I have many no secret about the fact that I’m finding our finances a bit tough at the moment. Being at home with two boys means that I generally go out quite often. Whether it’s to someone else’s house, or just popping to the park, we tend to go somewhere. And, I’m finding, that means that we spend!
Those little purchases, the ones I didn’t used to worry about? Well, they add up.
Suddenly, we’re not hitting out financial goals. I’m not hitting my savings aim [though maternity pay hasn’t helped that] and we are not managing our money as well as we should be. As well as I know we can!
So, I sat the other night once both boys were in bed asleep and I designed myself my own simple budget planner.
I wanted to keep it simple, as to not overwhelm. I need to keep things basic so I can stand a chance of keeping up with it over the month. In fact, as it stands, I’m quite excited about filling it in! I’m sure the novelty will wear off but for the moment, I’m excited.
This is the front page. A little reminder about why I’m doing this 🙂
So, the first important page. This is where I’m going to plan our budget for the month ahead. Then, at the end of the month I’m going to come back and write in the end numbers, to see if I have come under budget at the end. To be honest, I’ve not done this for a few months now, so it’ll be interesting to see. Here’s hoping we can!
Ah, my no spend month challenge. I love counting my NSDs, so it seems right to have this page in here. I’m hoping for lots of NSDs in September, so this should look good by the end of the month.
The important pages now – I have two of these printed at the moment – to keep us in the know. I’m going to write down every time we spend money in September, plus categorise it so we know what is costing us the most. If Mr FC spends at work, he also needs to let me know so it can be written now; everything needs to be accounted for.
I’ve done this direct debits and standing orders page to update my own records as to what bills go out and when. I have a rough idea of what our fixed outgoings are but this will show us down the penny what goes out automatically from our bank account.
This is a tracker for my savings aim for the month – so I can colour in our progress and have a visual representation of our savings. There are 100 blocks on there, so once I’ve decided on our savings aim for September, I can work out what one block will be worth.
This is to keep track of any extra income we get; from eBay sales, dividend income and blog stuff – it’s all going to go on here. Hopefully this will be motivating! I think I’m being fairly optimistic about how much extra income we’ll get and how much space I’ll need to write in but who knows.
Finally, a little reflection sheet for the end of the month. I love doing my monthly reviews so I thought I should have a paper one too!
I’m looking forward to using my simple budget planner for September and getting back on track. I do feel a little lost in terms of our finances lately and a little disappointed by our lack of progress as of late. Life seems to be getting in the way! I never want us to miss out on this journey, but I do feel like we need to be more conscious of our spending.
*ETA – I’ve now got this available as a physical product in my Etsy store – check it out!
Do you think I’ve missed anything out? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
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Can we print these off at all?
Thanks
Why not use one of the open banking expense tracking apps to take the donkey work out of all of this? They will give real time information on where your money is going and allow you to slice and dice the data any way you want. They take the biggest headache away too of writing everything down, and some can create automated sweeps to ensure surplus funds are being used to their maximum advantage. They can also aid in the after analysis of areas that are consistently over budget, or occasional spikes such as annual insurance renewals / DDs etc.
If you’re still keen to go with bits of paper then you might want to rationalise it down a bit as the individual sheets aren’t going to automatically “interact” with each other – as an example income – expenses = savings but in the above method their doesn’t appear an easy way to measure savings goals against savings realities, especially if both the income and expenses sides are variable.
You might also want to look at cost averaging for none monthly expenses to “smooth” the effect of these expense spikes.
I don’t want to use a banking app, hence creating this. And there aren’t areas that are normally consistently over budget either – I’ve explained that when on maternity leave things have had to be pulled back; savings included.
And this is a system I’m using to track our spending personally, which I will then total in the different categories at the end of the month. I’m trying something I used to do as a student which worked very well for me at they time.
I never made reference to your personal expenses in my post, I made general comments on what these apps can do and how they may benefit everyone. In the nicest possible way, I couldn’t care less about your personal financial position so please try to be less defensive.
I guess I’m a little older than you and so in my journey to financial independence I too used written ledgers and budgets etc (Oxford Red and Black notebooks as it happens) because PCs weren’t that widespread and smart phones / apps didn’t exist!!
I got to financial independence in my late thirties just as the personal technology boom really kicked off so I wasn’t able to harness it – If I was starting out now I’d want to make use of the technology to make things easier – optimisation and automation have a real place in simplifying the early retirement planning.
I think that you are brilliant. Your frugal achievement so far is amazing. Going off course a little is understandable with two small boys to look after. I’m sure it won’t be long before you are back on track 😀 I’ve mentioned before that I’m new to your brilliant blog and just starting my frugal journey. We have always been very careful with money but looking through your posts, we can make improvements. September 1st, my date to record our spending, outgoings and aims. Can’t wait to begin, thanks to you.
Thank you so much for such a lovely comment; this really has made my day. You must let me know how you get on during September and writing things down 🙂
Thank you for the timely post Nicola. Our small spends have certainly crept up over the summer holidays. I generally use Google spreadsheets to record my spending but do find that pen and paper gets the information to ‘sink in’ thoroughly.
I have to disagree with the comment above about using an app and taking ‘the donkey work’ out.
Some people just work better with things written down on pen and paper! I am certainly one of those people (I work in finance so I am absolutely bored to the back teeth of spreadsheets and doing things electronically haha). It’s actually quite cathartic putting pen to paper and something I enjoy doing. Personally I can’t be bothered with apps. It’s nice to have a visual reference I think.
You said this worked well for you in your student days, so why shouldn’t it now just because ‘there’s an app for that’.
The apps automatically harvest the data from your account transactions (open banking) so you literally type / write nothing which saves time. This data can then be used in any way you want – either in app or exported to excel … you can even print it out if you’d like it “visual” and something physical to hold.
But each to their own, I did it the old way as there was no option 😂
Nowadays I’d use the technology where ever possible as for a start you’ll create much more effective sweep processes that make you more money and by putting all spending on cards you can maximize cashback too ☺️
BTW Katie, just flicked onto your blog and read a few articles … your take on budgeting (part 1 and part 2) are really good, I particularly like the description of the methodology you used. So e similar good stuff over on the Escape Artist too.
I can see why apps like you’ve suggested are popular and I’m all for anything that saves time. But I enjoy the process of writing things down too. And sometimes the effort of putting pen to paper helps it sink in a bit more.
You did it the old way because you had no choice, I do it the old way because we’re overwhelmed with choice! Haha
But thank you Rich! Appreciate the feedback. Blogging is still very new to me – haven’t come across the escape artist, will check them out.
I love this – so simple! I’m unsure about using banking apps too (and I have no space on my clunky phone for any more apps if I wanted to) – I much prefer pen and paper. Thanks for sharing it.