Great British Budget – let's get our finances under control.

Now, I was supposed to do this post for the start of February. And I didn’t.

This may give you some sort of clue as to why I really need to get to grips with budgeting. I didn’t do the post because I was spending the end of January panicking about my tax return and NIC as a self employed person. Good eh?

So, my plan is two fold. I want to get my spending sorted so that I can set some targets for fundraising for that extension that we really, really need. And I want to get my paper work under control so that I don’t spend a month or so each year hyperventilating about tax returns.

Who is with me?

There’s a whole campaign about the Great British Budget. And lots of people who are organised, and got themselves sorted for the beginning of February.

But I’m here to say that it’s *never* too late to get started budgeting. Today is a good day to start, and continually putting it off doesn’t help any of us.

You can budget however suits you. I am going to be exploring Money Hub but a spreadsheet or even, dare I say it, a notebook (a real one with paper pages and all that) will work just as well. The main tip is to be honest with yourself – there is no point in setting a budget that you can’t keep to.

My target this month is to cut back on our shopping by actually using everything we buy and not getting to the end of the week with a fridge full of useless bits. I’m going to use Ms Jack Monroe‘s blog for inspiration – she does some fabulous things with food most other people would call waste. Also I bit the bullet and bought a copy of the Sun on Friday(spit) for 40p as it gave me a £5 voucher for Lidl. Which meant that this week’s shop cost £64 instead of £69. And £12 of that was coffee on offer at £4 a jar instead of £6something that will last us six weeks, so all in all, pretty good going. I figure if I can get the regular spend that we absolutely have to spend down to the absolute bare minimum, that will show me whether there’s any money left over each week that can go towards building works.

So, are you with me? Do you too want to take back control of the bills? Check out the Great British budget as linked with the lovely badge above, and see what other bloggers are sharing tips and whether they can help you to help yourself.

There’s also a daily photo challenge on twitter, you’ll need to follow Your Wealth UK or look out for #greatbritishbudget tweets. If you’ve got a budgeting aim or tips, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. What’s your technique for keeping track of spending?