How to fall in love with saving money

WantToBeSE

You both put me to shame with your spreadsheets! I dont even know how to use Excel!

I just have a folder! I list my DDs and SOs at the front, then every week i list my income/outgoings, my meal plan, any savings i can transfer into my ISA, and other stuff like meal ideas, coupons etc.

cathybird

WantToBeSE, if you've got a folder, you're way ahead of me :rotfl:

Eco_Miser

cathybird wrote: »

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).

Telephone varies with calls made. Council, water and TV Licence vary to make the annual total be the right amount. The power company keeps 'reviewing' my account and changing the amount. Credit card (pay in full every month) varies with what I've bought on it. All these amounts are pre-notified, but they do vary. So I check that what I think is going out is what has gone out.

cathybird wrote: »

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.

OpenOffice Calc - which is free, as in speech, and as in beer , and now discontinued, but it has successors, see the link.

cathybird wrote: »

Not that fantastic with mathematical formula though.:)

Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division are all you
really need. I think the only mathematical formula I use is Simple Interest: I = P*r*t (remembering that r, the interest rate, should be a decimal fraction, so 0.03 for 3%; and t, the time duration, is in years, so divide days by 365 (or 365.25 or 366 ). No need for compound interest calculations, just do simple interest each month, or whenever your balance (P) changes.
I do use some complicated formulae looking for looking up values in one place for use elsewhere. I just followed the wizard and the help screens to set them up though.

cathybird

well, now way over budget but at least it's instructive ... if this is me trying to restrict what I spend, what on earth was I spending when I wasn't paying any attention :eek::eek::eek:

Also, £10 of the latest spend was for two extension leads, one of which is to operate the breadmaker, so that at least will pay for itself.

Also, £3.50 was for Mr Muscle sink unblocker for the kitchen sink ... not that it worked, but I did manage to get the sink unblocked after that by thumping the waste disposal pipe a few times, so that saved me the fee for the plumber. Yay!!!! :j:j:j

At least I'm learning a bit about what I spend, why I spend and how I should go about saving, I guess.

cathybird

Eco_Miser wrote: »

OpenOffice Calc - which is free, as in speech, and as in beer , and now discontinued, but it has successors, see the link.

Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division are all you
really need. I think the only mathematical formula I use is Simple Interest: I = P*r*t (remembering that r, the interest rate, should be a decimal fraction, so 0.03 for 3%; and t, the time duration, is in years, so divide days by 365 (or 365.25 or 366 ). No need for compound interest calculations, just do simple interest each month, or whenever your balance (P) changes.
I do use some complicated formulae looking for looking up values in one place for use elsewhere. I just followed the wizard and the help screens to set them up though.

Thanks Eco Miser. In fact I do have Excel on the laptop, so may as well use it, I guess. I'll definitely put setting up a spreadsheet on the list of things to do in the next week or so ... I can see how it helps the whole process of saving be more transparent and honest, and keeps it at the forefront of the brain. Which is something I need to do.

cathybird

Eco_Miser wrote: »

OpenOffice Calc - which is free, as in speech, and as in beer , and now discontinued, but it has successors, see the link.

Didn't know OpenOffice had been discontinued! That's a shame. I have come across it before. Not sure if I ever used it for anything ... I'll check out the link to see what else is there.

Eco_Miser

cathybird wrote: »

well, now way over budget but at least it's instructive ... if this is me trying to restrict what I spend, what on earth was I spending when I wasn't paying any attention :eek::eek::eek:

At least I'm learning a bit about what I spend, why I spend and how I should go about saving, I guess.

Sounds like your budget was based on hope raher than experience. That's not going to work - either you'll just go over it anyway (as has happenned) or you'll cut down so hard you'll stop enjoying life, and give up.

I don't budget as such, just have guide figures based on previous spending, so I know how much I should be carrying as cash/have instantly available by card. At the moment, I'm spending over-budger, because my usual breakfast cereal is on offer at nearly half price, so I've been buying three cartons every trip to the supermarket, and now have a stack from floor to ceiling in the spare bedroom. Should last me until the next offer comes along.

cathybird wrote: »

Thanks Eco Miser. In fact I do have Excel on the laptop, so may as well use it, I guess. I'll definitely put setting up a spreadsheet on the list of things to do in the next week or so ... I can see how it helps the whole process of saving be more transparent and honest, and keeps it at the forefront of the brain. Which is something I need to do.

Since you've got Excel, you may as well use it.
A couple of years ago a financial adviser asked what my spending was in various catagories (to determine how much income I needed), and I had only the vaguest idea. So I set up yet another spreadsheet, and now know to the penny what I'm spending, and what I'm spending it on. Before I only knew what was leaving the bank account.

cathybird wrote:

Didn't know OpenOffice had been discontinued!

I didn't know OpenOffice had been discontinued either, until I looked it up for you, though I did know of the LibreOffice fork.

jamesd

Open Office hasn't been discontinued, just renamed to Apache Open Office by a vote of developers in 2012. All rights to trademark and source code were transferred to Apache in June 2011 and Apache Open Office 3.4 was released in May 2012.

Looks as though some of the forks are sitting on the OpenOffice.org page at Wikipedia to try to get themselves promoted instead of just having the old name go to the new one, which is what happens when you go to the real openoffice.org site.

gallygirl

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.

:T Mucho admiration :T. I've around the same number (plus a few others but they're basically just lists so haven't counted them) but I have btl properties to run.

On a day to day basis I often don't know what is in my main bank account. I do however know what is due to be in there on the day before payday which is what matters to me. £16.66 this month .

I have a page with DD's and regular savings listed and link these through to the main banking sheet so they're all shown as coming out till the end of the tax year. I have wages coming in and a set amount of spends each week. I add work expenses when due. Also use it as a little financial diary to remind me to cancel things etc.

I regularly update with transactions and embolden those appearing on online banking. Balance gets rounded down to nearest pound and the pennies 'Tilly Tidied' over to another account that I make mortgage overpayments from.

I work in a finance related co and we use spreadsheets a lot for work. It amazes me how often people will check their balances on line then work out what's still to come out on paper and when I suggest a budgeting sheet they think I'm crazy . So I keep quiet about my mortgage overpayment workbooks with daily interest calculations (had to get rid of the hourly ones as takes ages to save as it is ), projected pay-off date on each mortgage, date savings > mortgage, combined pay-off date etc. Plus my little excel house where I colour in a brick with every 1k paid off :rotfl:.

I don't however breakdown my weekly budget into food, treats etc but all clothes, lunches out etc come from a separate budget and are monitored, as is diesel (£1764.08 since April :eek:).

cathybird

Eco_Miser wrote: »

Sounds like your budget was based on hope raher than experience. That's not going to work - either you'll just go over it anyway (as has happenned) or you'll cut down so hard you'll stop enjoying life, and give up.

The budget was really based on the fact that if I only allow myself £30 per week for food I should be able to clear £1,000 for savings from my monthly pay packet. I like the idea of saving £1,000 a month and I still reckon it's achievable but there are probably other ways I can also go about it.

At the moment, I'm spending over-budger, because my usual breakfast cereal is on offer at nearly half price, so I've been buying three cartons every trip to the supermarket, and now have a stack from floor to ceiling in the spare bedroom. Should last me until the next offer comes along.

I have a spare bedroom and really should be putting it to use for this very purpose

A couple of years ago a financial adviser asked what my spending was in various catagories (to determine how much income I needed), and I had only the vaguest idea.

Very curious about this, Eco Miser, as I have been thinking I should go and see a financial adviser myself, to plan for retirement basically. Any advice or pointers about how to go about finding one or how you found the experience of seeing one? ...