What's your best saving tip?

shebrett

My OH and I are saving for a house. We're also both lowly workers in the NHS and so our jobs aren't overly secure at the moment but I am hoping we will both make it through all the job cuts. I'm lucky enough to have two jobs and so we have been able to save a regular chunk of money each month and we now seem to have that down to a habit.

In order to save this money I found that by looking at it in the same way as rent I therefore treat it as a non-negotiable amount and that way I don't miss the money and am able to save without being tempted to use it during the month.

The thing is, I know I could save more but I don't want to increase my saving amount as things crop up and I want to have my emergency money separate from the house savings as that way I keep well away from the house savings. I've been keeping a "bills" account for the big bills that crop up like MOT or TV licence but I still spend whatever is left over.

What are your savings tips? What small things do you do or tell yourself in order to save that little bit more each month? Anything, even if it seems weird or obvious. Anything to get me past this last little hurdle to become a proper saver!

Loughton_Monkey

shebrett wrote: »

What are your savings tips? What small things do you do or tell yourself in order to save that little bit more each month? Anything, even if it seems weird or obvious. Anything to get me past this last little hurdle to become a proper saver!

To me, the most important thing is to ensure that you save. And anything much less than 15% to 20% of your income is really not enough to continue with a good lifestyle after retirement (including savings made on your behalf, like company pension scheme contributions).

I have actually achieved this (and more) and I owe this to my budgeting system. At the start of any year, I can tell you what my total expenditure will be. I track it every month, and compare differences. The amounts in each expense heading are then adjusted to cater for over/under-spends, but the total remains inflexible (to me). So if I spend too much on petrol etc., then I increase that budget, but decrease something else.

This has never let me down, since it 'forces' me to live within my means (i.e. significantly less than is coming in). This approach, as a by-product, tells you how much is being saved each month/year. The most enjoyable part is watching this grow (according to plan, hopefully) and deciding where best to put it all - as between property, pensions, tax-free savings, spare cash - or safe v. risky.

opinions4u

1. Save before you spend (you're already doing this).

2. Save anything that's extra (overtime, bonus, gift).

3. Don't buy anything on impulse. Use the 48 hour rule - if you still want it 2 days later then consider buying it. If not, save half the money you would have spent on it.

4. Boots Advantage. Nectar. Tesco Clubcard. TopCashback. Maximise every loyalty scheme there is. Make this your treats money!

5. Collect freebies as identified by sites like HotUkDeals.

6. Only supermarket shop after eating. Make a list and stick to it. Don't take kids with you. Make sure you take all the vouchers with you and use them for stuff you would have bought anyway.

7. If you save money on a drive to work (e.g. day off etc) put that saving in to the account (e.g. 15p a mile x 10 mile journey = £1.50).

8. Take up surveys at places like www.valuedopinions.co.uk and when they reward you switch the cash in to an account.

9. Drive at 55mph on the motorway - it'll cut fuel consumption by a third.

10. Have a cheap meal once a week - e.g. beans on toast or fish fingers and oven chips - and stick £3 in to the savings account when you've done it.

11. Have an early night, turn the heat down, enjoy each others' company and save the £2 a night in winter heating bills that sharing body heat can save . Alternatively, turn the heat down and stick a jumper on and save the £2 a night.

12. Turn telly off (not leave on standby). Turn off all lights. Turn off dripping taps.


Review anything you have a contract for:

- Sky. Scrap it and save £50 a month instead. You've got loads of DVDs you never watch and there's always Freeview.
- Mobile phone. Go SIM only when you next review and never go over your minutes, texts or internet etc. Save whatever the reduction is e.g. £20 a month (change company and get a TopCashback commission e.g. Vodafone £100+).
- Review anything and everything at price comparison sites but then buy via Topcashback (e.g. home insurance, car insurance, gas/leccy etc).

