How are you all saving for your deposits

What a great thread!

I do a lot of the above too, here's a braindump of my savings approach:

Spreadsheets - I have an almighty spreadsheet that acts as a spending diary, works out future projections, helps me ensure all is well with my accounts in conjuction with internet banking etc, i'd be lost without them! The spreadsheet also works out my challenge totals - more on that later. (Oh, and openoffice is free, so if you haven't got an oem copy of excel - don't buy a copy )

Saving pots - I used to have a tendency to overspend at Christmas and Birthdays etc. I've now arranged for standing orders to pay into
savings pots at the start of each month, the money that goes into these pots should be enough to cover purchases, if the money ain't in the pot then I have to revise my ideas on what to buy. The pots I have are: Emergencies, Birthdays, Christmas, Holiday, Clothes, Days out, Gadgets.

ISA + Regular saver - A whopping great chunk (~half) of my salary is spread between these each month. These are my 'no withdrawals til buying a house' accounts, once the money is in there, it doesn't come out again. I never see the money (well I see the balance in i.b., but not when I go to the hole in the wall when steaming drunk) and am totally used to being without it.

Payrises - I'm used to living a certain way and am happier than I used to be when buying loads of ridiculous gadgets, smoking, eating crap and getting drunk twice a week, I don't see any of it as a hardship - I'm actually feeling lots of benefits. Since I'm happy living my way, when I get a payrise, I won't increase my consumption to use up this extra money, I'll just increase my savings accordingly. If inflation makes it tough to stick to this I don't feel bad allowing myself a little extra to deal witht he increased cost of living, I try to strike a balance.

Quit smoking - I wasn't really a heavy smoker, I'd say maybe 60 a week. This is still ~£780 a year (Guessing a pack of twenty is about a fiver?). There was a time I smoked 20 a day, that's £1825 a year. If you got money to burn, do what you like, but that's about 2.3% of the asking price for my kind of house up in smoke every year...

Cut down on drinking - There was a time I spent ~£60 per night out, and on average I went out on the !!!! twice a week. That's ~£6240 a year. And I felt like absolute !!!! the next day too... Now I go out drinking once every three weeks on average, and somehow end up just as drunk on £30 (probably cos I'm so out of practice I've really become a lightweight!). So, I'm down to about £520 a year !!!!ed away at the pub. I'm lucky in that my mates are all for some reason or another cutting down their drinking (health, mortgage, work weekends, deposit saving etc) so it's not like I'm missing out, we've all cut down together and find cheaper stuff to do on the sober weekends.

Food - I prefer to prepare my own food as opposed to buying ready meals. It's a nice bonus that ingredients are cheaper than jars and packets etc. I'll sometimes cook up a load of stuff on a quiet sunday and freeze individual servings, soon enough I have a freezer full of healthy and cheap 'ready meals' that are ideal for midweek evening meals. It cuts down on washing up too - a big deal for me I take a packed lunch to work, and healthy snacks like apples, yoghurts and nuts. I don't drink tea or coffee, but get through a two litre bottle of tap water at my desk over the course of the day. Whenever I go food shopping I take a list of what I need, one or two extras get added in, but so long as I get all the 'needs' to prepare meals for the week/month then I'm happy. I'm lucky in that one of my mates works in the meat industry, so every couple of months I get a huge box of meats for a fiver, this makes a huge difference and I understand that it's not an option open to most. I also get cheap eggs from the landlady (she keeps chickens).

Commuting - I've binned off my car. This has made a huge difference. Buses cost a tiny smidge more than my old fuel costs (might actually be cheaper than buying fuel now as diesel has shot up from about 105p to 130p!) but I'm not paying £200 road tax, £600 insurance, and whatever the hell it was I shelled out for repairs and maintenance each year. If I lived closer to work I could even walk/cycle in and save the bus fare even.

Fitness - I used to be a member of a local gym. It's a really good gym, and the £30/month membership fee really isn't that bad. Still, £30 is £30... I go running, I ride my bike, I go scrambling up mountains, I use free weights at home, situps and pressups cost nothing, you get the idea. The one thing I really miss is swimming, but live on the coast and that won't be a problem in the summer. I'm thinking of getting a wetsuit so I can go out when the weather isn't great, but will have to see how much they cost first.

Clubcard - I'm a sucker for stuff like theme parks, clubcard to the rescue! Every pound I spend in tesco gets me a point, every point is worth 4p in tesco deals. Just by swiping my card every time I go shopping I end up with free entry to theme parks and stuff, this is for buying stuff I'd be buying anyway so it really is something for nothing (I know tesco mightn't be cheaper than other shops for some items, but factoring in travel costs and time etc it's the best onestopshop for me)

Cashback - Before I buy something online I check quidco to see if they offer cashback. I've also got myself a Barclaycard Platinum that pays 4% cashback on all purchases for the first few months, then 0.5% after the initial period (just be sure to pay your balance off in full each month). It might not be much, but free money is free money, gift horse and mouth comes to mind. It's also handy to whack work expenses on the card and pay it off when expenses are claimed at the end of the month, I get a little kickback from barclaycard for work stuff which is nice.

Challenges - There are some good challenges on this forum to help you meet your targets, I do the grocery challenge in os, the 4k a year in dfw, and am on the saving for a deposit thred too. I like reading peoples posts and picking up tips from these threads.

