Budgeting - How do you do it?

ewal

Col_Decker said:

I've been on the wrong end of a personal finance crash and I can tell you it isn't pretty. It's a long and painful battle to clear personal debt so avoiding it obviously best. My advice is to only use cash to buy things. Give yourself say £60 a week to live on after household bills, so that's for your snacks, booze & fags, petrol, clothes, new strings etc. If you need to go the ATM you've over spent, if at the end of the week you've still got £10 then you only need to take out £50 next week.

Keeping track of card spending is hard (for me) because it requires effort. Opening your wallet and seeing it empty is easy and very good motivator.

This is an approach that I've taken previously and I too liked the simplicity of it (don't know why I didn't stick at it). Card spending is much harder to keep track of and is all too easy (especially with the advent of contactless).

Lots of good suggestions here - as I said - very motivational. Thanks.

EricTheWeary

ewal said:

Col_Decker said:

I've been on the wrong end of a personal finance crash and I can tell you it isn't pretty. It's a long and painful battle to clear personal debt so avoiding it obviously best. My advice is to only use cash to buy things. Give yourself say £60 a week to live on after household bills, so that's for your snacks, booze & fags, petrol, clothes, new strings etc. If you need to go the ATM you've over spent, if at the end of the week you've still got £10 then you only need to take out £50 next week.

Keeping track of card spending is hard (for me) because it requires effort. Opening your wallet and seeing it empty is easy and very good motivator.

This is an approach that I've taken previously and I too liked the simplicity of it (don't know why I didn't stick at it). Card spending is much harder to keep track of and is all too easy (especially with the advent of contactless).

Lots of good suggestions here - as I said - very motivational. Thanks.

I got into some debt as a student and when I cleared that I cancelled my credit card and bank account. My salary went into a Building Society account which couldn't go overdrawn and I could only get cash or get a cheque made at the counter. I had that for a few years, I gave myself no way to even get into debt. 
Not very practical in many ways but it did work ( had a lease car from work so that was deducted from my salary and I didn't have a mortgage then). 

Hoof

ewal said:

Col_Decker said:

I've been on the wrong end of a personal finance crash and I can tell you it isn't pretty. It's a long and painful battle to clear personal debt so avoiding it obviously best. My advice is to only use cash to buy things. Give yourself say £60 a week to live on after household bills, so that's for your snacks, booze & fags, petrol, clothes, new strings etc. If you need to go the ATM you've over spent, if at the end of the week you've still got £10 then you only need to take out £50 next week.

Keeping track of card spending is hard (for me) because it requires effort. Opening your wallet and seeing it empty is easy and very good motivator.

This is an approach that I've taken previously and I too liked the simplicity of it (don't know why I didn't stick at it). Card spending is much harder to keep track of and is all too easy (especially with the advent of contactless).

Lots of good suggestions here - as I said - very motivational. Thanks.

If you have difficulty with the card spending then maybe switch back to good old cash. Take out your monthly pocket money from the cash point and budget with the money in your pocket. Also doing it this way means the illuminati don't know what your spending your money on!

The biggest thing though is self discipline. There's no magic trick to this, you just have to be tough on yourself (and your partner/kids) but it does get easier. Mainly because people get used to you being a tight arse. My GF would have us eating out a couple of nights a week and Holidays 4 times a year and sod the fact that the dishwasher/washing machine/flooring needs replacing this year but somebody has to be the policeman. I never thought it would be me because I've been reckless in the past but needs must.

Hoof

One other thing: Insurance. Go through all your insurance policies, including the ones that get tacked on as extras on other accounts, and consider if they are all necessary. Of course, the essentials are (home/car/life) but I found that I had insurance policies on bank accounts that covered things that were covered on other policies. Hospital plans, Accident cover, PPI etc can really add up and many of them are a total waste of money. You might even be able to claim some of them back if you were never given a choice or they don't apply to your circumstances.