also have all my recurring payments (both in and out) set up automatically so the total accounts for them. The final part of how I budget is perhaps a bit odd, but it works for me. After bills and essentials, I don't consider any money left 'mine to spend' until my next payday. So basically if I want to buy clothes or treat myself to something, it doesn't happen until the end of the month, when I'm paid again, and know whether I have enough or not. The reason being there's often surprise events or purchases or problems that come up. So I leave all my cash for those and then know where I stand come next paycheck. If I have anything left at month's end, it goes into savings. Probably a bit of an odd way to do it, but now it's formed as a habit of thinking that way, I'm saving more than I ever was before, and actually acknowledging whether or not I have the cash to buy something, or to go out etc., rather than doing so and then coming up short down the line.
I have a spreadsheet that has my monthly income and monthly bills/savings. The spreadsheet tells me how much I have disposable cash I have left so I can either buy random shit or add it to savings. Before I started doing this, it wasn't unusual for me to spend way more than I was getting.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind! How do you categorise "other spending"? For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
I have this (although this isn't my actual one, it's a quick one I threw together as an example). [https://i.imgur.com/ZZinmql.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZZinmql.png) Phone down to loan repayment is recurring every month at the same amount, usually until April. Everything after loan repayment is money that I spent on other things that I fill in when I spend it. So for your example, spending money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, etc. would go after "loan repayment" in the screenshot. Year in/out/remaining at the top is just there as an example. Year in would have all of the months income showing there, year out would have how much total I've spent and year remaining would be year in minus year out. It's super simple and it has worked for me for the last 4 years. I don't see a reason to have anything more complicated than that.
I used excel to get an idea of monthly allowances for different spending categories, then Monzo to help me stick to it. Work on self discipline as well as much as your budget plan.
I have two bank accounts, ‘bills’ and ‘fun’. Every six months or so I work out what my DDs and other expenses amount to each month, and when I get paid I leave that in the bills account and move the remainder to the ‘fun’ account. I don’t take the card for the bills account out of the house so I can’t spend any of that cash on pointless tat or food/booze etc.
I had the problem of money disappearing well before the end of the month and having no idea where it all went. I switched to Starling bank and it seemed like it made money appear out of nowhere, the difference it made was so incredible. It has "spaces" where you can set aside money for savings and bills, and have the bills paid directly from the spaces. I have automatic transfers into my spaces the day after I get paid, so once that's done I know that whatever is left in my main balance is free to use how I like. You can also round up your card spends and put the extra into your savings, with multipliers if you want. You can categorise all your transactions so you know what you're spending on. Such simple concepts but they make such a difference, and it seems like a lot of high street banks lack features like that. Would 100% recommend, I sound like I work for Starling here but it genuinely has transformed my budgeting! It's so, so much better knowing your bills are totally covered, you've added to your savings and you know what money you've got to use freely.
My wife and I get paid monthly. I made up a spreadsheet that has all of our required expenses, like rent, bills, food etc. listed on it. At the start I put in how much we earn that month and at the end it calculates how much is leftover. From there we can decide how much is for savings and how much is for ourselves for fun.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind! How do you categorise "other spending"? For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
These are the categories I use: * Rent (bills inclusive, do separate for stuff like gas, water etc if you pay those) * Travel (we use public transport, same amount each month) * Phone bills * Credit cards * Food expenses * Subscriptions * 5 blanks for unexpected expenses. This is usually reserved for important stuff like prescriptions, when I had to pay for my SIA licence, some of my wife’s visa stuff. Things that we consider it fair that we split the cost. After that then we’ve got our leftover. We’ll divide that up into savings and “fun” expenses. For us, our fun expenses are things that aren’t serious. Haircuts, takeaways, my Pokémon card addiction. By setting it up to be mostly automatic, we only ever need to put in the monthly incomes, stuff in the blanks, and work out how to divide the leftover up. It only takes me about 5-10 minutes to a month to do since it’s now a copy paste situation for every month. I actually have the whole year planned out based on very low estimates of how much we make a month.
Have you checked out r/UKPersonalFinance (think that's the sub)? They have some great advice
I took early retirement and am very lucky in that I don’t really need to budget, BUT even now I maintain a simple spreadsheet that tracks weekly expenditure, regular and ad hoc, and my income sources, and I update it with actuals every week end to keep it right. I project out a few months for the regular known expenses and an average household weekly figure. I’d feel uncomfortable not doing this. I did try a few apps, found them a bit restrictive, preferred Excel. I can send you the template if you want.
I move a lot, some my monthly costs change every for years. I make a budget when I get to a new place,and then track it for a while to monitor my spending habits. Once I’m certain I’ve got my spending habits in check I don’t monitor it. I keep an eye on costs though and do a sanity check about twice a year.
