Budgetting advice please

If you have spare cash at the end of the month after bills etc, why not open an ISA each and put a monthly sum away by direct debit each month. That will soon grow and you'll have a rainy day fund.

As well as our own bank accounts and a joint account for bills, we have a joint savings account and individual (but accessible) ISAs

Once all the bills were paid at the beginning of the month, I would put a set amount of money into the ISAs and the rest into the savings account, transferring money back into the individual accounts from the savings account if we needed additional cash

It sounds complicated, but is all web based, so fairly straightforward once you get into the routine

I found that if I left only a small amount of money in my own account it made me less likely to spend it

Could you not just work out how much you need out of the main bills account to cover bills and put any surplus into an account to cover these other expenses?

We sound very much like you, we're just clearing a credit card debt and it's going to be lovely to have spare money each month. LIke you we also have a single account each and put a lump sum into the joint account for bills. We've just bought a new car so i'm planning to take maybe £20 a month from the joint account and buy car tax stamps with it, car tax is always one that gets us when we weren't counting on it so at least we'll have a little put by and can put the rest of the money to it.

As for holidays we tend to book one at least 6 months ahead, it's often just as cheap as a last minute but gives us time to prepare for it and to save for it. I put aside some money from my own account for spending money and also for christmas.

All this is fine in theory but in practice I end up taking some of the savings back when i'm short at the end of the month and need a haircut ?

We have one joint account but it is a "one" type account so we have different pots so to speak where we can put savings away from the main account if we have any

I have a spreadsheet with all of our monthly outgoings on it and I also allow for weekly spending e.g. we have £50 a week each 'spare' money but this soon goes!

We save £100 a month for both cars which sounds like a lot but this then covers tax, insurance, mot, service and any extras like last year one car had a new exhaust and the other car had two new tyres!

We normally budget around £1000 for Christmas and then if we can afford a holiday after that we do but if not we just do stuff in this country but we have been lucky enough that H has got a bonus the last couple of years that has paid for our holidays.

Maybe you need to set up a standing order for your 'savings' and either have separate accounts for treats/holidays and one for rainy days to keep them apart? We actually have three one for the cars, one for treats/holidays and one for emergencies.

HTH