What percentage of your income goes towards rent, utilities and other fixed costs ?
Do you spend a set amount of money on grocery? If yes how do you go about doing it, cash only, debit or credit card.
Pls share how you do things now and also tips that have worked great for you.
Back home (in the Gulf) I used to follow cash in the envelope system and it worked beautifully. But here it is very difficult knowing that we have credit card, debit card and we don’t really stick to a system.
Re: For those renting
There's no reason you shouldn't follow the cash system here if that's what works for you. Do you find that the prices of the things you buy are very different so your budget is a little bit out of whack and not sure what to set your budget at?
For groceries, and this has been how we have been doing it from the very beginning of living together--withdraw cash in the beginning of the month and just use it from that. we have debit and credit cards as well, but we've been using teh cash system forever.
We used to withdraw on a monthly basis, but now it's on a weekly basis (obviously a smaller amount).
Re: For those renting
actually, as Sara said, you can follow cash in the envelop system here too. Its just a matter of getting used to the prices. Another system that you may want to follow is auto-payoff. For all your utilities, cable, satellite - you can have money taken out of your account directly.
One painful (somewhat) reality of living in the west is that you can run your whole month, without holding a single currency note in your hand. You dont get to see your heard earned money that often in this country.
Re: For those renting
ZERO! i live with my BRO and Bhabhi :)
Re: For those renting
We rented for 7 years. Rent was around £800 per month and monthly income was around £2700. Yep. Welcome to UK.
I haven't included council tax, road tax, car insurance and utility bills.
Re: For those renting
We rented for 7 years. Rent was around £800 per month and monthly income was around £2700. Yep. Welcome to UK.
I haven't included council tax, road tax, car insurance and utility bills.
exactly. Thanks to the 40% taxes we have to pay here. But like TLK bhai has said, we have set up a direct debit account for our utility bills and the monthly rent. We keep little cash at home for emergencies. Mostly both of us use our credit cards. But yes living in the UK drains your finances. For us it's been like that..hardly any savings. What comes in goes out too.
Re: For those renting
Gosh, I'm gonna have to learn to manage all this :( How easy is it to stick to a said budget.. think I'd find that part really hard..
Re: For those renting
exactly. Thanks to the 40% taxes we have to pay here. But like TLK bhai has said, we have set up a direct debit account for our utility bills and the monthly rent. We keep little cash at home for emergencies. Mostly both of us use our credit cards. But yes living in the UK drains your finances. For us it's been like that..hardly any savings. What comes in goes out too.
Unless both partners are working, there is no way you can save up. That's why majority of women choose to have babies after 40s here...they want to have fun and save up at the same time which becomes impossible after kids.
Young mothers are relatively poor.
Re: For those renting
I have setup electronic checks for rent and for preschool fee, cell phone and internet bill. So whatever I know is fixed amount/bill, it is setup with e-checks. I think it makes life much easier, no need to worry about checks being late or anything.
Other utility bills, I pay electronically but since the amount is not fixed, we pay as the bill comes.
For grocery, its not a fixed amount but it is around same every month. We do weekly groceries and use debit card.
Hardly use cash, mostly its credit or debit cards or electrnic payments.
Re: For those renting
we still don’t stick to a budget. Esp for household items. We often end up buying stuff not needed :hinna: But now am making sure I take control of some of the finances. lol.
Re: For those renting
you might want to try mint.com if you want to keep track of where all your expenses are going while using credit cards etc.
Re: For those renting
Yeah I Can imagine it must be tough. I find the most effective way of avoiding unnecessary expenditure is by not going shopping. But I guess thats unavoidable when you’re living alone 
Re: For those renting
we have our rent, bills etc are automatically withdrawn from our accout.. we do use credit card for everything to collect miles on it but we pay the balance by just a quick trasnfer every month.. dont want to get sucked into debt and interest at all!
Husband recently proposed using cah and I think we will be starting that soon to keep track of our expenses.. we spend a lot of money and it needs to be controlled.
We are in the middle of buying a house inshaAllae.. since we have a budget for renovation, we have started an excel file to keep track of anything that we spend related to home buying and renovation ranging from home inspection fee to appliances to paint purchase! I am hoping it will help us stay in our budget!
Re: For those renting
1 word
*make a budget and stick to it *
OK those were 7 words but worth following.
If you are sticking to your budget, it does not matter if you are using cash or CC, you will remain top of your expenses. I like CC for one thing and that is that I gives you better money trail. Cash just flies away from my wallet unnoticed and unaccounted....
Re: For those renting
I don't keep track of anything.. pretty sad. I just spend on whatever I need as we go. Rent and all that is of course fixed each month, few bills get automatically deducted from our account and few we have to pay. I really think that we should be saving a lot and that can only be done if we keep track of things. We just bought a car in May and we are pretty much done paying on that :D.. so yes more savings can be done if we manage our account good.
Re: For those renting
Oh yeah when it comes to Cash and Credit.. Cash.. I don't even notice where the money goes.. with Credit card I see my statement and protfolio each month that breaks down my expenses. Not that it matters much.. lol
Re: For those renting
We find it much easier to manage credit cards and electronic statements than carrying cash and receipts. It all matter of paying off the entire balance on all of your credit cards before the due date to avoid any charges and bad credit score. Plus CC rewards point are pretty great too.
Cash is a hassle in my opinion.
Re: For those renting
My husband is terrible with credit/debit cards. For groceries/food and household items (detergent, soap, blah blah) we always use cash. For shopping (clothes, etc) we use the credit card. And like the previous poster said, it works out great using a credit card if you pay off the entire balance at the end of the month.
So how do you come up.with a dollar figure for grocery?
And what about eating out and entertainment ?
It has been 10 months since we moved and it just feels like money is pouring out of our hands. And I can't seem to.understand what is going on.
Both hubby and me are not spendthrifts by any means , maybe there is less barakah in the money earned here.
Re: For those renting
It's all about breaking out the financial class barrier, in UK (and I'm sure in US too) when you start to earn more than the average person's wage you start saving up because you have to pay relatively less tax.
It's capitalism.