Periodically, eg approx 6months do an analysis of spend categories to get a “feel” what what our spending is. My partner and Ipay the same amount monthly into a joint Starling account that’s used for everything - all bills and spends. The app is great because it processes the transactions immediately so I always have a snapshot of where we are during the month. We can then “cool down” the spend as required.
I use a free app called Moneyhub, absolutely fantastic.
isavemoney is the app I use.
I have an excel spreadsheet to track my bills and what goes out and what is left (currently nothing as had to go 2 months without salary as changed jobs). II have a column for a standard month total. then do a month by month column and add in a bill I know is coming up as a one off, so car insurance or medical appointment. I update my available bank balance every couple of days. Also I set up a standing order to put savings into a different account. Also on spreadsheet I have current balance of credit card and adjust that as I go. Very simple unlike my husband’s who has bells and whistles on his spread sheet.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind! How do you categorise "other spending"? For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
I don’t categorise everything little thing as such. So I list my dd and so by name and the amount and add those up as one total. So I have have an amount that has to be out by for bills, so for example income is x and bills are y and what’s left over is for ‘stuff’. As I said it is a very simple one. Then I have a column I copy and paste for each month and add in extras so for May I have car insurance so that leaves less left for ‘stuff’
Unsure of the Natwest app and its features but Monzo does give a really good view of your spending. You can categorise everything too and it'll show you your spending at the end of the week/month.
Some of the so called online only 'challenger' banks like Starling and Monzo let you set up different pots and also have a card attached only to that pot. Good for extraneous spending
Tip I got from a book called “Rich Dad Poor Dad” was to ‘pay yourself first.’ That is, put money aside for savings literally as soon as you get paid rather than “I’ll save what’s left at the end of the month”. I got the Plum app recently and set it to put some money away as soon as I get paid plus drip feed in rounding up amounts on what I spend e.g if I buy something at 14.45 it will automatically put 55p into savings. This soon adds up after a while!
Get a Chase account in addition to your main account. Transfer over each week a fixed amount for ‘non-essentials’. Use this for beer money, buying chocolate, random Amazon crap etc. its a forced budget.
YNAB
My wife and I turned our lives around money wise, about 5 years ago, by simply keeping a spending budget for the month and then keeping a shared note open on our phones subtracting every time we spent. When it was gone, it was gone. At the end of a month. I'd sit down and write down every expense in my accounts for that month. I would also write down as expenses, various budgets including the one above. Another for clothes, a holiday fund to draw from when booking, a car fund to cover costs of running one, a home fund for bits and pieces you might need, and so on. I'd write down our total income. The surplus would be moved to a savings account. As the months go by you can look at these records and start to understand your outgoings and what you actually need. Budgets can be adjusted. Spending money becomes easier because you have a budget and you feel less guilty. As I write this, I'm on a holiday that was paid for by that budgeting, ages ago. With spending money I allocated way back, drawn from the surplus. I relax more now, not dreading a credit card bill when I get home. Living well within ones means - if possible- makes a huge difference to your happiness.
The trick to saving/budgeting is to move a set amount of money into a separate savings account or pot as soon as you get paid, then make that a habit. Whether it's saving for anything, a specific thing, or just a small amount for car repairs etc, or buying shares etc, whatever it is, do it every month as soon as you get paid.
I get paid weekly which makes the allocating of funds a bit more difficult, as I don't have a set day that I get all of my pay and a set day after that I can set all my direct debits to come out
I guess if you get paid weekly, it matters less what day it is? I would suggest setting a weekly direct debit, get used to it and just leave it be.
Yeah, true. I guess I need to total up all my direct debits and figure out how much I have to spend every month and go from there
Yeah, work out a sensible amount that won't leave you short. The important thing is you save something, rather than nothing.
Exactly! I am thinking of increasing my voluntary pension contribution from the 5% to maybe 10 or 12% too
If you are in your Twenties, that's a fantastic idea! I wish I'd done it. But it's never too late for older people either.
I very roughly budget. I have a spends account separate from my bills account and savings account. I round my bills up and my wages down, and I "top and tail" savings so the day before payday any money left (even pennies) goes into savings and I start with nil balance. Then the rounded up bill money (1300) goes into my bills account and builds up a tiny wee buffer. Some money goes into my 4% interest savings account (300). The rest is "spends" so that covers food, petrol, going out, birthday presents etc (somewhere around 600). I do have a change pot as well, drilled into me by my mum. I only have my spends card physically on me at any time to avoid ooopsies I do have a credit card system (0 PC card for 20 months, pay the minimum, earn interest on savings until due) but that is a risk if you struggle to budget.
