How To Take Back Control of Your Money
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| Wash your hands immediately! |
The first step to getting your finances under control is to make a monthly budget sheet, like this one, it's free to download from the Citizens Advice Bureau website.
Sometimes called an income and expenditure sheet, when you've completed it you may be shocked at just how much you're spending on food, power and entertainment, and at all the things you can cut back on.
Why Should I Start A Monthly Budget Sheet
Do you count the days until pay day? Are you constantly going in to your overdraft? Do you turn down social events because you can't afford them until you get paid? Do you have to pretend that you're out when the milkman calls? (Okay, that's an old, but familiar one!) Would you like to put money aside for a holiday, or in case the worst should happen? If you answered Yes to any of these, then an hour or two spent making a budget sheet may be the answer.
Some Things To List On Your Budget Sheet
Income:
- Wages / Working / Child Tax Credit
- Income Support
- Job Seekers Allowance
- Any other regular money such as lodgers and contributions from your other half, ex partner and children
Expenditure:
- Rent or mortgage
- Council Tax
- Energy Bill
- Water Bill
- Food
- TV Licence if paid monthly
- Car payments
- Petrol
- Child maintenance
- Entertainment - Netflix, pub, anything else. Set a monthly budget amount
I recommend sellotaping it inside a kitchen cupboard door as a regular reminder of where you are with your finances.
For Those In Debt
You'll notice when you download the free budget sheet that there's a section at the bottom to fill out, for you to list your priority and non-priority debts. Priority being those such as rent, mortgage, council tax, child maintenance, hire purchase. Priority debts are those that have serious consequences if those are not paid or arrangements made.
Non Priority Debts should be listed too, these include money owed to friends and family, unsecured bank and payday loans (those where your home is not at risk.)
Where To Get Free Debt Advice
Once you've filled out the budget sheet, I guarantee that you'll sleep much better. If you have yet to sort your debts out, don't worry. There's people to help and it's never to late. See the links below, and like everything that you find online, do your own research before acting:
Care to share your story or have advice, please leave a comment below.
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Love this. We're terrible at budgeting but it is can be very easy to save money when you put your mind to it. I put in 90 mins of effort a while back and it saved us £1,500 a year on a variety of things such as utilities etc.
ReplyDeleteThat's impressive, John! I'm pretty fixated on where I can save, it's a full time hobby!
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