Plan your savings:

- known events. Put enough money aside to cover each week/month to cover annual events like car insurance/tax/service/MOY, home insurance, Xmas, birthdays, holidays etc. Work out the annual cost divide by 10 if you pay monthly or 40 if you pay weekly.
- unknown events that are inevitable sooner or later. Assume a TV, washing machine, fridge or dishwasher will die each year. Assume you will have one puncture plus £250 of "unexpected" repairs per car each year. Same formula as above.
- targeted events. Typcially medium term. Such as your home deposit, the next car, the cruise or trip to Australia, the new bedroom furniture you want.
- rainy day. These are the unknown targeted events. Opportunities come along in life to "holiday with friends" or "buy that bargain plasma telly". You don't plan for them, but rainy day money can help pay for them when they happen. Don't dip in to it for frivolous spending though.
- longer term. Kids education, retirement etc. Start early. Life will hopefully last a long time. I had my biggest disposable income when I was 20 years old. Don't waste it!

(and inspired by a post below, remember to live a little to!)

mostlycheerful

I save £20/£30 a week by mostly only buying the reduced food in the supermarkets. So yearly that’s £1,000/£1,500 and over ten years it’s 10k or 15k! Wow.

Last week Tesco had whole ready roasted chickens for £1.05 each. Just a quid! Amazing. I asked them why and they said it was cos of the Pope’s visit! Oh yeah? Workers with a sense of humour. Great, thank you Pope! I went mad and got 8 (eight!). Then as I left the shop I felt just so incredibly rich and fortunate and lucky that I gave one to the poor sad care in the community beggar woman sitting on the pavement and her face lit up. And I don’t care whether she ate it herself or just sold it to get money to buy booze or drugs, good luck to her. Of course if she had to hand it over to a brutal minder and got nothing in return except a slap, well, that wouldn’t be very nice, would it, but there’s nothing I can do about that if that’s the case so I’m not going to worry about all the world’s ills. Then I gave two more to my poor friends as, come on, I still had five left all for me! Five! That was a lot of chicken. But I like roast chicken so it all went down and I’m happy to say that I didn’t end up wasting any of it. And, yes, I am starting to get a bit fat what with all these bargains all the time. It’s so cheap that I sometimes tend to buy double what I actually should. In fact maybe that’s part of their game and I end up spending more than I would if I just bought normal stuff. Hmm, sneaky.

I regularly get bread for 9p or 25p, fish that’s normally £2 or £3 for just 70p or 30p. Ready meals that are normally £3.49/£2.20 etc for 70p and sometimes even just 35p. All sorts. £2 packets of meat for 35p, big collections of delicatessen meat for 70p. £1 sauce for 20p. £3 pizzas for 49p. Quiche that’s normally £1.99 or whatever it is for just 39p. I don’t normally eat much red meat cos it’s not very healthy but a couple of weeks ago there were two whacking great big £6.50 lamb shoulders for £2.29 each so I thought, well, you don’t often poison yourself with this stuff so occasionally the nutrients are probably more good for you than the toxic stuff – then what clinched it is I remembered how nice it tastes (apologies to any vegetarians reading this). A huge amount of fat came out of it so I’m not sure I’ll bother with that again. Oh yeah, and the sausages at 10p and 20p, nah, not for me, the amount of fat that came out of them last time was stupendous, and the quality of the meat, er, no, I don’t think so. So there are some limits to bargain hunting, there is some stuff that I mostly won’t have.

Peak time for bargains in a lot of the big supermarkets is about 6pm and 4pm on Sundays and there’s also a fair bit of stuff at 8.30pm and other times. They’re fairly regular but also they vary it a bit so sometimes you have to wait around a bit and sometimes it’s early so it’s all gone by the time you get there. But it’s very doable, I nearly always get loads of good stuff dirt cheap, it’s only occasionally a waste of time.

And years ago I switched to the cheap bog roll, 12 rolls for £1.50. When I was an ignorant mug I used to pay that much just for 2 rolls in the local corner shops, cor, what a waste. Hundreds of pounds literally going down the drain, just on that. Of course in India they just use their hand and I was shocked to find a friend who’d done a lot of travelling in India doing that in London a few years ago, but, er, no, there are some limits. And don’t use newspaper as the ink is toxic on your skin and it often blocks the bog - and clearing it is the most awful job which I twice had to do in 1981 when I lived in a house with ignorant plebs.

