#57 Review of monthly spending over past 12 months

Decided to have a review my variable spending.

Since June 2015 we have only stuck to our budget twice. And one of those times was because we didn't pay a mortgage payment for that month due to moving house and dates of the month aligning. So in 23 months with five different updates to the budget we have only really been on budget once.

With this in mind we're obviously spending more money than I'm planning for and this should be rectified. First to understand where and why and secondly to rectify and improve.

The cause of this is variable spending. Variable spending has been above target for 21 of those 23 months. One of the months we were below budget was June 2016 - the only month we were entirely below budget. The other one was the most recent month June 2017. Interestingly the previous month, May 2017, was only £9.08 over the variable budget also, so perhaps things are improving without even planning.

The data.

Final three columns are

• Total spent in that period.
• The average this equates to per month in this period.
• How this average per month compares to the budget.

Previous 12 months:

Previous 6 months:

My thoughts on this.

1. I knew we weren't sticking to budget but... it really isn't very good.
2. On average over £700 per month spent over budget for the last 12 months, trending up to on average over £800 per month for the last 6 months.
3. For items we're not budgeting anything for on average we are spending £500~ (12 months) or £660~ (6 months view).
4. We're under-spending on 6 items in the last 6 months view to a value of £50 per month, excluding my travel costs as these are relatively new so dont have 6 months of data.
5. We're over-spending on our Sainsburys grocery shopping which is disappointing as I didn't realise this. Even though we're trending down (£123 over per month for 12 month view and £90 per month for 6 month view) still improvements needed here
6. The most significant difference between budget and actual spending is on Misc One Off Big Things Over £50. £174 over budget over 12 months and £283 over budget for previous six. This to me is a failure to plan and budget properly. We're going to need to look at what we expect these to be and factor them into the planning somehow and also look to reduce significantly. 
7. Some of these figures are made to look worse by positive things. Ie if we overpay on debt repayment we 'spend' more on this than expected.

Next steps.

1. I'm not going to update our budget to reflect what we have been spending. Instead this should serve as a kick up the arse to get us moving in the right direction again.
2. I will look to break down our budget/spending tracking into positive spending - ie savings and extra debt repayment and usual spending. Will update charts to reflect this now.
3. Look into the data behind the 'Misc Big On Off Things Over £50' and see how we can anticipate this better and plan for it more wisely.