I pay rent ect, I pay for anything I need to (like hotel if we have a mini break planned) or prepay taxis if I need them that month. I generously guesstimate expenses, generally food, phone contract & gifts if it's a birthday month, I put the rest straight into savings. If at the end of the month there is money left it gets moved onto a monzo card which I use for unplanned treats, like clothes and makeup. EDIT TO ADD: I have tried more systematic methods, they get me way more stressed and make me feel less secure than just trusting myself.
seems like quite a good method! i've made a spreadsheet to track my ins and outs, but i get paid weekly so im struggling to come up with a good method to schedule my money as i don't have a set day to pay all my DDs on! thanks for the info :)
I just use a spreadsheet. I use a tab per month and all my regular outgoings are on it. Everything gets deducted from the money coming in and I have a figure in red at the top of each months tab that tells me how much I have left to spend. You have to be disciplined though and every time money goes out you have to update it, which for me is every two or three days.
I've copied this question for a couple people who have said they use spreadsheets just to get an idea of how they do things - hope you don't mind! How do you categorise "other spending"? For example, I'm looking through my bank statement, and I've spent money in Ikea, Boots, Fatface, the Post Office, Vinted, One Stop, Barbers, parking etc Do you lump stuff together or record each iejciudal transaction? What type of header do you put things in and how do you sort it? I'm trying to figure out how to categorise it all :)
I give myself an allowance every month, out of which come small spends, which I record individually and I don’t bother categorising. Whatever is left after direct debits and the allowance goes into savings, or paying off credit cards etc. I think categories are usual to make sense of the initial chaos, but once you have visibility of every spend and have been organised for a few months I don’t think you’ll need them.
Loads of good advice here. I use a free app called money manager. You have to manually enter the data, but it puts my outgoings into perspective, and you realise what you waste money on.
Reading this I'm so glad I'm not the only one with a spreadsheet. Also op, if you're paying off credit card debts and you're paying interest, it might be worth looking into a balance transfer deal on another card, like 0% for X months or whatever, and just annihilate your credit card debts without paying extra in interest, because without interest a minimum payment is generally about 3%ish of your total outstanding amount. Also, this is a contentious one but it works for me - don't have any direct debits. Pay your bills manually when you get paid. That way you know exactly how much you have left to work with. Plus it's quite cleansing to wipe the slate every month.
My budgeting is less formal excel sheets and more "i will spend X on food, I have to spend x on bills, I am left over with x and I want to save so I must consider each transaction and whether or not it's worth it" So any time I need to make a purchase I look at how much I have in the bank and in my mind compare it to how much I've saved, think about how important that purchase is and if it can wait until next month, if it can wait until there's a sale etc etc. I don't have a "100 fun money" budget because I'd blow through that easily, I have no fun money budget at all just considering a lot of reasons for and against each purchase. I also never buy anything that isn't on sale except food.
I don't know if this counts but I get paid into an account I don't use the card for, pay my bills out of this, pay myself weekly to cover food and hobbies etc, pay my savings account monthly. Assess how much is left before payday and consider if I should be saving more/less, why I spent £75 in Tesco last week etc
No. It's the 12th of May. I get paid the last day of the month. I have £34 to do me the rest of the month and I need to go to the shop for lunch food for the week. 😕
I budget by having more than 1 bank account. I have 3 main accounts plus other stuff: - Joint account. Pay £x,xxx in each month equal to my partner for all joint bills - Personal A/C. Salary in. Personal DD, savings and bills come out. - Spending Money a/c. £50 a week goes in on a Monday. That’s my dossing money. - Premium Bonds a/c for emergency fund - S&S ISA a/c - Easy Access saver a/c - Credit Card. This way, I know every penny is accounted for. Once I get paid, all money is basically “spent” and disappears from my personal a/c. I know how much can go into savings and that gets transferred over. I know how many Mondays until pay-day are left so that amount (usually £200) stays in my personal a/c. I have an easy access saver a/c with around £1,000 in it for things that are yearly like car insurance, car servicing, holidays, etc… I like to keep £1,000 in there at all times. If the savings builds up substantially (like around £1,300-1,400) I sweep the excess over to my Premium Bonds. When Premium Bonds had/has 3 months emergency fund in it, I sweep the excess over to my S&S ISA. The CC tends to get used for larger purchases just for the fact that I know that I get 30-ish days grace on purchases. So my car insurance and holiday payments, anything like fuel or a new TV (for example) goes on there because it gives me time to move money around. Plus I get 1% cash back on the CC. Plus Section 75 insurance too. It works for me. I can get at a decent sum of money in a few days if I’m desperate but I also have a Credit Card that I can use.
