Pocket Money

Siggy75

I've been reading this forum and picked up some good tips, so thought I'd share something with you.

We (my wife and I) operate a pocket money system whereby we each have pocket money each week.

We have ditched buying stuff on credit card and Switch and only buy things with hard cash. The only time we use Switch is for petrol and health/medical items; everything else MUST come out of pocket money, if you haven't got the hard cash in your hand then you can't buy it.

At the start of the week (which is Friday of course!!) we take out £150 and do our grocery shopping. We aim to spend £50 and keep £50 each. If the shopping is more than £50 pounds then our pocket money is reduced accordingly. If we spend less than £50 then we get more pocket money. It's amazing how much you can reduce your shopping bill using this method.

Your pocket money can be used for ANYTHING. If you want a take-away, then it comes out of the pocket money etc, this way you aren't depriving yourself of little treats but it will affect other things you want.

We have a rule that what is bought in the shopping stays in the shopping (but not including things like CDs, clothes, magazines etc). This means that if I want to buy lunch at work then that's fine, but it will have to come out of my pocket money. If I take a packed lunch then that will come out of the main shopping, so in effect your partner pays half of it.

The overall effect of this system is that you are control your outgoings. In theory your outgoings (on average) should be the same each month. You still get your little luxuries but YOU have to prioritise the things you really want. We've found that we aren't depriving ourselves of anything, we've just cut out the wastage.

Our Debt in the last year and a half has fallen from about £35000 to £25000 and we should be Debt-Free (not including mortgage) by 2010. At the start we set oursleves a five year objective and based our budgets accordingly, including money for emergencies, which will be knocked off the debt if we don't use it. We could have set a smaller pocket money rate but 5 years was a realistic target for us.

I hope this might give someone a bit of help.

Siggy

tru

We have pocket money too, it's saved loads of rows :T

The rows are usually started by me, I'm a bit mean with money. Just a bit, mind :rotfl:

lil'H

Although single, I operate the same system or myself, adn it works just as well. I take out my money each monday and that covers groceries and everything else I may need. Have a budget within that which is aimed food amount, if i go over it's less cash spends for the week. My petrol goes through switch card every monday and is £25 anything over comes out of cash.

Monday works best for me as it's an extra incentive to save all week, so that I still have money left for the weekend. Since going down the cash route i've always stuck to budget, something i'd never managed before.


lil'H

**purpleprincess**

I love my pocket money system! I too have only been to budget accordingly and actually stick to it since using cold hard cash.

taplady

We do the same type of system too!
We only use cash, that way using internet banking we always know how much money we've got(or not:rolleyes: ) its amazing how you really think about what you're spending when you have to use cash!;)
We have pocket money too then its up to us what we spend it on and it also covers our clothes.
We do draw out a sepatare amount for groceries.

Siggy75

I used to be a switch addict, never really carried much money, so it never feels like you're spending anything. When you have hard cash in your pocket it makes you think twice about spending it, if you know you can't draw anymore out.

I've become a bit tight now!!

Siggy

Fitzy29

Often thought about doing this...gonna start the same system soon! Brill,