Family budget

Sunrise_Sunset

We are a one income family, 2 adults & 2 kids.
I am pretty good at budgeting and since we dropped to one income a few years ago I started keeping a spreadsheet of expenditures.
However, our mortgage repayments are increasing shortly as we're trading up slightly and our interest rate is going up too.
Myself and his nibs get personal money to spend each month. I think this has to be knocked on the head going forward, or at the very least decreased. He doesn't see it my way and says he needs his money. He spends it on lunches, a few pints to watch the footie, maybe one bigger night out per month, and a small amount on clothes. I don't want to emasculate him by insisting on this, I would prefer if he agreed with the plan. I can cut back on my personal money though so I don't see why he can't.
Any other ideas for expenditures we can cut back on?
Already we have one family car, don't have TV channels, shop mostly in Aldi.

Jellybaby1

Check out the Living Frugally forum for ideas. This thread asks the same question:
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057759722

ted1

Life is for living. If you can’t treat yourself to things then what’s the point. Have a look at cutting bills I stead. Move utility company , change health insurance. Look at your transport, swap out tv package for an Android box.

SusanC10

We too are a single Income Family with 2 Kids. I was made redundant during the Recession and my Husband had a few pay cuts. We had to adjust our spending massively.

We pool our finances and have done since we got married. We are not big spenders in general but we really had to have a serious re-think on spending.

We don't do the thing of having a personal amount to spend each month. I track our spending and let my Husband know if a particular month is tight and then both of us put off any unnecessary spending until the following month. We have Joint Accounts so he can easily see what is happening anyway. When things were tight, we decided to not spend more than €100 on a particular thing without consulting each other.

Things have been ok for us the last couple of years as my Husband was promoted. But now we would like to move house so we will be actively reducing our spending once again.

You are used to tracking and using a Spreadsheet so you should know where the money is going.

Tackle all the Utilities first. ESB/Gas/Phones/TV/Refuse etc.
Look to switch for ESB/Gas. We also bundled our Landline with Mobiles recently and reduced cost.

You already have 1 Car. Shop around for Fuel and Insurance.

I keep a running List of things that are needed in the house. This month is a tight month with Back-to-School Costs so I will wait until next month to buy those things and maybe even the month after.

In terms of your Husband could you maybe suggest bringing his own lunch to work ? It will reduce the cost significantly. We have a "Happy Friday" so my Husband doesn't bring a packed lunch on Fridays.

Also maybe suggest lowering the Clothes spend ? Adults don't really need to spend much on clothes. My Husband likes a particular brand of (expensive) shoes for work. Instead of him buying them when he wanted to, I started looking for them in Sales and online and have found them half-price etc so I buy them and put them away for when he needs them.

If you are moving house, sell your unnecessary items online. Also look for things you need in Charity Shops. I wanted a Bookcase for our Bedroom and by being patient and following the Charity Shop on FB I picked one up for €100.

Recycle unwanted/unnecessary Gifts.

You already shop in Aldi but also do a Meal Plan before you shop - cuts down on waste.

I know you are tracking but track everything. Coffees, Newspapers - every little thing. You will see where savings can be made easier.

Grumpypants

The usual suspects, make sure you move electricity/gas. I use level pay with board gais on a 28% discount, which means i pay €70 a month all year rather than getting surprise bills. I usually have a surplus from the summer that covers the winter.

Move banks, we changed our mortgage to Ulster banks 2.9% rate from 3.8% and saved over €200 a month.

Try moving from Aldi to lidl. Aldi are quite pricey. Our weekly shopping was over €150 and i got it down to closer to the €100.

I moved from eir, it was €180 for broadband, tv and 2 mobiles. Now with vodafone. €25 a month for 6 months of tv and internet and both on vidafone x which gives 20gb data and spotify premium or sky sports mobile for €20. That's saving another €100+ a month.

Have a look at your driving see if electric is an option. That's the biggest saving i've made. I went from around €70 petrol to €6 electricity a week. If you can charge at work you can drive for free. Tax is €120-170 too. I bought a 2015 outlander phev jeep and even after paying back €210 a month I still save another €200 over the cost of running a petrol or diesel car.

If your kids are in childcare there is a payment coming in October to help fund that.

The above freed up 400-500 a month for us.