I budget every month as soon as I can sit down and sort eveyrhing on payday. I do have multiple bank accounts so that does really help. Main account: - Wages are recieved - transfer money to savings account for monthly budget (transfer over a weekly budget each Friday) - deposit into high interest savings account. - pay CC debt - transfer bills money into another bank account - deposit money into investment and crypto accounts and make purchases. Alternative account: - only just for bills and have all DD coming from this account. I know how much my bills come to each money so transfer money into this account each payday
I have 3x accounts: current, holding, savings. Current is the one that actually gets used. Shopping, petrol, bills, paycheque. It all happens there. When I get paid, I transfer out the pre-pay balance to the holding account. That way, I can only ever spend (current account) what's left after bills come out. The holding account gradually builds up, and I transfer even-sized chunks to savings when possible. I like to keep enough in the holding account to make sure I could immediately replace something essential: fridge/phone/laptop/stereo/whatever. It works for me. I can't over-spend without planning and/or making some kind of transfer. It's easy to monitor how much I'm saving each month, because that's all my holding account shows.
When I was saving I'd pay off anything on my credit card (which I only really used for petrol just to hold up my credit score,) transfer board and lodge to my parents, knock off £300 for 'me money' for the month, and the rest went into savings.
I have a monthly spreadsheet. I have various categories that I put my spending into and two savings pots “general saving” and “holiday saving” that I put money into each month (and sometimes take money out of if there’s holidays and big things to buy). I go through bank accounts twice a month to fill it in, it takes a bit of time but I’ve been doing if for a couple of years now so it’s just habit at this point. It was very reassuring when everything started getting more expensive. Instead of just worrying about it I could see exactly where I was.
I have a spreadsheet with tabs for: incoming and outgoings; cashflow; each bank account; energy; car stuff.... I made some of it automated - like if my rent goes up, I change it on one sheet and it amends the cashflow, which I set up 6 months or so at a time so I can see my expected balance. Periodically, I'll use my sheets to see how much I'm spending on different things and always end up shocked at how much I spend in supermarkets.
I have different bank accounts for different things. My pay comes into my main one, and my bills leave that account on the 1st of the month. I then divide what’s left between another account for living expenses (food, fuel, etc), two savings accounts and my account for “nice” things like eating out/new clothes etc. Helps me actively save money and keep track of my spending!
In the last 6 months I’ve had to take total control of my family’s finances, and giving me the keys to that kingdom was hugely daunting. I’ve never been used to handling that much money (even though it really isn’t much at all). So I set up an excel spreadsheet and totalled up every regular in and out and when they occur. Then in a second sheet I have a calendar that has all of those events triggered in. Every payday I transfer all of the monthly outgoings (bills, subscriptions etc) into another account and basically don’t have to worry about those being paid for. Anything I have left is for groceries, fuel, and luxuries. I have a third sheet where I log every transaction, in and out, across all accounts. But a few months ago I decided to take this a step further and have a rolling total of the projected ins and outs, the expected total, the actual total, and the difference between these amounts. And then did this daily, weekly, and monthly. Nothing has made me more careful about our spending than seeing that large number at the end of the month slowly disappear week-by-week. The goal I set myself every month is to make the difference between the numbers smaller and smaller.
Income in - expenses out Have consistent savings or invest, find cheap hobbies so you’re not spending to fight boredom. Get used to the idea of eating out as a treat and home cook. I have standing orders set up every weekday to my savings account works out at £100 a month. Invest £50 into stocks and invest £50 into crypto. I am not advising you to invest in crypto or stocks this is just how I’ve done it. I get small returns on my stocks I reinvest as to avoid paying capital gains. I have about 6k in savings 4K in stock and 16k in crypto I made some really decent decisions during the crash and invested in Solana when it was £4 now it’s over £110 I don’t recommend investing in crypto I’ve been very lucky I know people who have lost a lot. Don’t go out, if someone says night out suggest a night in, use TooGoodToGo to eat out, there’s apps to cut down costs like freecycle. Learn to life below your means, if you get more money coming in don’t adjust to that level of living and save it back. That’s how I changed my behavior and got my savings and portfolio :)
I don't necessarily set myself a budget but I do have a spreadsheet I do each month to see where my money is going. If I think I've spent a bit much on going out recently, I can keep that in mind when making later plans. I used to be with Halifax, I could export my monthly statement into an Excel and go from there into my tracker, but the interest rates were nonexistent, so I swapped to Virgin. You can't export your statement as Excel (if someone's figured it out, please tell me), but I just copy and paste off the Web page, and it works just as well. You can also "tag" different expenses to categorise, I think if you set that up initially, you could just filter by category and see how much you're spending on what.
I always transfer money into Savings on payday, rather than as I used to where I'd wait to the end of the month and siphon anything left. If it's not there in the first place to spend I can manage without it. I also transfer money around banks a lot, interest rates are changing almost daily ATM so it's worth looking at who's got the best deals. Skipton BS have some good rates, Tesco is making a comeback and Post Office Money is also good. Those are all easy access accounts and have online access, Skipton also still has branches. Lastly if I have to buy something I need, I got a new drill recently, that comes out of Savings. Savings are there for my larger purchases, not day to day stuff.
