How to fall in love with saving money

Ken68

Yes indeed I echo setting values, for example, is alcohol allowed (expensive) or tea and coffee only (cheap) or just water (very money saving).
I've taken a middle choice, milky tea and it's the cheap powdered milk which contributes to my daily protein allowance, meaning less meat buying.
After nearly 10 years on MSE have only in the last year rattled to death the food and groceries board.
Compared to this savings board and the gas and electric, lots of 'choice', as in taste and different brands.

pearl123

A simple saying that has also stuck with me.
Save it you got it - spend it you've had it.

cathybird

I did like the Joe Dominguez idea (in "Your Money or Your Life") to not just track every penny of savings but also note on the same spreadsheet whether you felt the expenditure was worth it. I did this for a while and found some spending naturally went down over time, without my thinking about it further.

cathybird

At home nursing my "Virgin Mary" (non-alcoholic Bloody Mary). Nice drink in the winter and cheap too. And I don't miss my usual glass of red wine with my dinner. In the summer I like ginger beer. Not as cheap as water or indeed tea, but very nice.

I resisted the urge to buy something chocolatey earlier and was rewarded when a colleague handed round some choccy he had brought in. Free chocolate! You can't do better than that. :beer:

It might seem unrelated to a savings diary to bang on about what I eat and drink but food and books are my two big weaknesses and already, since starting the diary, I've spent much less of them than I usually would.

cathybird

Found £90 in a bank account I don't use much any more so it can go into the savings pot too. Have now got more than £500 so half way there for my November goal! :j:j:j

YoungBusinessman

I most definitely have got the bug!! Well on course for my savings targets this year. Playing about with figures and budgets having a wee try this month and next before flat out saving in 2014. Will be about £6k in savings by year end, hopefully over 10 by April. That would give me 8 months to save £10k plus so a total of over £20k in savings by end 2014 which effectively wipes out the debt!! Don't think much benefit to paying the debt off early(asides the obvious il then be mortgage excluded, debt free and won't need to pay money out for it each month. So maybe pay half off which will leave me a healty cushion should the unthinkable happen.

Feel like I'm finally getting somewhere and it's thanks to threads like this.

dreaming

cathybird wrote: »

Found £90 in a bank account I don't use much any more so it can go into the savings pot too. Have now got more than £500 so half way there for my November goal! :j:j:j

It is amazing that once you start to really look at your money and where it goes you often have these "finds" and can start to save without necessarily going for bread and water rations. I used to "treat" myself in the weekly shopping (magazine, nice cake, wine) but then started to highlight the items on the receipts which weren't really necessary and found that my treats often added up to about a quarter of the bill:eek:. Fast forward a few years and I have nice little nest egg, have paid off my mortgage, helped my family a little and now happily retired at 58. I still have my treats just not so often AND they are now budgeted for.

cathybird

Dreaming, thanks, that's so brilliant that you're retired at 58 - I am myself hoping that if I get my act together I can retire early. At the very least if that seems impossible I'd like to go part-time. If I had more time I'd make much more of my own food anyway (I love sourdough bread, for instance, but don't have the time to make it, or feel I don't, anyway).

I am sure there is plenty more room to cut down in my current food expenditure and I'll do so over time.

cathybird

YoungBusinessman, good to hear you too have caught the bug I want to save up about £1000 a month on average so let's cheer each other on :T:T:beer:

tara747

Hurrah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've just found some money that I lost a few months back (a few hundred quid, so not insignificant!). I knew that it was in the house somewhere, but I couldn't find it. I'm delighted

I'll be adding it to my end of November savings total. :beer:

Well done cathybird, finding that account with £90 in must have been such a wonderful surprise.