www.iva.co.uk

Hi,Just wanted to know how other people are getting on budgeting while in iva.

diffcult, i have to go with out alot of the time.

I'm afraid it will never be easy.

The CCCS guidelines, which will apply to most VAs nowadays, have very little slack in them.

Ian

I have only just made my first payment,so i am just getting used to sticking to the budget. Car tax coming up end of feb !with 3 kids it aint easy,but im gonna do my best.

It's not easy rachell. The best way I have found to do it is to have "pots", perhaps not literally have flowerpots dotted around the house, but I draw the necessary costs out in cash that I need (bus fares to work, supermarket consumables, etc), buy my shopping online monthly (you will be amazed how much that saves!). Have a couple of bank accounts for storing unused and contingency money in.

A couple of ideas. They are helping me so far!

Good luck with it rachell. [:)]

Thanks for the advice ,i have got savings account so i shall proberbly start putting bits away in there.

I moved 'down' a level in my Asda shop... by that I mean for instance if in the past I bought branded fish fingers then I changed to asda's own. If I previously bought asda's own then i moved down to Smartprice. There was h*ll on at the beginning with a threatened revolt from my children and wife ( 4 children, 1 wife) but they have adapted now as the Borg would say. I save abour £50 using this technique

We found it really difficult to start with as we really weren't used to it. To make it easier we got separate accounts to divide our budget up. I understand you are in contact with Caraf? If she has still got them i sent her a copy of our budget and how it breaks down and what goes into each account and I am perfectly happy for her to forward it to you if it helps!

At the end the of the day everyone works things differently and although Huby and I have an interlocking IVA you wouldn't know coz he doesn't actually deal with anything relating to it.

Lou x

I am just learning to.
I have my Lloyds account, which my husband wages and the benefits are paid into, and all the household DD come out of there.
I have my smile account which has my wages paid into, and this I call my "living" account, food, petrol, dentist etc..etc..
at the moment it is working but only in the very early days yet.
I shop at Asda everyweek, and this is what I seem to be struggling with at the moment always 7-8 quid over every week, need to tighten the strings a little as i only have 400 per month which is not alot really for 4 people. Its hardtoreak the habit of just throwing everything in and then put it on the plastic..

Look upon it as a learning curve.
You learn to think "do i actually need this" before you buy it.
You shop around for better bargains and save a little.
Look how well disciplined you will be after the 5 years.

mrs skint

If you can get a delivery online, then try buying all your non-perishables (frozen stuff, tins, tea, coffee, etc) online and I reckon we have saved £75+ a month just by doing this. The number of times I went in to my local supermarket, bought 3 or 4 things for tea that ended up costing £10 or so. I made something last night that probably cost £4 and was absolutely gorgeous!

You will probably find, especially on the tins and frozen stuff that you get 2 for £x, when before you might have bought one for a week, then bought the same the following week, when you could have saved 20%. It's the little things that make the big difference!

I can eat own brand "cheap stuff" very easily, doesn't bother me at all - the girlfriend isn't so keen though!!!

That's where my the majority of my savings have come from.

I have started to buy sainsburys and asdas brands while shopping and it does make a huge difference.For childrens pack up for example 20 choc bars £99p but if you buy kit kat or penquins you can be talking £2 ! unless they are on offer that week .We shall see how it goes .Food is so expensive these days i dread to think what prices things will be when my kids grow up !

As the others have said its really hard. I'm now 2 years into mine, and although i'm usually counting the days til payday I still have money to last me until then whereas before I was just spending my wages and putting everything else on my card. On the bright side though and more of a long term benefit, i'm now excellent when it comes to money saving and living on a tight budget that I think come the end of my IVA I will be able to continue making the same payments into a savings account! Its been a long hard lesson, but a good one at that!

Also if you spend under budget for your housekeeping are you allowed to keep whats left over for savings.

I find that shopping at Tesco's works for me as I save all the clubcard vouchers for xmas, I also pass a Tesco express on my way to work so I buy my petrol there as well.
Silly, I know, as I could save more by shopping elsewhere but last xmas was a lot easier than previous ones.