Motivation - I'm saving to buy a house, it's kinda a big deal to me. Saving a few quid here and there never really meant much to me in the past, but now it matters I have take an idea from the mortgage free in three mfw challenge and now have a very childish looking picture of a house on my desktop. The house is made of 800 bricks, and I reckon I'll be able to buy the kind of house I'm after for about 80k in a couple years time, so each brick in the picture represents £100. When my deposit savings increase by £100 a brick gets filled in on the image, as time goes by I see that more and more of the house is 'mine' (though I haven't bought one yet, when I do this will be my equity). I know it sounds ridiculous, but it spurs me on, each to their own but motivation really helps me beat my targets. I'm way way way ahead of my target savings for 2008 for instance, though the target I came up with was the absolute max possible when doing the math, somehow by being motivated I've managed to add more to it (eg what I expect to spend on food has dropped, the excess can be added to the savings etc).

OCD - I like round numbers. Interest paid is very rarely going to be a nice round number. Say I had £4000 in a savings account, and I received interest that month taking it up to £4023.16 or something (these are just pulled out of !!!! figures so don't ask about interest rates etc lol), then I'd transfer over £26.84 from my current account to round it off to a 'nice' number i.e. £4050. I can handle pennies and stuff in my current account, but the savings need to be rounded. I'm strange, so what, it works Nearest fiddy quid rounded up works nicely for me.

That's about it I think, if not, tough, I've gone on and on for long enough so have to cut it short here. I'd say the #1 most important thing is that while you're saving, you really have to 'BE HAPPY'. Don't ever set out on an unrealistic plan, life isn't worth living if you're just gonna be miserable all the time. Set yourself achieveable targets, not easily achievable, but achievable, when you surpass them you feel like you've done something worthwhile. If you find that your target was too tough, that you can't live without your cigarettes or you really have to have that gym subscription or whatever, then reduce the target accordingly and let yourself have your treats. Stay within your comfort level and cut down over time. Oh, and goiod luck


Edit: How could I possibly forget this one!?

Rent - I rent my place for way less than half what I'd spend on a mortgage, it really is amazingly cheap here I know of people paying twice what I pay in rent to rent a similar sized place, just that they live in the middle of town whereas I live 2 miles out surrounded by fields and trees and wildlife and stuff I have a stream in the garden and everything, it amazes me how beautiful this location is and how cheap it is to rent here (landlady has owned the property outright since the beginning of time so my cheap rent is still bonus money for next to nothing for her ) I can save a huge amount more than anyone else I know in rented - unless they're sharing, and I like living on my own so that's an option I'm not really looking at (you remember what I said about saving what you can but being happy right?)

MrDT wrote: »

Food - I prefer to prepare my own food as opposed to buying ready meals. It's a nice bonus that ingredients are cheaper than jars and packets etc.

Fitness - I go running, I ride my bike, I go scrambling up mountains, I use free weights at home, situps and pressups cost nothing, you get the idea. The one thing I really miss is swimming, but live on the coast and that won't be a problem in the summer. I'm thinking of getting a wetsuit so I can go out when the weather isn't great, but will have to see how much they cost first.


That's about it I think, if not, tough, I've gone on and on for long enough so have to cut it short here. I'd say the #1 most important thing is that while you're saving, you really have to 'BE HAPPY'. Don't ever set out on an unrealistic plan, life isn't worth living if you're just gonna be miserable all the time.

I haven't quoted all of your fantastic post, because it was too long.

I agree about food. We cook all our own, and would do so if ready meals cost the same! That way, we know what the three of us are eating, not loads of salt, fat, and nasty chemicals. It also means we eat more veg, whole grains, etc. Our meals are much, much nicer as a result!

OH has binned his gym membership, and he is horribly fit. He cycles about 100 miles a week (quite a lot with our son on a childseat, which is harder work with the extra weight!) He runs sometimes, and jogs up and down moutains for "fun".

I think the last point is important. Saving money isn't about making yourself miserable, far from it. I think it's about valuing the things you do choose to save money on, and enjoying things that don't cost. It's also about opting out, to some extent, of a consumer-driven society.

The things we've cut down on do not in any way spoil our lives. Far from it, I'm fitter and happier than I was!

That's a very good point - you save money by either cutting expenditure, or earning more, or ideally, a combination of both!

In our case, earnings are very unreliable. Both of us are self-employed (barristers) do we can't transfer a sum at a set point in the month. Between January and March this year I got paid almost nothing - a total of a couple of hundred pounds in 3 months. So money came back out from my savings account (and OH transferred some over to me).

Last week, though, I got paid nearly £8k, and most of it has gone straight into my online saver. When that has a decent amount in it, I transfer some into a higher rate savings account.

We eat in season stuff too.

For example, my parents have a big veg patch, and end up with gluts of this and that. My mother uses a lot of it, and I bag some. Last autumn, I nicked a shed-load of tomatos, and made a base sauce by roasting them with onions, garlic and herbs, and then reducing the mixture. I froze it, and used it for all sorts of cooking until we ran out.

Grow your own food. We have an allotment and grow a lot of our own fruit and veg. You can keep yourself in tomatoes, beans, jam and chutney for life by doing this. Word of warning - if growing courgettes and beans your friends and neighbours will start to avoid you as you get to the point where you are inundated and give carrier bags of the things away to everyone you meet, every time you meet them! Even if all you have is a kitchen windowsill you can still grow herbs, if it is sunny then tomatoes, peppers and chillies. Have a search on Amazon for a book that sounds good and then get off down to the library and order it in. NEVER waste money on any book untill you have borrowed it from the library and decided if you need a copy or not

We also go for long walks with the kids and forage a lot of food. We are lucky in that where we live we have both wood and shoreline nearby, but even in the depths of towns there are usually trees in parks loaded with fruit and nuts, you can always find nettles and blackberries when in season.... Again, get a book and learn what is edible - you can save a small fortune on food by foraging and the kids love 'wild' food. They don't grow up too fussy if they see how food grows and learn how to cook when quite young. Fussy kids will ruin a budget :):)