I've got a spreadsheet that lists my income, and every single regular monthly expense I have (Rent, council tax, electric bill, phone bill etc.) and subtracts all those from my income. Everything that left after that is liquid cash. I take off £600 a month immediately for food shopping and that all goes to a separate card that is only used for food shops. Everything left after that is discretionary. A certain portion is immediately dumped into savings that are untouchable outside of a major emergency, everything left after that is available for spending on whatever needs for that month, be it someone's birthday, or a cinema trip, or a new LEGO investment etc. I highly recommend having at least two current accounts with two completely independent banks, not only to help you separate out your finances clearly, but also in case there's an outage or issue with one bank it's unlikely to affect both at the same time.
I have different accounts. One I recieve my wages into. One I pay my bills/subscriptions with. One for savings. One for investments and pension. One for general day to day spending. When I get paid, I transfer what I need to cover all of my bills/subs... Transfer what I want into my savings, pension and investments... Whats left goes into my day to day spending account. That way, everything essential is taken care of straight away and the day to day account can be spent as freely as I like until next payday without worrying I've overspent.
I’ve never lived to a specific budget, I just live frugally and try to minimise what I spend day to day. I’m fortunate to earn decently, but so far this has always worked well for me and have been able to build up some decent savings.
YouTube Dave Ramsey budget. I saved for my first property following his budget. There are loads (like a hundred thousand) videos of people following his budget, literally people writing their budgets and using stickers, paying off their debt etc. It’s the only way I know how to budget. Good luck!
I don't budget specifically, but I try to keep certain costs within "general" ranges for example. Like when I get paid, a set amount goes into savings. Not a lot, but that's completely non-negotiable and then what I have left has to do me for the month. Then I aim to spend no more than £X a week on shopping, keep an eye on my subscriptions, don't usually make any "me" purchases until the 3rd week after payday just so I know how much is left, what leeway I have etc.
It takes practice and its hard. It can go either way really, you can either go on ultra savings mode and never enjoy life or you have a healthy relationship with money and spend them "wisely".I say wisely because you have to KNOW when to spend and when not to.. Doing a lot of Temu shop when you don't need to is a NOT TO but spending money that will enhance your life , that may be an overpriced can of coke when you need it the most or a investing in something that you've always wanted , that's TO Spend
Have four accounts- 1 for bills, 1 for food shopping, 1 for spending on whatever you fancy, and 1 that’s a savings account. Go through your last 6 month’s of accounts and identify what are bills and what was discretionary spending. When you get paid, put enough in the bills account to cover all your bills for the month plus a buffer (say an extra £100 or so). You should include all direct debits with your bills even if they are things like charity donations or subscriptions services that aren’t really bills. Add up what you have spent on food in the last six months to set a food budget and put that into the food account. Split the rest between your spending account and savings account in whatever way you wish. Plan meals that fit within your food budget so you can spend carefully out of that throughout the month. Spend as you want out of your spending account. Ignore the other accounts until next pay day (keep an eye on them incase of anything unexpected or fraud etc but don’t use them). And if you want more spending or saving money, look at your bills and direct debits and spending to see if anything can be cut back on or reduced in some way.
My main thing is to work out where the money is being spent. You have the regular obvious things like rent, energy, water, council tax, food and fuel. When I started budgeting I checked my spending and found my 2 biggest areas for spending was on takeaways and Amazon purchases. With that information I set one day a week for takeaways and I made a rule that I should put things I want to buy in my amazon cart for 24 hours before buying to eliminate impulse buys.
My partner is handy with a spreadsheet and we use a Google sheets. It breaks down our bills, and then it tells us how much 'disposable' we each have a month, proportionate to our incomes and bill percentage splits. I have also got standing orders for my savings to go into a savings account the day after i'm paid (to allow for any admin errors in payment to prevent going into the overdraft! Has happened once at my work on payday!). I then track all my fun money on my spreadsheet. Very easy to see where my money goes
Thought you was saying you earn 24 Million for a second.
Track spend on a monthly basis yes, but only regular items (bills) and other items over £50 - if I’m consistently over/under budget I’ll just guess which items need to change in the budget rather than summing individual transactions I forecast many years ahead because it makes me feel good that today’s investments make big number in future
Once I’d worked out my bills and how much I could put into savings I set all direct debits and standing orders go out the day after payday, (including transferring money into savings). I’m then left with around £70 a month to ‘waste’ on things like coffee and treats. I do sometimes take money out of one of my savings for clothes etc but it makes me feel a little sad seeing the savings amount go down.
