CAP Money Course

 

CAP stands for Christians against poverty.

The three CAP Money Course principles are

  1. How to build and live on a budget – the cornerstone of managing your money well
  2. The CAP Money course system – dividing your money into a three account system simplifying the way you keep track of your finances
  3. How to live week to week using cash instead of cards.

 

Week 1

You are asked to think about how you feel about money. I have always felt a bit guilty. I do have a budget and on the introductory quiz I do come out on the saving side, but I have never managed to save so when a crisis comes or a big item comes up like a giant car bill or a dental crisis I max out on cards. I would like to feel excited that it is all smoothly in hand.

The course encourages you to set financial goals, so, for example, I would like to save for a new second hand car before mine, which has 130,000 miles on the clock packs up.

You can build your budget on the CAP Money Course website www.capmoneycourse.org

which does all the calculations for you even fancier than an excel spread sheet. I especially liked the way it broke down your expenditure into %. So I spend currently

37% home costs

14% living costs (I pack my own lunches, buy from the reduced counter & support son 2)

20% travel (car and commuting to London)

6% pets (pesky horse)

6% Leisure (basically go round friends’ houses and attend lots of free courses!)

10% Future needs (presents, car and HOLIDAYS. We know I am a travel obsessive)

7% debt

What it did which was so enlightening was to put the outgoings in to the 3 separate accounts – regular outgoings, cash and savings accounts so it spells out for you how much you should be saving every month to meet the cost of potential expenditure, like for example, the bulk of my horse feed costs are in the winter. It also rather meanly made me think about how I could get more from my assets and why didn’t I constantly change energy and insurance providers to get the best deals? I have never done that.

Week 2

I didn’t really learn that much new this week. A lot was reviewing last week, but we did move on to discuss that once you had worked on making your budget balance you needed to make sure that the stuff you agreed to put in your cash account was paid for in cash. They reckon that people will spend 12% less if they actually use physical cash to pay for things.

You are also expected to run 3, possibly 4 accounts (if you are a student or self-employed) so our homework was to set them up AND to practice for a week using cash only.

Week 3

What I found difficult about the course was the idea that you would change everything in 3 weeks. I may get round to changing my energy providers, but this will take a lot of working up to. Likewise setting up all these bank accounts! I didn’t practice using cash. In the final week we talked about the value and importance of saving for what you want and there was a lot of signposting to what to do next if you were unable to deal with your level of debt.

I thought the course was very well facilitated and it has given me things to work on over the next few months. My goal is that by the end of this period I will have committed to a savings account.

If you know anyone who is in financial trouble point them to the CAP website.