I’ve done a few posts on budgets, income and expense, but recent events have got me getting out the old spreadsheet and doing some updates.
With the UK Budget looming, I am wondering what wonderful tweaks and twerks of the figures our dear Chancellor has played on his monetary violin to make things look better.
From where I’m sitting, we’re in for a bit of a rough ride, but consider ourselves fortunate compared to some.
My number crunching days saw me balance a list of figures in a variety of ways. I loved my job and enjoyed working with the numbers.
Designing a spreadsheet for my credit control position was also an enjoyable exercise as simply by filling in the columns, aged debt percentages were automatically calculated.
My boss loved it, as did the various publishers that came under our umbrella.
Balancing income and expense though is very close to home at the moment.
Our income is about to take a dive thanks to a change in government policies, and I was curious about percentages pro rata after the event.
At the moment, just over 40% of our joint income goes out in taxes, insurances, utility bills, running the car, medical expense (ie, dentist check ups twice a year), Maggie’s annual booster injections, our internet package and food.
It doesn’t sound too bad does it.
However, with the pending loss of some 35% of income, those bills equate to almost 62% .
Worst case scenario and we only have our private pensions coming in for the next four years, and that increases to a whopping 85.7%.
Hubby will now be reaching for the valium, but don’t worry Love, I’ve got it covered.
I can tweak our food, phone and car expenses a bit, and we can reduce our heating by turning the thermostat down (currently 18º so not exactly a furnace).
However, inflation dictates that prices will rise, and sadly our pensions won’t, or at least not sufficiently to cover the increases to boost company profits.
Our broadband package and gas/electricity deals are fixed for 2 years, so I don’t have to worry about those immediately. As for food and fuel costs? We’ll eat less and walk more.
I have two pathetic little annuities as well as my bank pension and they present 1% of our current income. This actually doubles should we only have our pensions to live on. Whoopee doo.
Out of additional curiosity, I did my calculations on the same basis but being on the boat.
On our present income, our outgoings equated to over 60% of what was coming in. This increased to 93% with our known reduction, and well, the toilet rolls were well and truly on the shopping list if we had to rely on just our pensions, as we exceeded our income by 30%.
Good move then to sell up and buy a house.
But you know what?
Thankfully, we have enough (just) for now so I’m busy tweaking and twerking my own budget to make things look better.
But at least my figures are real.
pensitivity101 
As long as there is enough left for chocolate! 😀
One 30p bar a week should fit the bill!
Good enough! 🙂