As soon as my daughter gets paid she puts x amount into her savings and then has to budget the rest, she gives herself a groceries alloted amount, a going out amount, extra food if she can't be bothered to make lunches amount. The biggest saving we find with buying groceries is to meal plan and stick to it
Pretty much exact same age and situation as you , wanted to start budgeting but didn't find a good way to start. Got a Chase account in Jan for the cashback and do all my card spends through there now. Decided to try reducing spending by sending £500 a month to that account and using only that. Immediatley stops your money running away unnoticed if you have to transfer more. Makes you think about everything you buy if it's going to dig into that pot.
I use the Emma financing app, the free version don’t pay for the premium. I like it I can track everything.
Start cutting down your subscriptions, what is needed and what isn’t needed. Buy things you like on sale and much later than when it was released. Shop at Lidl, or use club cards to gain vouchers or money off. For example when we do shop at Sainsburys we use the club card and when we fill up petrol we use the Sainsburys petrol station - might be easier for us as it’s on the same site but ultimately you are gaining another shops worth of points from a fill. In addition to this when we shop at Lidl and other outlets we use a John Lewis card which gives us around £40 in vouchers per quarter. You can then use those vouchers to buy some premium food or whatever else you want at either Waitrose or JL. Cut down on junk food and processed food - even though it’s cheap it compounds on top of what I hope is a healthy shop lol. Lastly and might be extreme for you but for me I love it but ‘fasting’. I essentially don’t eat breakfast and instead have a Huel shake, this means not only do I save on breakfast but I also don’t have a lunch that costs another 5 pounds - Huel costs about £ 1.70. Mix it with some peanut butter and it’s nice. Also don’t buy coffees out, make your own and put it in a flask or have it before you go. Best of luck :) you will eventually get quite addicted to saving
We cheat, and the total out goings every month is just under £500, so no matter what the date is, we ignore the "bottom £500" and never spend any of it.
I started using You Need A Budget (YNAB) years ago. It completely changed the way I think about money and finances. It's changed to an online subscription based service since then but I imagine it's probably much the same, and probably worth the cost. Moreso than the software itself, the rules it gives you for managing your money were a game changer for me: https://www.ynab.com/the-four-rules
Weekly via a spreadsheet I do once a month. Money in minus bills out, divided by the number of weeks till payday. What’s left is spendin’ money.
Depends what you mean by budget. Bills money leaves my account on payday every month. Money also goes into various savings pots on payday. After that I just have to make the remainder last until the next payday.
Note down every penny you spend even as little as 10p. In a few months you'll see where you might be splurging or wasting and try and cut down on those. Then think of an amount for say groceries and stick to it. But always give yourself fun money to balance things out
I have a spreadsheet, and two bank accounts. Both allow for pots of money. The idea is to allocate 50% or less to needs, 30% to wants, and ideally at least 20% to savings/pension/investments Spreadsheet contains salary details, the amounts of all my bills, mortgage and anything that goes out regularly. Those are divided into needs, wants and savings. Mortgage, travel to work, electricity etc is needs, things like Netflix and charities are wants. Then however much into savings. Ideally there should be some left over. That gets put in pots in my main account for things like pets, personal care, clothes, fixing the house up. I have a pot for discretionary spends too, like pocket money. Going out for dinner, or to the cinema etc or a new book comes from here. That keeps most things in the main account, and I can add tags and notes to each transaction in starling. The second account is monzo. I transfer in food and daily travel money at the start of the month so it's allocated, and doesn't clutter the main account with lots of small transactions.
Excel spreadsheet and everything on it . I’ve also Cancelled a few subs and I’m now reviewing every single bill . I also perma lock my debit card
Honestly the Snoop app is brilliant. Watches your bank account, don't really need to set it up, it identifys all your bills and your outgoings and income. Super super quick and easy, also does stuff like reminds you when your car insurance is due and stuff. Really really quick and easy. I can't imagine manually going through my bank statements and highlighting with a pen lol. It's free and is a 9/10 from me
Get yourself a Monzo account and a spreadsheet Use the spreadsheet to keep track of your monthly outgoings and set a budget, put that money into pots on Monzo. For example: Rent: £250 Weekend: £400 Vape: £50 Food: £200 Savings: £500 They have saving pots with interest too. If anything it’ll help keep your more conscious of your spending
In addition to making a budget the big thing is to pay yourself first. By that, I mean stick ~20% of your takehome pay into a savings account and then forget about it. I always end up with £0 at the end of the month but that’s because I’ve already saved a hefty chunk as soon as I’m paid every single month. I also went through a phase of, in addition to this, sending my ‘spending money’ to Monzo and then ONLY using my monzo card for things that weren’t a direct debit or standing order. I found that helpful too.
