How to fall in love with saving money

cathybird

Yes, maybe the boredom issue is one I should give some thought to My mind wanders a lot too, and it's always entertaining. Also, I'm not saying boredom is the only reason I tend to spend. ... Eco Miser, I do like the sound of your spreadsheet - did you set it up yourself? ... By which I mean, is there a "source" spreadsheet somewhere I could adopt for my own purposes? ...

gallygirl

Eco_Miser wrote: »

I have a spreadsheet keeping track of my savings. One of the things it calculates is how much interest has been earned but not yet added to the account. So yes, it does update every time I look.

What I'm really looking for is a spreadsheet that changes WHILE I'm looking at it . I can stare at my mortgage spreadsheets for hours and the balance never drops no matter how hard I concentrate . Even when I try to catch it out by sneaking up on it, it still sits there with a great big minus sign :rotfl:.

cathybird

gallygirl wrote: »

What I'm really looking for is a spreadsheet that changes WHILE I'm looking at it . I can stare at my mortgage spreadsheets for hours and the balance never drops no matter how hard I concentrate . Even when I try to catch it out by sneaking up on it, it still sits there with a great big minus sign :rotfl:.

Funny that, my mortgage is exactly the same :rotfl:

cathybird

Well I have got confused about the money I have coming back in :mad: I thought there was a deposit due from a rental car company but as it turns out the amount that went out of my account in early October had nothing to do with that. The rental car company never charged the deposit to the account. So that's £250 less to put towards the savings in November. Doesn't mean I won't meet my target but it will be harder than I thought it was going to be. :mad::mad::mad:

On the plus side, though the scale of the potential savings are more minor, at least in the short term, I've hauled the breadmaker out of the cupboard. I've got one, I may as well use it. I have expensive taste in bread so it will save a few pennies.

WantToBeSE

ooh i used to love my breadmaker but i dont use it much now.
I made loads of stuff in it, bread rolls, tea/fruit bread, chocolate bread, nutty bread and of course normal bread too.
Google some bread maker recipes and i am sure you'll have a great time (if you are as sad and desperate for entertainment as i am!).

Shame to hear about the confusion with the money coming into your bank account.

Eco_Miser

cathybird wrote: »

Eco Miser, I do like the sound of your spreadsheet - did you set it up yourself? ... By which I mean, is there a "source" spreadsheet somewhere I could adopt for my own purposes? ...

I set it up myself, starting with a blank sheet about ten years ago, and implementing the manual records I'd been keeping since 1968. Since then it's grown to 49 sheets in two workbooks, plus a third for my spending diary.:o All my own work. With hindsight, a database might have been better - but harder to set up.

There's a page for each account holding my money, and for each organisation being paid by direct debit, pges predicting what will be spent, and when, what money needs to be moved to meet various conditions, and, on the front page, how much I'm worth.
Unfortunately, it all grew in an ad hoc manner, and is a real pig to change, other than adding new transactions as they occur.

gallygirl wrote: »

What I'm really looking for is a spreadsheet that changes WHILE I'm looking at it . I can stare at my mortgage spreadsheets for hours and the balance never drops no matter how hard I concentrate . Even when I try to catch it out by sneaking up on it, it still sits there with a great big minus sign :rotfl:.

Mine will change, sepecially at midnight. However the mortgage page stubbornly sticks with an unchanging -£1.

cathybird

WantToBeSE wrote: »

ooh i used to love my breadmaker but i dont use it much now.
I made loads of stuff in it, bread rolls, tea/fruit bread, chocolate bread, nutty bread and of course normal bread too.
Google some bread maker recipes and i am sure you'll have a great time (if you are as sad and desperate for entertainment as i am!).

Shame to hear about the confusion with the money coming into your bank account.

Yes, have succeeded in making a large wholemeal loaf tonight, so looking forward to having some of that for breakfast tomorrow Never tried making chocolate bread in it - should try it on brioche actually, I have a recipe.

Re the confusion, it's so my own fault! It's the sort of stoopid thing I do Doesn't make organising my finances any easier.

Well I've cooked all the food for lunches at work this week, for the second week in a row - this week pea and ham soup and cottage pie - and no shortage of food in the freezer, plenty for the rest of the month. Yay!

cathybird

Eco_Miser wrote: »

I set it up myself, starting with a blank sheet about ten years ago, and implementing the manual records I'd been keeping since 1968. Since then it's grown to 49 sheets in two workbooks, plus a third for my spending diary.:o All my own work. With hindsight, a database might have been better - but harder to set up.

There's a page for each account holding my money, and for each organisation being paid by direct debit, pges predicting what will be spent, and when, what money needs to be moved to meet various conditions, and, on the front page, how much I'm worth.
Unfortunately, it all grew in an ad hoc manner, and is a real pig to change, other than adding new transactions as they occur.


Mine will change, sepecially at midnight. However the mortgage page stubbornly sticks with an unchanging -£1.

Sounds incredibly useful and detailed but, as you say, hard to maintain I should set up something like that though - something a little simpler perhaps. I won't keep filling in anything too complicated. Amazing amount of work on your part though!

Eco_Miser

Thing is, when I set it up it was simple - one page with my bank account, and one page listing the direct debits to come out and salary to go in each month. Then I improved it, and added a bit here and a bit there, and the regular savers, and the higher-interest-paying current accounts came along, and each got a sheet to itself, and than I needed a totals sheet to add them all up, and then ...


Even now, filling it in isn't dificult, it's mainly recording the interest and dividents received:T, and confirming the DDs went out at the expected values. You should be doing that anyway.

cathybird

I can print off the direct debits coming out from my bank account tho and they have never varied, at least not that I have spotted (I do look at my account quite often, daily at the moment). But perhaps you're right, I should think about setting something up that gives me the whole thing at a glance. Is it Excel that you use? ... I'm not too bad on Excel. Not that fantastic with mathematical formula though.:)