"Most only have £500 of savings ",says Lloyds boss ,really ?

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Uther said:
Maybe his mate just wanted the 10 free pints...
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Haha! We agreed to go to the pub weeks before, he even said to me he would have loved to get a pint in but couldn't afford it. I wanted to see him, its been about 10 months since we met last. The guy was almost in tears about his finances. I really do not know how he can cope. He was slapped with a ridiculous energy bill that he can't pay and he is using a food bank for himself and the family on occasions.

Maybe I shouldn't of kept buying rounds but at the end of the day he needed a break!

Please tell me how you can survive on just shy of 20k a year in the curent climate, its all well and good saying make sacrifices but there is a limit and if no fun then well.....whats the point?

I am not rich by any means and have 5 children to support but even I am considering paying off his energy bill for him! money isn't everything
 
Freefaller said:
This does it automatically. You set up your categories and it learns from your regular payments and predicts when payments will likely go out. I.e. if you usually go to a coffee shop in the morning it'll add it as a regular budget element and does some predictive budgeting based on your behaviours across all your account.
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This is the kinda stuff I don't want. If I have a regular thing, I'll set it up. It annoys me when MS tries to do it (although it does it very badly). I assume you can turn that off though. I do like the idea of it bringing payments in manually though. It is annoying looking for that transaction I missed...
Freefaller said:
i pay £9.99 a year. It's a bargain imo.
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Cheap enough to give it a try I guess.
 
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AndyCr15 said:
This is the kinda stuff I don't want. If I have a regular thing, I'll set it up. It annoys me when MS tries to do it (although it does it very badly). I assume you can turn that off though. I do like the idea of it bringing payments in manually though. It is annoying looking for that transaction I missed...

Cheap enough to give it a try I guess.
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You can stop it doing that. I've enable it as I like it but I've also manually set up my budget and forecasting accounts. I.e. I don't want it to use my savings account in forecasting. Happy to chat offline about it. I'm no salesman for this stuff I just like using tech that makes my life easier!

It shouldn't miss any transactions if you connect all your banks and savings and pensions it'll track everything in real-time (ish). If you tag the payments logically you'll be able to track/search transactions.

I personally couldn't go back to exporting csv and importing it to excel and doing it all manually now. I'd be happy to try another app if there are better ones. I've just stuck with this one for now as it seems pretty good. The Devs are quite responsive to suggestions and feedback.
 
Is it in an phone app only? Trying to find this out has led me to Money Dashboard, which looks like it has a desktop app, so I'll take a look at that.
 
Okay, I've registered, I don't think it's for me though. It looks like it's trying to automate everything. I go to 'Regular Payments' and it's listed some of them, I guess recent ones, but I can't add something like my car insurance, which I know is coming up.

I really need to just write it myself. I guess a well set up Google Sheet will probably do what I'm after tbh...
 
Fair dos! Might be worth dropping them an email to ask if your feature exists? However if you're handy with Google sheets and whatnot then of course it makes sense to do it yourself :)
 
AndyCr15 said:
Okay, I've registered, I don't think it's for me though. It looks like it's trying to automate everything. I go to 'Regular Payments' and it's listed some of them, I guess recent ones, but I can't add something like my car insurance, which I know is coming up.

I really need to just write it myself. I guess a well set up Google Sheet will probably do what I'm after tbh...
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This is why I couldn't get on with any of the apps. Ended up building an epic excel over the last 7 years that does everything I can ever want.
 
Wizzkidy said:
Please tell me how you can survive on just shy of 20k a year in the curent climate, its all well and good saying make sacrifices but there is a limit and if no fun then well.....whats the point?
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This is whats so hard. Depending on where you live and your circumstances, £20k/year is doable. You are fundamentally not earning a lot of money so you have to live a very different lifestyle to wealthier people.

The problem comes when people are always living on the edge and treating themselves when they can and then when stuff changes they are completely blindsided and can't afford it. On low wages you can't buy a nice phone, nice car, afford sky TV, new clothes and eating out/takeaways. You also can't buy all these things and then plead poverty when the cost of living increases.