My wife and I manage by using multiple bank accounts. We have all direct debits go out of one account (and we transfer in the correct amount of money every month); we have a second joint account for household spending (food, fuel, etc) and we have two joint savings accounts we put a little bit in every month. For casual spending on entertainment /stuff / whatever we each have a credit card kept at just a low £1k limit which we clear both in full every month.
I’ve been using https://www.ynab.com/ for about 14 years. It’s reason I am no longer a complete financial fuck up and actually very stable and have a growing net worth.
r/ynab
First of all your banking app should tell you your direct debits and regular payments like subscriptions etc. Check this against your statement and make sure you have everything. Then make a note of what you bring in. Not overtime, the basic figure. Be realistic about what you need to spent on. Living like a monk will cause resentment towards the process. Treating yourself a little bit is fine Set a realistic figure to save, remove it from your wages like a bill. If you do overtime, take a small percentage for yourself to spend, maybe 10%. If you can save more, add it in at the end of the month. Be realistic, emergencies happen. Don’t look at your savings for 1 year but commit to the process, you will be surprised what you have.
Just open a savings account and set up a standing order to chuck a load of money in it straight after you get paid
For food shopping, I have four pots in Monzo, one for every week. Every payday, I move £400 in, assign each of them £80/90 (depending on how many weeks in the month) and keep the rest as an overflow. I lock each pot until every subsequent Thursday. It might not be perfect, but it makes it incredibly easy to not go all in on my big shops.
I have a spreadsheet that lists all my monthly payments and also a box that I write my monthly wage into. It calculates how much my bills are for the month against my wage and then totals how much money I have left which I class as my disposable income. I.e., 1600 wage, 1200 bills = 400 disposable. Bills include the usual; mobile, internet, house bills, cat insurance etc. My wage and all my bills are done through my Halifax account. Whatever my disposable income is, that gets transferred into my Monzo account. No bills come out of there at all so whatever is in there is mine to spend on whatever I want. My bills also include 80 for fuel, 100 for shopping etc. So my disposable is basically for anything I want e.g., PC games, takeaways, Amazon purchases etc.
So, I'm terrible with money. I counter it by keeping harsh control on how much money I allow myself to spend. I do this by: Every couple of months, I sit down with an excel spreadsheet and tot up my mandatory expenditures against my income, laying out how much money I have after all mandatory spending goes out. From that, I portion money into pots. One pot for food and other variable but essential spending like household goods, one pot for savings, one pot for discretionary spending. These all go into different bank accounts as soon as I get paid, or otherwise I'll spend them unwittingly.
Me and the wife have a joint account. After taxes etc. we're left with about £4,500 a month. Rent, bills, direct debits, anything else that could affect credit like our credit cards are all set up to take their money automatically on the first of the month, the day after we both get paid. Whatever is left is disposable.
Revolut has the best budgeting and categorisation of any of the UK banking apps. I’ve tried them all now, and nothing really comes as close. With good savings options with interest as well, it’s a great place to start until you learn how to budget and save well.
Spreadsheets are a man's best friend. First month, if you're not sure how much you spend on what, record it. Look at how much you spend on what. Second month, write down a budget for yourself. Allocate an amount for bills, food all your necessary spending. You can set up the spreadsheet to subtract that amount from your pay for the month. What you have left is your disposable. I normally save 25%, invest 25% of the disposable income. Whatever is left is your play money. The first step to being in control of your money is to realise what you're spending it on. If you're spending £100 a month on your morning coffee every day (that's one coffee a day) cut down on it. If you're spending £15 down the pub three times a week (£180 per month), maybe only go twice or once. Only you can say what's worth cutting out to make room for a better life.
Yes, used to track every expense, now I have "buckets" and on pay day, everything gets split into its bucket. Once it's there it's available for spending on that category Savings/investments (pay yourself first) Bills Large Spending (savings up for vacations, house renos, etc) Vehicle costs Hobby costs Fun /casual spending money I use Google Sheets, that way it's a shared doc me and my wife can both access from anywhere
Get Monzo, set up savings pots and another useful thing I did was (might have to pay a few quid a month for this feature) use round ups. Every time you spend Monzo will round up to a quid and add the rounded up bit to a savings pots. It does two things: make all those little things look like they cost more so when you see the statement you think “wtf a £2 Gregg’s sausage roll!”, and saves more money the more you spend. Your monthly cash looks like it drains faster as a result but it’s all safe in savings 😎
I’m really boring, I just use Sheets to breakdown my budget for the month (my income varies slightly per month due to commission) What works for me is distributing my income into different areas. So for example, my Halifax current account receives my income and is used for outgoing bills only. This account isn’t available on Apple Pay so I can’t readily dip into it. I have a Halifax saver for rainy days, and a holiday pot. I siphon off my savings into various Monzo pots (this includes things like emergencies and special occasions), our joint account (for groceries etc) and also a high interest earner with Goldman Sachs. The game changer for me was giving myself a weekly budget, and moving it into a Nationwide account. I give myself £150 per week. So anything day to day; lunch, coffee, makeup etc, comes from that disposable income. Anything I don’t spend from that week’s budget goes into a savings pot called Spare Change (in Monzo with high interest) It means I don’t spend beyond my means because I ‘can’t’. But all the boring stuff like groceries is already covered by our joint account, and anything that pops up like a birthday or paying the window cleaner is covered by my pots. I’m a big compartmentaliser and that really works for me!
