How to fall in love with saving money

WantToBeSE

Great idea about postponing stuff that you are tempted to buy/eat Cathy. I think i'll try that.
I have a few CDs that I want to buy from Amazon, but I am going to ask my Mum to buy them for me for my Birthday (not until October). Until then, I have found one of the albums on YT. It plays the whole album too. I fell asleep to it playing last night, its very relaxing


I am in total agreement with you about making targets realistic. I have had to spend quite a bit in the past month or so, what with cats visits to the vets, insurances due, car stuff etc.
I started to lose motivation for saving because I could see that I wasn't going to meet my goal. So I think I am just going to aim to save the very basic amount that I KNOW I can save every month- £300. In reality, i'll probably be able to save more then this every month, but if I aim for £300, then I wont get disheartened or distracted if I see I cant.

JoJoC

That's some really interesting stuff there cathy- I had never thought about employing delay tactics to avoid spending. I tend to err on the side of buying it now to save me the hassle of going back for it another time, but maybe it's worthwhile doing the opposeite- if I REALLY need it then I'll make the effort to go back for it.

You're so right about unrealistic goals! I've written a list of events that are happening in each month (Ie birthdays, days out etc) and set my saving goal accordingly. This morning to we have no birthdays so savings goal is higher, but next month we have four so it's lower. I hope that helps me to keep my motivation!

cathybird

Hi JoJoC and WantToBeSE! It is amazing how disheartening small setbacks can be. I think the problem is I want to save as much as I can so I think I will motivate myself by setting the bar high but in reality the opposite happens - I can't reach the bar and then the excitement about saving, and the momentum, just ebb away.

The minimum I can save each month is realistically about £600 at the mo so that's what I will aim for as well. I'm sure I did manage that in June because it comes out via direct debits but I'm pretty sure that was all I managed.

I'm finding the delay tactics are working pretty well for me so far but only been trying them for two days

cathybird

I did have another thought about that William Hill statistic, which is that a gambler is obviously much more likely than a non-gambler to take out a bet with a bookie that they can lose weight, and that might skew the statistic - perhaps habitual gamblers tend to have poor impulse control and/or judgement generally, which would explain the high rate of failure? Just a thought. Still a scary statistic. Maybe we all overestimate how much self-control we really have. Another thing the book points out is that it's easy to assume we will avoid temptation when everything is calm and temptation is far away, but not so easy in the heat of the moment when it's right in front of us (which is why browsing on Amazon etc should be avoided). You'd think this would be obvious, but I don't always act as if that's the case. I do get emails about sales at John Lewis and various other places I've shopped at in the past and should basically unsubscribe from all of them. They're an invitation to look and although I don't generally look and just delete them, it would be better not to see them in the first place.

cathybird

Morning all! I managed a no-spend day yesterday, the first one in a while. Also I've managed to organise the food for lunch at work all this week - again not something I've sorted out in a while.

I tried to download Toshl finance onto my phone to keep better track of what I spend, but my phone has refused to accept any downloads for quite a while. I think I may have to reset it, which is a nuisance. I'd use the You Need A Budget app but unfortunately it's a Windows phone.

I hope everyone is having a moneysaving day.

organic_wanabe

Well done on your NSD and also on organising your lunches for this week. One of the papers that I read today (we get both The Mail and The Guardian - something I could cut back on but I like the two very different viewpoints) had a piece on 'Decline of the Packed Lunch'. It was something along the lines of 'packed lunches decline as the economy picks up'.

