Help – only careful actions ease pain

to suck eggs some of this stuff is pretty basic. But I make no apologies for that because it is often the basics that trip us up.

It’s easy to get into the kind of debt that we dealt with last week and, according to the statistics I read every day, more and more Scots are struggling with the basics of money management and budgeting so what comes next is really important and useful.

Before we start to look at how to put a budget together there is some work to do.

And this is probably one of the single most important exercises you will ever carry out in connection with your money.

I’m not overstating its importance by saying that. You need to keep an absolutely accurate note of everything you spend for a period of at least a week but preferably a month.

The coffee on the way to work in the morning and the newspaper or magazine to read on the train and the sandwich and Mars Bar at lunchtime and the gin and tonic on the way home and the DVD you rent when you get home. Everything.

And be honest with yourself. You’re not doing this for me or your bank manager or your boss or your partner.

You’re not doing it because you are trying to figure out what bits you are going to have to cut out.

You are doing it because the starting point in putting together a sensible budget is to understand how you spend money. The big stuff is easy – your mortgage and car loan and council tax all come out of your bank every month and you can quickly add them all up and work out how much they total.

It’s the daily money that gets lost. And that’s what you need to get a handle on before we can pull it all together in a sensible format.

And remember this exercise is to help you spend, not stop you spending.