How do you budget your salary?

Sleeve

Sleeve

Sleeve

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As above.

Guess this applies mostly to those on monthly pay.

The reason I ask is that I struggle ever so much to save, and I'm sure it all comes down to the way I manage my money.

The way I do it is once my pay comes into one account, which is joint with my partner, I calculate the exact amount needed for that months bills and transfer the rest to my personal account for use that month.

I would then take the amount in there and divide by 4, that way I'm sure to not be skint any weeks in the month.
 
We don't save, we simply overpay as much as we can on our mortgage and as it goes into a revolving credit arrangement I suppose it amounts to nearly the same thing.
 
So you take all your spare cash, split it between each week and spend it?

And you're struggling to save?

How about you decide how much you need to spend and transfer only that much, transfer the remainder into a savings account?
 
We are in the enviable position that our combined income exceeds the costs of our lifestyle, we have no debt and do not take any. Effectively if the money isn't there we simply do not buy it.
 
I've been having this problem recently, and we both seem to be in similar situation.

I get paid, and send all the bills money to another account.
I started using premium bonds to save, as I bought x amount (minimum of £100 mind) each month. They are fairly quick to get back, but awkward, which discouraged me from spending.

Or some form of regular saving account - that was brilliant for me. HSBC do an account that take an amount out of your current account (between £75 and £200 I think) and place it in a savings account that you can't touch for a year. Then you get it back in a lump sum with the interest.
I had the money coming out on payday, so I didn't really miss it.

And every little bit of money I spend for the rest of the month, I put on a spreadsheet, and categorize my spending so I can see exactly what I spend on bills, food shopping, alcohol, games, electronics etc etc.
I would recommend doing something like this spreadsheet so you can see where you're money goes - made a big difference to me.

Hope there are some ideas there to help you?
It just takes a bit of time to get in the mind-set of doing it all, but worth it in the end.
 
I do all my home accounting in Excel.

Its a 10 minute job to set-up an incoming and outgoings spreadsheet and get it to calculate your remaining cash per month.

Right from getting my first wage my parents drilled it into me to always understand where your money is going and exactly how much.

We keep all receipts and every Sunday I have an hour inputting them into my spreadsheet to work out our total spend for the week.

As most things like directs debits and council tax are a fixed cost it and don't change, an hour a week is not really much to understand where your money is going.

You just have to remember to actually do it.

I'm now 35 and have been mortgage free for 7 years with no debt at all simply because we understood exactly how much spare cash we had in any given week. This allowed us not only to save but also pay into a pension scheme and overpay on our mortgage by a considerable amount.
 
Tend to only spend what we have.
If we need a new piece of furniture, or work doing to the house, we save, have the money, then buy the item.
Usually have a small reserve sitting for emergencies such as boiler, or broken washing machine.
Else the excess gets saved, as no doubt a holiday next year will obliterate that.
 
Castiel said:
We are in the enviable position that our combined income exceeds the costs of our lifestyle, we have no debt and do not take any. Effectively if the money isn't there we simply do not buy it.
Click to expand...

Same, even though my wife left her high paying job to take one that was a lot less hours. I'd rather have less money and have a happy wife!

However we still have enough money coming in to exceed our lifestyle. We only have a mortgage as a debt and, like you, if we don't have the money to buy it then we don't buy it.

Saving for me simply involves emptying whatever is left in the current account at the end of the month into the savings account. Simple but effective. Won't work for people who's outgoing nearly match their incomings though.
 
Castiel said:
We are in the enviable position that our combined income exceeds the costs of our lifestyle, we have no debt and do not take any. Effectively if the money isn't there we simply do not buy it.
Click to expand...

Surely this is the case for about 95% of the UK? At least the first part anyway, about your income exceeding the cost of your lifestyle. If it didn't then you'd be in an ever increase deficit (ha much like the UK gov).