Sonny noggs

Strange decision to trade up slightly when it appears you can’t afford it without affecting your lifestyle on an already tight budget.

LuasSimon

Doesn’t sound a great existence for some people working listening to these stories .
Meanwhile there’s people who never worked a day in their life in council rented houses going out 3/4 nights a week not worrying about offers in Lidl etc . If you had 4 kids and neither of you worked you’d have as much disposable income . Many are only working to pay for their own house .

Sunrise_Sunset

Sonny noggs wrote: »

Strange decision to trade up slightly when it appears you can’t afford it without affecting your lifestyle on an already tight budget.

We are moving from an apartment to a house. The 4 of us are tripping over ourselves in a tiny apartment. The house is also in a nicer area, and we want to provide a better life for our children by living there, and attending the local school. I am re-training and aim to return to work in a year's time so hopefully our finances will improve then. In the meantime, I will do some childminding and babysitting for extra money. We are only borrowing an extra few grand as we saved up a lot of money, but our tracker interest rate will increase by 1%. There's a few other outgoings that are increasing too; life insurance, buildings & contents insurance (we never had buildings insurance before as it was included in our management company fees), property tax, house alarm (we never had before). Any of the extra money we had been saving towards the new house will now go on all of the above things. Yes, money will be a bit tighter but for us the whole thing is worth it. Just looking for other ways we can cut back too.

Sunrise_Sunset

SusanC10 wrote: »

We too are a single Income Family with 2 Kids. I was made redundant during the Recession and my Husband had a few pay cuts. We had to adjust our spending massively.

We pool our finances and have done since we got married. We are not big spenders in general but we really had to have a serious re-think on spending.

We don't do the thing of having a personal amount to spend each month. I track our spending and let my Husband know if a particular month is tight and then both of us put off any unnecessary spending until the following month. We have Joint Accounts so he can easily see what is happening anyway. When things were tight, we decided to not spend more than €100 on a particular thing without consulting each other.

Things have been ok for us the last couple of years as my Husband was promoted. But now we would like to move house so we will be actively reducing our spending once again.

You are used to tracking and using a Spreadsheet so you should know where the money is going.

Tackle all the Utilities first. ESB/Gas/Phones/TV/Refuse etc.
Look to switch for ESB/Gas. We also bundled our Landline with Mobiles recently and reduced cost.

You already have 1 Car. Shop around for Fuel and Insurance.

I keep a running List of things that are needed in the house. This month is a tight month with Back-to-School Costs so I will wait until next month to buy those things and maybe even the month after.

In terms of your Husband could you maybe suggest bringing his own lunch to work ? It will reduce the cost significantly. We have a "Happy Friday" so my Husband doesn't bring a packed lunch on Fridays.

Also maybe suggest lowering the Clothes spend ? Adults don't really need to spend much on clothes. My Husband likes a particular brand of (expensive) shoes for work. Instead of him buying them when he wanted to, I started looking for them in Sales and online and have found them half-price etc so I buy them and put them away for when he needs them.

If you are moving house, sell your unnecessary items online. Also look for things you need in Charity Shops. I wanted a Bookcase for our Bedroom and by being patient and following the Charity Shop on FB I picked one up for €100.

Recycle unwanted/unnecessary Gifts.

You already shop in Aldi but also do a Meal Plan before you shop - cuts down on waste.

I know you are tracking but track everything. Coffees, Newspapers - every little thing. You will see where savings can be made easier.

Thank you for the tips. I will shop around for gas/electricity, we change every year anyway to get the best offers and it's about time again this or next month as I think. I think hubbie will need to bring his own lunch in more. I definitely need to do a meal planning that's a great tip. Good luck with saving for a new house! We did it on a budget too. Still can't believe we managed it, but it feels great.

Sunrise_Sunset

Grumpypants wrote: »

Move banks, we changed our mortgage to Ulster banks 2.9% rate from 3.8% and saved over €200 a month.

Try moving from Aldi to lidl. Aldi are quite pricey. Our weekly shopping was over €150 and i got it down to closer to the €100.

Have a look at your driving see if electric is an option. That's the biggest saving i've made. I went from around €70 petrol to €6 electricity a week. If you can charge at work you can drive for free. Tax is €120-170 too. I bought a 2015 outlander phev jeep and even after paying back €210 a month I still save another €200 over the cost of running a petrol or diesel car.

