pixi-dust

I know this is age old, but I cannot recommend highly enough sitting down and budgeting weekly, working out a shopping list etc etc.

Up until about 4 months ago we didnt do this at all. We are on a decent income and just spent willy nilly, always thinking that it was all fine.

It wasnt!

Every month we were spending more than we had and we ended up with an overdraft.
A friend of ours had been saying for as log as I remember - you need to budget properly - get a free spreadsheet - sit down once a week....

Well eventually we saw the light ( as we were losing sleep again and had vowed with our move here we wouldn't mess up with money!) and did - it has been a total revelation!!!

We now save EVERY month, our overdraft is paid off and we know what we're doing.
I don't feel that we are really doing much different through each week, we're definitely not going without, but the planning of meals seems to help hugely - our weekly grocery shopping went down from about $400 ( ) to get this.....$180-210 purely from making a plan and shopping for it rather than nipping to the supermarket every day to buy dinner, and the rest

I know I'm probably telling a lot of you how to suck eggs - but we thought for years we didn't need to do this! oh were we wrong!!!
It truly has transformed our lives! I wish we'd taken the advice ages ago and done it.

For those of you that are good with money - I am so jealous! But we have now seen the light!!!

Stoof

we used to be really good at this when money was tight then somehow as salaries increased it all went pear shaped... we started again a few months ago in readiness for our (hoped for!) move to nz and having just sorted out this months banking, we've somehow managed to save £500 this month!!! we even managed to pay for emergency £250 car repairs this month (grr!) and still had £500 left over! blimey....

pixi-dust

It's amazing isn't it!

Am Loolah

WOW - so how does it work - you say we can spend x amount this month and then add everything in or is it just from only buying what you need? I'm crap at both by the way so could do with some lessons!

P2L

I start out with good intentions each month, and then 'life' gets in the way.

I am very concsious though of our 'lack'of savings since we hit these shores. I would love to know how the Kiwis do it. Lots of them we know are on modest wages and seem to be able to do lots more than we can

Share your secrets oh clever one

pixi-dust

the first couple of months you do it, if it's anything like us, it'll be a bit all over the place.

We got a homebudget spreadsheet with our computers so have just used that.
I'll attach a copy of what it is - this isnt our budget!!!
You can change the boxes to make it relevant to you. We were way off for a little while but really quickly you can get what you have to spend - we're so into it now that come a Sunday night we're both sitting there going through it all.

Obviously there are some things you can't change - we have mortgage, insurances etc which come off every month - just adding these all up was a shock! Honestly we've found there is no secret to it - just do it every week, keep an eye on it - if one week you've had a lot of expenses be more frugal the following week.
I really agree though, when I see some people managing on a very small income I sat hats off to them - blooming brilliant.
Oh and another thing we found - at the start we thought we were over what was being earned and there was just no way we could cut it anywhere - but there always was!

And to see savings mounting up - seriously we had nothing - less than nothing!

Obviously there are things that sometimes crop up - but we've allowed for car maintenance, medical etc per month so if we don't spend it we keep it - which means that if there's a big surprise we have money. It's been a revelation. I don't mean this to sound like - oh look at us we're so good - it's more look at us - we were possibly the worst people in the world with money and even we can do it