As for budgeting, we have two accounts, one for direct debits and one for house keeping. We what's needed into the DD account, and put about £100 more than we need to into the house keeping accounts (food, oil, fixed car costs etc), the money left over we save. That's about the best you can do, get all of your expenditures down into a spreadsheet and work out how much you need to put into each account, and how much you can save.

Edit - Didn't read the OP properly, you do pretty much the same as me, but you haven't worked out how much you need to survive on none direct debit bills, work that out and take the remainder out of your spending account and save it. Simples. Just think before you buy something so that you don't run out of money.
 
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Hopefully this thread will turn into the typical GD thread !MONEY WARS - WHY YOUR WAY IS WRONG AND I AM RIGHT (AND SO GOOD)!

I can't even bring myself to search on 'money', 'savings', 'salary', or 'budget'.
 
[FnG]magnolia;23001467 said:
Hopefully this thread will turn into the typical GD thread !MONEY WARS - WHY YOUR WAY IS WRONG AND I AM RIGHT (AND SO GOOD)!

I can't even bring myself to search on 'money', 'savings', 'salary', or 'budget'.
Click to expand...

More likley, as this is OCUK, it will turn into a: "I have a ten figure slaty. If you don't then that's your fault. Work harder peasant. Look at this 20k watch I got with my pocket money..."

That's how threads talking money normally go.
 
godinman said:
Surely this is the case for about 95% of the UK? At least the first part anyway, about your income exceeding the cost of your lifestyle. If it didn't then you'd be in an ever increase deficit (ha much like the UK gov).
Click to expand...

1. A lot (much more than you'd think) of households only have enough to cover outgoings. The rise in cost of living (especially childcare) isn't helping.

2. The buy now, pay later culture is epidemic.
 
I create a spreadsheet each month, recording known outgoings (rent, loan, bills, food, petrol) + extra outgoings (dinners out, weekend activities etc) + £100 spare cash then deposit the rest into a savings account a few days after pay day.

If you dont have enough to do this then you are probably spending money on things you shouldn't.
 
I know my monthly expenses (rent, utility bills, council tax, food, petrol, phone, internet etc). On payday I transfer the difference between this amount and my salary into a savings account, leaving me "just enough" in my current account to cover my monthly expenses. If I want to buy something then I will transfer the correct amount back from my savings account.

In this way I "always" save a little each month - aside from the expensive months (car insurance month; pay annually and save nothing, and December for Christmas), and if I buy any large items (v. rare).


There are 1001 suitable ways of managing your finances, but they all begin with knowing exactly how much you NEED to spend each month. Sit down and do a monthly budget of all your outgoings. Won't take long to throw everything onto a sprewdsheet. This will be a very useful in any kind of planning.
 
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godinman said:
Surely this is the case for about 95% of the UK? At least the first part anyway, about your income exceeding the cost of your lifestyle. If it didn't then you'd be in an ever increase deficit (ha much like the UK gov).
Click to expand...

There is a significant proportion of the population who have debt burdens that exceed their ability to repay over a reasonable timescale.....people often live far above their incomes when it comes to the cars they drive and the houses they buy....a good proportion of other people live within their means but would live lifestyles above those that they can currently afford if they were able, they make a conscious decision to limit their lifestyles in order to save or they do not save at all and live to their means, whereas others and I am part of this group that lives a chosen lifestyle that costs less than their income, if their income increases their lifestyle doesn't increase proportionally (in some cases not at all) which is not true of the 95% to which you refer.
 
Our combined wage goes in one account.

We pay bills/mortgage/rest.

Put away savings (around 750 a month for various things)

Give ourselves an allowance which transfers to our personal accounts.

Rest we use for day to day living and treats etc.

We make saving an important part of our monthly outgoings not an afterthought this making it easy to save :)
 
I have an epic spreadsheet of all income and predictable outgoings.

On pay day I move any money over say... 4,000... into a savings account. So I start each month with the same budget.
 
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