Now that we are out of negative equity we will look at changing banks when we can. No other bank would look at us while still in negative equity and looking to trade up.

I didn't realise Lidl was cheaper than Aldi??

We will need a new car soon enough, ours is old but reliable so far. Will definitely consider electric or hybrid.

SusanC10

In terms of Grocery Shopping, I find it very much depends on what you are buying. We are both decent cooks and cook pretty much everything from scratch and so are buying ingredients for the most part.
We shop primarily in Tesco with a little bit of Lidl. For the most part I buy Tesco own brand products and they are mostly the exact same price as Lidl (have compared)
Where we benefit is the Tesco Tokens and the Boost scheme where they can be multiplied for use at other Companies. Eg €2.50 of Tesco Tokens becomes €10 Voucher at Milanos.

We have also cut out Take Aways. Only get one about once a year now instead of twice a month previously. I can't actually remember the last Take Away we had.

pwurple

Single income 2 adult 2 kids here too. Small kids consume a budget for a couple of years alright, so it is very tight, but it eases for sure. We dropped the savings first.

We also budget, but include discretionary for it. 50% bills, 30% discretionary, 20% savings.

That discretionary includes a family holiday for example, birthday parties ... all things which are needed to have some kind of life.


Electric driving saved us thousands a year as well, but I know that's not suitable for everyone, if you do a lot of driving for example.

Sunrise_Sunset

SusanC10 wrote: »

In terms of Grocery Shopping, I find it very much depends on what you are buying. We are both decent cooks and cook pretty much everything from scratch and so are buying ingredients for the most part.
We shop primarily in Tesco with a little bit of Lidl. For the most part I buy Tesco own brand products and they are mostly the exact same price as Lidl (have compared)
Where we benefit is the Tesco Tokens and the Boost scheme where they can be multiplied for use at other Companies. Eg €2.50 of Tesco Tokens becomes €10 Voucher at Milanos.

We have also cut out Take Aways. Only get one about once a year now instead of twice a month previously. I can't actually remember the last Take Away we had.

We are good cooks and cook the majority of meals from scratch too. Once a week I'll do a freezer meal, but it's always cheap anyway. We would have a take away or a lunch out with the family maybe once a week, but will look at cutting back to every other week. I do shop in Tesco for some things, but wouldn't spend a huge amount there. The vouchers I get from there we trade in for family days out with the boost scheme; like for Milanos TGI's, the zoo, Aquazone etc. I know that I spend too much on the kids clothes and am definitely cutting back on that too. About how much would you spend on clothes?

Sunrise_Sunset

pwurple wrote: »

Single income 2 adult 2 kids here too. Small kids consume a budget for a couple of years alright, so it is very tight, but it eases for sure. We dropped the savings first.

We also budget, but include discretionary for it. 50% bills, 30% discretionary, 20% savings.

That discretionary includes a family holiday for example, birthday parties ... all things which are needed to have some kind of life.


Electric driving saved us thousands a year as well, but I know that's not suitable for everyone, if you do a lot of driving for example.

I agree with you on that, and we always save for a family holiday once a year too. We feel it is important. I suppose I put the kids needs before our own for the most part, and I like being able to send them to after school activities, buy them nice clothes etc. We wouldn't spend a huge amount on toys, I budget well for Christmas and birthdays and birthday parties but they wouldn't get a lot in between.
We are definitely considering electric or hybrid when our current car packs in, but I think we will keep driving it until it does.

zapper55

I think you need to sit down with your husband and ask him where he sees the extra money coming from. What are his suggestions? Does he understand what the budget is made up of? Did you both agree the budget together.

I dont understand why you have to carry this burden by yourself.

Fair play to you for retraining and hopefully getting back to work in a year. Maybe because you arent working you are taking more than your fair share of worry on this but you are a partnership you need his help.

Edit: your last post puts a different slant on things. Do the kids need as many after school activities and nice (do you mean pricey?) clothes? I know you say you like it, but with the new house maybe knock some on the head for a while.

Sunrise_Sunset

zapper55 wrote: »

I think you need to sit down with your husband and ask him where he sees the extra money coming from. What are his suggestions? Does he understand what the budget is made up of? Did you both agree the budget together.

