How my budgeting works

Thanks for the comments Froogs - its nice to know how other people manage their money!

I think I have explained my Freedom account before but for newbies who have joined me recently (welcome!) here goes....

I am an anal spreadsheet maker - everything is down on a huge one - its a work of art! I only have 3 different accounts with my bank - joint current, joint saver and my own saver.

All my regular bills (ie direct debits for gas, electric, council tax etc, mortgage,broadband etc) get left in my current account. When I started my Freedom account I had to go through all my outgoings that had to be paid - these are:

Road tax
Car insurance
Telephone

I divided the yearly amount by 12 and put this amount away (joint saver.

Then I figured out how much to spend on:

Birthdays
Christmas

and do the same.

Then I divided the rest of my money between the additional following

Emergencys
Clothes
Hoidays
Repairs
Household
Entertainment
Car repairs

Over the years I have tweaked and tweaked the amounts - the first 5 always got funding - then I managed to fund the last 7 - at first I could only put £1 in each of them but as I paid off my debts that rose and rose.

Then at long last I managed to have a proper savings account which is a nice feeling to have a wee bit of money behind you - this is the amount that got hammered when my dd was sick.

Again, its all on-line or on paper - as I was so bad with cash I tried not to use it as I always wrote down what I paid for with my debit card.

So for 8 years this stem's has worked well but by tyring just to use cash I think I can be more aware of my spending and open another account (Seasonal pitch) to put money in to pay for our seasonal caravan pitch.

I budget £300 for housekeeping - now this does seem a lot compared to what some people are living on......so I have had a re-think and dropped it to £250 - £50 is therefore going into my seasonal account which means I only have to save another £10 a month and that's it sorted. I must admit I am finding it more and more difficult to manage on my housekeeping. We do love our grub (dh and dd are total carnivores!!) so I am going to have to get a real grip on this. We cook from scratch really well but its also the portion sizes I have to deal with.

So off to do this weeks menu ready for my Asda on-line shop....