We have saved money this month. You very kindly gave me details of Hotel Castex in Paris, which we booked. However, we cancelled due to the French Air & Train strikes. Unusually for me, I had opted for the more expensive accommodation rate (due to the fact that a relative is in poor health) which allowed cancellation and so that saved quite a bit. The flights were free anyway, so we lost nothing there. Instead we opted for 3 nights in the Couples Retreat at Portavadie Marina on Loch Fyne in Argyll. It was stunning with great weather and was cheaper. On the way up to Loch Fyne, we stopped for our packed picnic lunch at the side of Loch Lomond. However, I do admit to having lunch at The Creggan's Inn at Strachur on our return trip but this was paid for by my son as a birthday treat for my husband. Interestingly, we had stayed at The Creggan's 30 years ago (1984 - I remember it well because, as we were travelling up, Scotland's Rugby team won The Grand Slam and that doesn't happen very often!).

Eco_Miser

cathybird wrote: »

Oh well that's interesting, Eco Miser So it's not just iron-clad self-control per se? ... Although that is clearly part of it I also get the impression that with spending you are someone who doesn't particularly put yourself in temptation's way either.

I replied to this shortly after you posted it, but it's gone missing. Must have clicked the wrong button.

Anyway, try again:
I do actually wander round shops fairly often, but I don't find much I need, or even want - although I do stay out of The Works and similar places. When I do see something I think is a good idea and actually buy it, it's only a pound or two, so not too bad if never actually gets used.

On savings targets: I've never had one. Sometimes I've been paying into a Regular Saver account, which sort of sets a minimum, but it could be paid from savings, so only sort of.

Quite simply (in theory) everything that is not spent is saved.
Therefore, spend nothing and you will automatically save everything;
spend everything and you will save nothing.
More realistically, minimise your spending, and you will maximise your saving.

How do you minimise spending? I just don't spend on anything I don't need (I always need an ice-cream after a long walk:)) otherwise I presume you've read this already.

Hm, that turned out longer and more preachy than I intended.

JoJoC

I just wrote a long post and it disappeared

Eco Miser, it might have been a bit preachy but you talk a lot of sense and I think sometimes people need to hear the obvious to really think about it.

Organic Wannabe, your trip sounds fab. I'm only about an hour away from loch lomond but still love to take day trips up there.

Cathy, well done on getting your lunch ready for the week- what are you having? Did you get your phone fixed?

cathybird

hi Organic Wanabe! Nice to hear from you Loch Fyne is sooooooo beautiful - I love Scotland altogether. The scenery in Norway and Scotland is not dissimilar, in fact - Scotland has the same epic feel to it.

Eco Miser, that's interesting that you wander round shops but don't buy stuff. I find with me it depends on the sort of shop - if it's a food shop, or a bookshop, I'm always tempted. Other shops do nothing for me and in fact I dislike a good many and find them claustrophobic.

I hadn't actually read the thread you posted the link to and it was very interesting, many thanks. The "sleep on it" principle is obviously similar to telling yourself you can have something, but will leave it till later - the idea being that with the passing of time the urge will pass.

I'm really rather worried that your post and JoJoC's posts both disappeared - I wonder why? That seems very odd

JoJoC, I have managed to take in lunch all this week - yay! I bought a packet of wholemeal wraps from Tesco and filling them with different fillings - today was some cheap salmon offcut bits with a little cream cheese and red onion and quite a lot of rocket. There were some free choccy cake things handed out at work, too, so I snaffled one of those and it made a nice free treat. I haven't fixed my phone or my laptop, but my laptop seems to be working again - whether it will last I don't know. I can't reset the phone to enable it to download apps till I work out how to back the contacts etc on it up, and I haven't done that yet!!

JoJoC

Excellent! I love a free treat!!

In my work, it seems to be that on a Friday, everyone has a Friday treat for lunch. Last week it was Subway, the week before it was pizza. I joined in a fortnight ago as it was payday and thought id treat myself but it's becoming ever difficult to opt out of it every week!

I'm finding that making my lunch on a Thursday night helps because once I've made it, I don't want it to go to waste. Why does everyone have a spendthrift 'treat' mentality when I'm trying very hard to save?

It's not a real moan, just an observation on the 'pack spending' mentality that's going ok round about me.

Your Lunches sound lovely Cathy