I dont understand why you have to carry this burden by yourself.

Fair play to you for retraining and hopefully getting back to work in a year. Maybe because you arent working you are taking more than your fair share of worry on this but you are a partnership you need his help.

Edit: your last post puts a different slant on things. Do the kids need as many after school activities and nice (do you mean pricey?) clothes? I know you say you like it, but with the new house maybe knock some on the head for a while.

At the moment only one of the kids is in school and goes to after school activities. He goes twice a week, which isn't a lot.
I don't buy them designer clothes by any means, but I know I need to shop in cheaper places like Penneys and I have already started this. I have realised this and made that cut back already.

thunderdog

In terms of clothes I’d recommend looking into getting them on eBay. The amount you can save their on clothes is well worth it, many with tags still on but if you really want to save money go second hand. 99% of the stuff we’ve bought there is of great quality with savings of 60-90 %.

scarepanda

Very interested in this thread. We're a single income, 2 kids family so always looking for was saving.

We need to move electricity for sure.

What types of food are cheaper in lidl over Aldi? We also do most meals from scratch. I currently do most of the shopping in Aldi, and try to limit a trip to Tesco's as it tends to be an expensive shop of stuff I can't get in Aldi. But I am tempted to move to lidl. I find the selection of fruit and veg is better than Aldi and it will suit a bit better once the toddler starts school.

SusanC10

We rarely eat out. I eat out maybe once a month with my female friends. As a family we eat out on Holidays and rarely apart from that. As a couple we eat out maybe 3/4 times a year.

We do have a Date Night twice a month at home and take turns cooking or else each person cooks different courses.

We prioritize our annual Family Holiday abroad in terms of Fun Stuff and have a separate Savings Account for this. We use our Tesco Tokens for Irish Ferries and managed to pay less than €200 for the Ferry to France this year.

On the Kids Clothes - I rarely pay full price for anything. I buy a year ahead and in Sales and mostly online. I don't buy in Penneys as find the quality terrible. I do buy in Dunnes, Next and M&S. I won't buy Labels unless a bargain. (I got a Nike Swimsuit for my daughter for €6 in Elverys last week). I won't buy expensive Shoes or Runners for the Kids. My son is currently wearing Runners from Decathlon for €17.

pwurple

Sunrise_Sunset wrote: »

I agree with you on that, and we always save for a family holiday once a year too. We feel it is important. I suppose I put the kids needs before our own for the most part, and I like being able to send them to after school activities, buy them nice clothes etc. We wouldn't spend a huge amount on toys, I budget well for Christmas and birthdays and birthday parties but they wouldn't get a lot in between.
We are definitely considering electric or hybrid when our current car packs in, but I think we will keep driving it until it does.

The biggest savings were on tax and servicing. Tax is 120 euro. Service was under 100. We were spending loads on those every year. Broke my heart to spend 600+ euro on servicing.


For clothes, I almost never buy them. We are lucky to have family, friends and neighbours with kids a little old than them, so there are LOADS of hand-me-downs available to us.

shesty

I shop mainly on sales for kids clothes.

I also don't shop in Penneys because I find the clothes don't wear well and so end up costing as much or more replacing them in the longer run.Also I find a lot that I don't like their clothes for my older girl who is now five-personal opinion.

But there are sales, particularly online, on most shops.So say for autumn/winter clothes, there is a period of a week or so in Sept/Oct where current season stock will be on sale.This is repeated in most seasons.I do online shop a bit, which can knock off more.I would mainly pick up tights, underwear etc in Dunnes then throughout the year.I also find H&M extremely reasonable for kids clothes, and their leggings and t-shirts are great, especially in winter as they make warmer ones. I would buy occasionally in Next, and more often in M&S, and Nameit, (who have great sales for really good quality stuff). We also take second hand stuff from friends and family when available.

SusanC10

shesty wrote: »

I shop mainly on sales for kids clothes.
I don't honestly shop in Penneys because I find the clothes don't wear well and so end up costing as much or more replacing them in the longer run.

But there are sales, particularly online, on most shops.So say for autumn/winter clothes, there is a period of a week or so in Sept/Oct where current season stock will be on sale.This is repeated in most seasons.I do online shop a bit, which can knock off more.I would mainly pick up tights, underwear etc in Dunnes then throughout the year.I also find H&M extremely reasonable for kids clothes, and their leggings and t-shirts are great, especially in winter as they make warmer ones. We also take second hand stuff from friends and family when available.