Everyone is different and there are people who struggle through no fault of their own and others who struggle almost entirely due to their own poor planning and spending. You will find that at almost every level of earnings there are people who will say they have no money and others who have plenty saved.

They really should teach more financial planning and budgeting at school though because so many people are awful at it and don't understand the most fundamental things even though they are very simple even if you just think about them from a mathematical standpoint. I'm always astounded when I talk to people about their mortgages and their lack of understanding around numbers.
 
I earn 35k a year and have bugger all in my account, living pay cheque to pay cheque. 18 year old car. Zero debt/loans/credit card owed. Zero things on finance. No TV packages. 3 year old bog standard phone. VERY frugal with elec and gas usage. Never eat out/get takeaways. Batch cook and only eat what I make at work. Don't remember the last nice thing I bought myself. Or even bought new clothes etc. Very handy with a needle and thread.

Having a house on my own, and being a long-distance single dad RUINS your financal life. But I wouldn't change a thing (other than earning a bit more...)
 
fez said:
They really should teach more financial planning and budgeting at school though because so many people are awful at it and don't understand the most fundamental things even though they are very simple even if you just think about them from a mathematical standpoint.
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I'm almost convinced it's deliberate. The economy needs people to be in debt / spending / working
I was completely useless with money when I was younger and spent every penny, then paid a heavy price, which is why I instilled saving into my son from his very first pay cheque.
 
Uther said:
I'm almost convinced it's deliberate. The economy needs people to be in debt / spending / working
I was completely useless with money when I was younger and spent every penny, then paid a heavy price, which is why I instilled saving into my son from his very first pay check.
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I was just about to write this. The world needs debt, doesn't matter if it's £1 or £100000T
 
fez said:
They really should teach more financial planning and budgeting at school though because so many people are awful at it and don't understand the most fundamental things even though they are very simple even if you just think about them from a mathematical standpoint. I'm always astounded when I talk to people about their mortgages and their lack of understanding around numbers.
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At that age though a lot of people don't really have the experiences to put those lessons into a context. One of those things really a lot of people learn the hard way.
 
Rroff said:
At that age though a lot of people don't really have the experiences to put those lessons into a context. One of those things really a lot of people learn the hard way.
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Learning the hard way can be better in lots of things because you make sure you damn fine well don't do it again if you come out fine from it.
 
Bouton Aide said:
Learning the hard way can be better in lots of things because you make sure you damn fine well don't do it again if you come out fine from it.
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Agree here. I dunno if you can teach it in schools any better... They do cover it, people just aren't paying attention. Like most of school. I think there's an element of wilful ignorance too, "I dunno how that works it's maths innit" seems like the cool thing to say. I learned plenty about budgeting, tax, earning, monthly/yearly expenses etc from school and college I'm sure. I remember being in my first job at Sainsbury's aged 19 and raising issues with the paycheque tax calculations!

I grew up poor though, so I've never really had the option of  not being good with money. It boils down to knowing how to not spend it. Not just finding the cheaper deals, mostly saying no to things outright. Now I'm earning ok I actually struggle to pay for anything I can do myself for free. never paid for a haircut in my life, only paid for a tradesman to repair/do work this last month.
 
Arsonist said:
I earn 35k a year and have bugger all in my account, living pay cheque to pay cheque. 18 year old car. Zero debt/loans/credit card owed. Zero things on finance. No TV packages. 3 year old bog standard phone. VERY frugal with elec and gas usage. Never eat out/get takeaways. Batch cook and only eat what I make at work. Don't remember the last nice thing I bought myself. Or even bought new clothes etc. Very handy with a needle and thread.

Having a house on my own, and being a long-distance single dad RUINS your financal life. But I wouldn't change a thing (other than earning a bit more...)
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I was waiting for the kid to show up in this story :p

A house on a single income is brutal as well unless you have a very cheap house or a lot of equity in it already. Most people with a house have 2 incomes feeding it.
 
After reading this thread, I'm going to try a little experiment.

I'm going to cash only spend (no contactless/ card) payments for all my shop/ going out spend for the next month or two.

I think that might be an eye opener.

Edit: just realised that recently, my wallet has often had no more than £10 cash in it.
 
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