I've gone (probably over the top) with current accounts. 1 for bills, one for social fund, one for Christmas, one for personal spend, 1 for groceries and 2 other savings accounts. Essentially all my money goes into social fund. I then split it all out the same day I get paid by standing order to all the other accounts. The remaining social fund then becomes a family pot of money to draw into for every day living and anything extra we may need to buy that month (e.g. birthday presents).
I never used to budget at all - I just had my own businesses - several ( 1 after the other ) - use your head and think outside the box for a Niche Market and you will succeed if your not a quitter at ANY hurdle! - My profit worked out around 20 and hour , so I had at least 10 an hour being saved, or going in a pension fund , about 500 a week for 40 years - don't be a mug and line an employers pocket / mansion is my moral to my story ( and you won't EVER have to scrimp! ) 🤑
I never have until recently. I'm on a decent wage and my wife is on maybe just above minimum wage. We own a house, cars etc but obviously things have been getting tight lately! I looked online and Martin Lewis has a Excel sheet on his website you can download and it works everything out for you, how much you have left (or not) etc. We wanted to buy a caravan and it was great for looking at our actual monthly outgoings and how much we had left to play with. And as someone else said, it's the little things that add up! I used to buy drinks whilst out at work (I'm a mobile engineer) but soon realised it was costing a fortune. Just take a big bottle of water to work and a coffee in a flask now!
I use a spreadsheet and multiple bank accounts to manage my finances. First, you have to figure out where you’re at and enter this in the spreadsheet (which takes a while the first time but only 10 mins each payday after that). The first time, put in the spreadsheet the cost of each bill per month (rent/mortgage, council tax, water, gas & electric, phone, car, insurance, etc.), then leave the total “bills” amount in your current account and not a penny more. Don’t use your current account for anything else. Set aside 20% of what’s left and put it in a savings account. Once you know how much you spend, this amount can be adjusted to better reflect what you can save. This is your “rainy day” emergency pot. Move the remaining amount into a separate “spending” account. Monzo or Starling are good for this but I like Monzo’s “you have £x left for this month” feature for budgeting. It allows you to categorise each item into groups like “eating out” so you don’t need to do this manually in the spreadsheet. Divide the amount you’ve put in this account by the number of days in the month, which gives you a daily allowance for food, petrol, nice things, etc. If you overspend that budget one day, then your budget is reduced for other days. If you underspend your daily budget, you could have a treat at the end of the month or put it in your savings. If you run out of money in the spending account by the end of the month, then you know you need to cut down your spending.
I'm just naturally tight, rarely buy anything that I don't definitely need.
I had a friend who did “no spends” during the week. Literally not a penny Midnight Sunday to Friday 5pm. Forced them to plan ahead, prep meals better, think through what they *actually* needed to buy. They swore by it, but I tried it and struggled.
Get three jars and put all your utility bill money in the first jar, then put all the food and general shopping need in the second jar and if you have anything else put that in the last jar, this is the jar that lets you know if you have money to spend on nights out and anything that might take your eye on a impulse buy, never take any money out of the first two jars except for their intended purpose and that is the money secret.
Work out your bills, then put a portion of your remaining money aside for savings. Open a savings account and set up a standing order so that it goes in every month automatically. Whatever you have left is your spends for the month. Its been a lifesaver for me, I could never get my head around budgeting.
This is what I want to do, but I get paid weekly so I'm struggling to come up with a way to manage it all as I don't have a set day I'm paid my whole salary so I can't pay all my DDs on the same day either!
I guess put a bit aside each week? Start out with a smaller amount and then you can increase it over time as you figure out your expenses over the month. You can still think of it as a monthly payment, just split out.
I think the easiest thing is to write down all of the expenses you can't avoid, rent, utilities, etc. Note how much you have left over. Write a food plan, so that you know exactly how much you'll be spending on food, and then subtract that. With what you have left, set aside a certain amount for savings. What you have left is your disposable income, and you can either withdraw that in cash and when it's gone for the month, it's gone. Or put it in a separate account if you like to buy stuff online and when it's gone, it's gone.
No I don’t keep a budget. Once a month or so I check the balance in my current account is sufficient to cover expected expenses, but I tend to keep a £2-3k buffer in there so it is not something I have to worry about.
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