In our house, money never sticks around for long. We are fortunate enough to be in a situation that we have enough to cover all the outgoings including a few luxuries like Sky and Spotify and a bit spare for birthday presents, outings to soft play etc but things are tight and it is a juggling act.
Today I'd like to talk to you about how we keep our beady, little eyes on our finances, especially now I'm on maternity leave and our income is getting smaller and smaller in the run-up to baby Bear making his grand entrance.
This is our calendar. For ages we both had all of our ins and outs and direct debit dates on our phones and iPads. But it then meant so much shuffling back and forth between the calendar, the calculator and the notes and we were both getting into a bit of a muddle. So we popped out one day and found this!
It's adhesive and so sticks directly to our fridge which is nice as I'm not forever picking it up and re-pinning it to a cork board or misplacing it. Apparently it doesn't leave residue when you peel it off (I don't plan on doing that for awhile but I hate re-adhesive things...it always goes wrong).
Using white board markers we write in the month and it's dates in the correct boxes. We then use colour-co-ordinated markers to write in our ins, our outs and any family-impacting events so that they cannot be forgotten such as midwife appointments, parties, weddings etc.
Black; dates.
Green; ins.
Red; outs.
Blue; events.
Our bills are spread out across the month because in my job, I get paid weekly. I cannot express how handy it is to have it all written out in front of me, when I know I've got a bill coming up, I can see easily what day it's going to come out and what I have coming in before hand to cover it. We find that this works really well for us but it might not suit everyone. A regular calendar would work just as well however when we went on a hunt we couldn't find a calendar with big enough boxes that wasn't £11 (yes, really). My little duck helps me keep track of what day we're on, I move him over in the mornings when getting breakfast. Am I the only person that never knows what the day of the week is?
Stick-on calendar £6 Martha Stewart and white board markers 4 pack £5.50 Sharpie, both from Staples.
How do you manage your monthly budget? Is it as much a logistical nightmare as mine?
Clare
Labels: budget, Money saving, monthly
