My monthly budget

                       

I'm going to share with you my monthly budget for June. You may remember last month I told you that I get paid in cash and that I live off the previous months wages. I get paid on a Thursday so after the last Thursday of each month I sit down, put all my wages together and allocate it to various expenses.

Firstly I empty last months 'envelopes' and bring my budget back down to zero, essentially sweeping up anything that I overbudgeted for the month into my savings. Unfortunately last month I had quite a few things to pay for so after balancing all that out I only had £64.63 to put across into my savings.

Once last months money is dealt with I turn my attention to next month and add up all my weekly pay packets to get my total. In May I earned £1151.12. So this is what I have to live off in June. 

I then place any coins into a couple of money boxes I have. £2, £1, 50p, 20p and 10p's go into one money box and 5p, 2p and 1p's go into another. I put £11.12 into one and 22p into the other. I decided to see how much was in these money boxes out of interest and just by putting the coins I get paid with and any leftover coins at the end of the month in I have managed to save £70.30 in one and £17.34 in the other. Not bad for just a few months and I haven't missed the money. Hopefully this can be spending money when I go on holiday or something.

Next I get out my envelopes and put the required amount in each one for the month. 

They go as follows:

Rent: £450

Utilities: £70

Council Tax: £100

Internet: £30

Mobile Phone: £20

Spotify: £10

Food: £50

Petrol: £50

Birthdays: £40 (I look ahead in the month to decide how much I need in this envelope so it depends on how many birthdays there are in the month. I budget £10 for friends and £20 for family)

So that's £820 in total allocated for my monthly budget. That leaves me with £319.78 'spare' for the month. As I said earlier I had to pay for some hen party things like activities, accommodation and food. I had a deposit to pay on someone's 30th birthday celebrations. I also treated myself to a lamp and a few new plants for my flat so I only ended up with putting £181.29 into my savings account this month. I aim to save £250 a month but sometimes that amount just isn't possible.

I'll share with you what accounts I use and how I separate my money in another post.

Budgeting

I have been moved into my small 1 bed flat for almost two months now. It is the first time I have ever lived by myself, and so far I absolutely love it! I can do what I want when I want, things don't move when I go out, nobody makes a mess and doesn't clean it up except me!

What I am also enjoying about living on my own is budgeting my money. I know it isn't the most exciting of things but I do genuinely really enjoy working out my budget, seeing if I can stick to it and saving money at the end of every month.

My job doesn't pay much, it is minimum wage and not quite full time each week, but my basic hours guarantees me about 35 hours each week. I also do some cleaning, gardening etc for my grandma once a week which she pays me a bit for.

The best thing for my budget that I have done, which I haven't done before, is to live off last months earnings. I get paid weekly and in cash from my job so when I get paid

I put it into my money box until the end of the month. Then at the end of the month (usually after the last pay packet for that month) I open up all the envelopes and put them together to see how much I have to budget with for the next month. I have found this system really good mainly because I don't earn a salary so what I earn each month changes, so it is good to know exactly what I have to work with each month. It also means that I don't have to wait for my next wage to be able to pay bills etc. The money is already sitting in my money box waiting to be allocated.

I have also been using a bit of an envelope system to work out what needs to go where. I use plastic wallets to put the money for rent, council tax, utilities, car, phone and Internet. I also have a purse with two coin sections where I put food money in one side and petrol money in the other. I am attempting to be really tough with myself in that once the money has gone from a category that is it. Even if I have spare in another envelope.

At the end of each month I take my budgets back down to zero, essentially sweeping up all the loose change into my savings, however small the amount. For example, if I budgeted £30 for my internet and it is only £27.99 then the extra £2.01 goes across to my savings.

Because I do love budgeting I have spent a fair amount of time (mainly on Pinterest!) reading people's different budgeting techniques and I have taken bits from them to make my own budget work for me and so far so good. I am not stressing about money despite the fact that this is probably the time when I have the least spare cash because I know how much I have and where it is. I am working on building up emergency funds for life's little surprises and hopefully going to have enough money saved up for a holiday or two this year!

At the end of the month I will share with you my budget so you can see how I allocate my spending, and where I save each month.