Plus 1 to all of this.

Grumpypants

We have two under 4 and rarely buy clothes, (not that they run around naked ) But people with older kids are mad trying to get rid of bags of clothes.

Most of the clothes are perfect and many even still have their tags on. We have a 3 year olf girl and 1 year old boy. The neighbour has a 4 year old boy and 1 year old girl. So we get the boy hand me downs and they get our girl hand me downs.

Also check Advert.ie there are loads of people selling kids clothes.

SusanC10

The way we reduced outgoings when we had to was Track spending (track every little thing) for 2 months while trying to reduce.

I do the Tracking as I have more time and I do more of the actual spending as I buy most of the things for the Family.
This did involve my Husband giving me Receipts for his spending for the initial period. Now we are both used to how we spend so it is not necessary.

Put everything into a Spreadsheet with different Categories. I use a lot of Categories. Then look at each Category individually and see if there is any way this particular Category could be reduced.

Small things matter too as they add up.

Also thinking about spending and postponing unnecessary spending helps.

SusanC10

On Kids Activities - GAA and the Running Club have been excellent for our Kids. And fantastic value for what you are getting. Keeps them busy and active several days a week for very little in terms of money.

Grumpypants

Consider a smart thermostat for the heating/hot water. they can be relatively cheap now with almost no installation. A simple kit with smart radiator valves can be under €200 and you can control the heating for each individual room from your phone.

You would be surprised at how often heating on a timer is wasted. If your house is at 18 degrees a thermostat will turn off the heating, the timer will keep heating your house way beyond what is needed.

That combined with an extra layer of attic insulation (and a pretty mild winter) knocked a grand off my oil bill.

jlm29

Following this with interest, I really need to up my budgeting game! I think in this house, the food shop is what I need to tackle.
As above, with kids clothes, buying cheap can be a false economy, if your kids are both the same gender anyhow, you're better off buying better stuff that you can pass on. If you've got a boy and a girl, then some things are better value to buy cheaper because you won't be using them for as long, so don't need top quality.

Do you need to save money solely to meet the bigger mortgage payments and assoc costs? Or does the house need some work etc?

Kevhog1988

SusanC10 wrote: »

On Kids Activities - GAA and the Running Club have been excellent for our Kids. And fantastic value for what you are getting. Keeps them busy and active several days a week for very little in terms of money.

The GAA is excellent, its 80 euro for my membership and 50 for my sons and we are welcome to use the pitch etc as often as we like as well as both playing and training with teams. The gaa are currently installing a gym which i think i will have access to also

shesty

Oh I do my grocery shop online too....really saves money in terms of stopping impulse buying and you get plenty of vouchers.I top up fruit and veg, dairy a bit once a week if needed.
We have two girls so clothes are shared.

Laughing at my first post,I only mention girls stuff because my youngest is a boy and almost all his stuff is second-hand from cousins.Our girls stuff goes back to them for their youngest.

DavyD_83

2 adults, 2 kids here too, 1 income.
I've been finding we're in the red at the end of most months lately, we to up the current account from savings etc, but that's going to run out some day soon, so really need to figure out how to work within our limits without just spending till it's gone and then scrimping for last week (s) of the month.
We shop in Aldi. Kids clothes are bought in sales or online mostly, but we have started getting the odd takeaway again when we're lazy or whatever.
We cancelled TV a while back, but paying for netflix (might drop) and broadband.

What I'm getting from this thread so far is that we really need to work on meal planning (which I've been meaning to do for a while anyway, it will make sharing the cooking duties easier too).

Will definitely look into the move to hybrid/electric on next car change, but that won't be for a while.

mariaalice

The issue is not about budgeting, the op is doing all the financial planning for the family, therefore, it's allowing their partner to view the money they get as a sort of pocket money for adults and that is not healthy or good for an intimate relationship.

It has to be viewed as something they are jointly responsible for getting him to look at the budget and make suggestions of how both of you come up with the extra money needed.

In a one-income household to be able buy lunch, go for pints, and a big spendy night out each month is doing very well on one income.