Wilko Budget Planner

[Loup321]

I saw this in Wilkinsons last weekend, and thought I'd post here in case it was of use to anyone.
http://www.wilko.com/tribes-stationery-range/wilko-tribes-budget-planner/invt/0436041
You complete all your regular incomings and outgoings, all your irregular incomings and outgoings (birthday presents, for example), and have pages to use as a diary to track all the actual spending. It does run January to December, which is possibly not ideal for everyone.

It's only available in store, and was in the stationery section. Price £2.

LouP

[vrdiver]

I use a spreadsheet, called "Budget" funnily enough. Every month gets a separate worksheet, and there are annual summaries and graphs to show comparisons by month and year.

I find that setting up a set of account codes (e.g. "house", "Tax", "Utilities", "Entertainment", "Car" etc) allows me to summarise spending into 26 different categories and track expenditure accordingly. (You may find more, or less, accounting buckets more suitable.)

The advantage of a spreadsheet over a paper journal is the opportunity for analysis: "where did all the money go?" It also helps me set targets for expenditure and to have a logical approach when deciding whether something is affordable, based on planned annual expenditure, not current cash.

Getting the spends into the spreadsheet is just a matter of keeping receipts, recording on phone etc until back on the PC.

One item I won't be recording is £2 spent at Wilko on a budget planner, but if that's what it takes to get into the habit of tracking your outgoings, then the £2 is well worth it.