If you want to take this further then there’s also binning and freeganning which I’ve done a bit of but I’m not really that much of a radical to climb over gates to get at the bins which some keen people do. But most of the big supermarkets chuck out loads of stock every day, as has been repeatedly reported in media for years, so if you want to go the whole hog then there’s a lot of free stuff available everywhere all the time. And there are people publicising this on the net and sometimes having public dinners all made from found stuff. There’s a bit of a culture about this if you want to look into it. Happy hunting.

IvanOpinion

Saving is important but it is not the end all, there has to be a good balance .. there is no sense in saving loads of money for your future if the stress kills you in the meantime.

When we first got married we struggled and it was made worse because I was intent on paying my mortgage off early ... we existsed, we did not live. A sequence of events happened and I wised up, remortgaged and we splashed out ... ultimately we worked out a far better life balance .. holidays, going out, updating the house etc.

Always look to strike a balance between what you save for the future and how much enjoy life today ... the latter is probably slightly more important ... as my grandmother used to say, there are no pockets in shrouds.

Primrose

Firstly, work out a budget which covers all the ESSENTIALS and keep that amount every month in your current account. Have a separate EMERGENCY instant savings account into which every month you put an agreed sum and don't draw on it unless it really is an emergency. This will hopefully force you to live within your agreed budget. Have a small fund for TREATS, and put the rest of your monthly pay into your longer term savings account as soon as you're paid.

Use loyalty accounts such as Nectar, Waitrose Partnership and use the benefits to reduce your shopping bills. Don't be tempted to use Discount Vouchers on items you wouldn't normally buy, thinking you're getting a bargain.

Add up the cost of your daily expenditures (bought lunches instead of taking a packed lunch to work, a daily newspaper (could you read it online?) and if you can save money here, put your savings into an "Opportunity Pot" which will mount up gradually.

Cook from scratch and batch cook to save fuel, especially when basic foods are on special offers. Save fuel by wearing an extra layer of clothing indoors.

Jonbvn

Simple rules we use:

1. Pay off debts before saving (except mortgage).
2. Always pay-off credit cards (unless 0%).
3. Get into the habit of saving regularly (monthly).
4. Don't be loyal to any retailer or bank.
5. Monitor savings a/c's regularly and switch to best payers.
6. After accumulating sufficient savings, invest in stocks and shares.

jamesd

shebrett wrote: »

I still spend whatever is left over.

Attitude is the most important thing. It's tough to change that one but it's necessary if you want to be really good at saving. Since it is tough, you might consider paying yourself an allowance or pocket money each month and putting that into a dedicated account with small overdraft facility to protect you from charges, not to ever deliberately use. Then you can freely spend the allowance part of your income without guilt or stress.

Include in the allowance the day to day spending items where you can change how you do things. Lunch at work, say, where you could pack lunch instead of buying from a restaurant. Then if you were to switch to packing lunch you'd get more money to spend on other things, so it's not pure sacrifice but a chance to spend money in more enjoyable ways.

RobertR

Not sure if this is any help, but if you have the time and have more than one supermarket within easy distance, dont confine your weekly supermarket shop to just one place, as each supermarket will have different items on special offer etc.

My weekly shopping trick is to make a list every week of my regular buys plus any extras which are needed for just that week (I try to spread the purchase of "big" items costing around £3.50 or more. I then set a weekly budget which in my case is £50 for the whole week, and see by how much I can come in under budget for that week.

I've managed to stick within £50 for around 6 years now, and some weeks can get it down to £40, thus saving me £10.

I see it as my weekly challenge, but you do need to have a fair amount of time on your hands.

Another thing I do is to buy a larger joint of meat for Sunday lunch which then does for 2 days sandwiches.

uberteeb

Transfer your pay to your savings as soon as you get it so you don't get tempted.

Use an account that penalises you interest for withdrawing so you don't.

oldfella

work out a budget and track monthly expenditure against it. Use budgeting software such as MS Money etc.