Budget setting for 2015

A couple of years ago my husband brought a Home Accounts software package from Amazon for £5 and set about rationalizing our accounts and keeping a close eye on everything. I ran a report today on Groceries, Eating out, gifts. All came to £3500. Last year was a bit of a strain with a funeral, two births, my retirement early from work and moving house which added to our expenses and strained our income.  Nevertheless I set some budgets for 2015 and hope to operate well within them as we will both be home full time and growing a lot of our own food.

• Groceries £2800 (£54.00 per week for two of us having 3 small meals a day and occasional visitors)
• Dining out £200 (it will have to be treats only and our picnic stove will have to come out and be in the car ready all summer.  Or our guests will have to treat us in exchange for free B&B!)
• Gifts £300 (more homemade things planned but we have a growing brood of grand kids)

We are going to have to check our buying  of bird food - our flock of house sparrows, numerous blackbirds and finches are costing us a fortune.
I will continue to explore the budget options of this software but I can recommend doing this as it makes us very conscious of our bottom line and we thoroughly check all debits on our accounts each week.