Started a spending diary and stopped spending!

BlondeHeadOn

I decided to finally bite the bullet and start a spending diary last Friday, to try and work out where all my money is going. I have kept this completely honestly for one week and have spent ..... precisely £0.00 !!!

Everytime I have thought of buying something I immediately think "Oh no, I can't put that in my spending diary!" and so have not bothered to buy it. So no spending at all - how useful is that!!! :T :T :T

This was supposed to help me identify where I am wasting my money, so I think I am going to have to add another column labelled something like "thought of buying, but SD stopped me" so I can see what I would have bought PSD ("Pre Spending Diary").

Has anyone else found that keeping a spending diary has this effect?

owessomuch

Well done Blonde Head On :T

I don't keep a diary as such but no end of times I've have things to buy in my hands, got to the checkout, put them down and walked out. It's like a switch tuns on in my head and I don't want to buy it any more. Spooky!

**purpleprincess**

:beer: woo hoo!!! I found that once I started keeping a spending diary my spending went down too!!!

yung

well done . don't have a diary myself as all my spending is strait forward

DontDoDebtKids

well done! they really do work, don't they?

MustStopSpending

I started my diary monday and haven't spent anything either! It is a great way of stopping spending, will carry on doing it forever and maybe one day I'll be a millionaire, or maybe not!!

Serialdieter

I've just started a spending diary today (not spent anything), hoping it works for me too.

Jx

Bambywamby

I have a spending diary too - found it very helpful as it made me consciously aware of every penny I spent. Normally I would forget about the odd packet of chewy and magazine here and the odd bottle of body moisteriser because I like the smell there.

the lower the expenditure numbers in my diary the better I feel, so I always ask myself before any purchase....Do I really need this?

It makes saving cash so much easier.

TNG

Hmmm - interesting. May have to start one to see what happens.

irchy_mum

I would add it up in my head but conveniently the numbers never seemed quite that bad.........
It was only when I started writing it all down that I realised exactly 'how' much I was spending.

frugglewump

Yep - exactly the same effect.
It's even easier not to spend when you post to the "what have you spend today dd/mm/yy" threads as you're admitting it to others.

Not that anyone is ever harsh to people who say woops on that thread, but the feeling is enough to me - imagine a small hoard of DFW posters on your shoulders going "tut tut" as your browse.