Terrible with money and budgeting!!

Hi guys, so I left uni last year and had managed to rack up £600 overdraft (not a student overdraft). I have a regular monthly income but I'm so poor with money I literally manage to spend everything in a month.. I get £1100 monthly and it's all gone within 2 weeks and honestly idk how to curb this. I'm a compulsive spender and buy anything I see. I use contactless payments all the time so am constantly spending little bits here and there. I literally have NO necessary outgoings at the moment which makes everything 10x worse.
I really do sound pathetic but I never had 'pocket money' as a child & teenager, I just got given money as and when I needed it so I feel like I have never learned the budgeting skills that I clearly need. I also have a bad habit of using the 'buy now pay later' feature on klarna so always have clothes etc to be paying for each month. HATE MYSELFFFFF.
So my questions are:
How do I get out of this overdraft?
How do I get my finances in order and stop spending SO much?

Reply 1

abbii-x

Nope I literally pay for nothing (living with parents). My only necessity is petrol. Pathetic I know, I just buy so much crapppp

Reply 2

Anonymous #1

Original post by abbii-x

Nope I literally pay for nothing (living with parents). My only necessity is petrol. Pathetic I know, I just buy so much crapppp

you're so lucky you have to pay nothing, imagine how much you could save!

Reply 3

abbii-x

Original post by Anonymous

you're so lucky you have to pay nothing, imagine how much you could save!

I know! I really am trying but I feel like all my money disappears without me really doing anything :frown:

Reply 4

Anonymous #1

Original post by abbii-x

I know! I really am trying but I feel like all my money disappears without me really doing anything :frown:

really wish this was my problem

Reply 5

abbii-x

minimalism really interests me actually.
I do spend a lot of money on material items. For my family and boyfriend as well as myself though, it's just out of hand. I've already pretty much spent all of my money for the next pay day. fml :frown:

Reply 6

abbii-x

Original post by Anonymous

really wish this was my problem

I feel really annoyingly ungrateful. I realise how fortunate I am atm but it's the skill of managing money that I really need to address.

Reply 7

Realitysreflexx

Firstly,

Money is hard to manage always for everyone, most people just don't discuss it publicly. So i appreciate your honesty.

My advice would be to set aside an amount to save each month. Just £100 set it up like a bill... This should help you realise that money is a precious commodity there to serve a function.

Secondly, you need to look at where your overall life is heading. How long can you realistically afford this lifestyle your living now/want?

Couple issues or points i want to make

1. How long do you plan to live at home? What happens when you want to move on to the next stage of life?
2. Wheres your education coming back into the fold? The best way to poverty in the UK is having no university qualifications or anything else to sell your labour with bringing in more then a measly £1,100.

Realise that your parents are giving you sometime to "sort it out" to recover from a bad uni experience... But good parent's eventually their patience will run thin and call you to action.....it's not likely either you or they over a longer time horizon expect you to remain home never earnjng any real money with no qualifications.

I would sit down with them and make a financial plan and discuss next steps.

Original post by abbii-x

Nope I literally pay for nothing (living with parents). My only necessity is petrol. Pathetic I know, I just buy so much crapppp

Reply 8

abbii-x

Thanks for your post! I don't plan on living at home forever, I understand I need to do some serious saving and am definitely in a position to save a decent amount.
My university degree proved to be pretty much useless but I am looking for better paid jobs. Unfortunately working in education these are hard to come by.
Do you have any strategies on where to start with budgeting?

Original post by Realitysreflexx

Reply 9

Anonymous #2

"the key is to not save what's left after spending, but to spend what's left after saving" - Warren Buffett

Reply 10

doodle_333

Stop taking your card out and start using cash. Get £100 or whatever you're happy to spend at the start of each week and that's all you get. Stop online shopping cos tbh you don't need it. It's just about self control. I lived alone with rent/bills on that income and had a decent quality of life and still saved.

Reply 11

DarthRoar

Original post by abbii-x

Nope I literally pay for nothing (living with parents). My only necessity is petrol. Pathetic I know, I just buy so much crapppp

Just... stop?

Reply 12

Muttley79

Original post by abbii-x

Start by stopping using contactless and use cash - then you might think more about your spending :smile:

If you take out a specific amount of cash each week then when it's spent it's gone ...

Reply 13

Max1989

As others have said stop using contactless and use cash;
Another thing you can do is get another bank account and every week transfer a certain amount into you account you said you earn £1100 a months so set it to transfer £200 a week and save the £300, living off £200 should be ideal, but you also said you live with parents so even reduce this to £100. ANd make sure this card is not contactless, and then take your other cards out of you wallet and only have this one, plus take out £20 in cash for emergencies. Then you need to work on your self control to not use the cards you have at home, perhaps put them into a box, lock it and give it to your parents, you might get withdrawal symptoms but it is for the best. Also you don't NEED all that stuff, I know that's easy for me to say but you really don't, learn to be appreciative of what you do have and make sure you use it all until it's ripped and in tatters.

Reply 14

honeykates

You need to make a budget. Sure, you have extra things you want to buy, but just include those in your plan - you may have to forgo some of them. First priority is paying back that overdraft! Depends how much you earn but focus on that first, make sure you put petrol as your main expense, put 20% in savings if you can. The rest is your expendable income.

Reply 15

Cheesybread

Don't use your card. Cash only, that's what i do i spend £30 on food and other essentials a week. When you have to take that money out of your hand, psychology it's harder to spend lots of cash money on non essentials. Or have 2 accounts one with both with no overdraft, one to just spend money, the other to save, Save the amount of % you want, put the other in spending, plus with no overdraft to go into, you'll be more careful