How to fall in love with saving money

JoJoC

Yeah, I suppose you're right. My online banking would just look messy then though!! Am I sounding like a freak? Lol I'll have a think about how I could make it work. Maybe transfer £21 p/w?

I just checked my online banking actually and thought I'd be able to spare a wee bit so transferred £30.25 into my savings account to bring it up to £700, giving me an overall total of £980.

Just need to find £420 by the end of the month to hit my target. woop!

cathybird

atush wrote: »

Ok Cathy it is the 15th, how have you soent 0 for food etc this month. Went to Tesco yesterday and dropped just over 100 quid lol (for 4 peeps and a dog currently, going down to 3 next week). that includes the weekly alcohol budget too

But not my weekly dip into M&S where i picked up the Valentines meal for 20 quid, which will actually make 2 meals as using the starter as another meal Used the chocs as my OH's Valentines gift, even more MSE.

ha ha, atush, you're quite right. Very sharp-eyed. I have kept the receipts but not noted the cost in my siggie. Haven't noted the book spend either, which hasn't been £0. I'll sort it out this arvo.

danielhermann

The best way to save is to transfer a pre-determined sum to another account as soon as you receive cash and do not touch it under any circumstances. You have to draw a line at spending else you are looking at a very bleak future. You need to give up something to gain something. There is always a trade-off. Either you live as a spendthrift today and be ill-prepared when you have to retire or give us a few pleasures in the present ( or reduce their frequency) so that you enjoy both the present and the future. Good luck to you!

atush

How much is the weekly alcohol budget, atush? My £7 bottle of wine went out the window this week, too poorly to drink, but did sneak a cheeky pear cider

I don't have a budget lol, but there are sometimes 5 drinking adults in the house lol. 6 bottles of cheapish plonk and a few beers every once in a while. But we don't tend to go out to pubs etc like other people do.

As for Jojo, yes you need to rethink your portions lol. We have made dinner for five out of the dine in for a tenner before, adding extra spuds or vegetables (mainly when they have a whole chicken in it and we choose a desert that can stretch like profiteroles or a pie or trifle).

cathybird

Signature duly updated. Doing quite well on the food compared to previous months - I have the last week of Feb off work so won't be buying much during that week, can just eat out of the storecupboard, pretty much. The books is a bit of a shocker - £41.54 of that went on presents, but not ones I was obligated to buy - I got copies of favourite books for various friends, just because I like the books and wanted to share. The other £32 I spent when I wandered into the work book sale and while I got about 15 books for that price it's still quite a lot of money, really.

Lomcevak

cathybird wrote: »

Signature duly updated. Doing quite well on the food compared to previous months - I have the last week of Feb off work so won't be buying much during that week, can just eat out of the storecupboard, pretty much.

We've been having an eat up the freezer month so haven't yet spent anything on groceries in Feb, will probably end soon though. But we're fairly frugal on groceries, January was £79.72 and 2013 was £1775.14 in total (i.e. £4.86 a day - under a fiver was our target), for five of us including two always-hungry teenagers. We eat very well though, lots of fruit and veg and pretty much everything is cooked from scratch. Only possible thanks to heavy use of RFQS to do it, I dread Waitrose and the Co-op getting their stock management under control - at the moment we get loads of good fruit and veg for 10p just because it has hit its best-before date

On the savings front, almost got my pension plans together at last - called the taxman who has adjusted my tax code, so once I get my last payslip for the year and know exactly where I stand I will kick this off. :cool:

cathybird

Yes, I love cooking from scratch, in fact can't recall the last time I bought a ready meal - it would have been years ago, not sure how many. Pizza from scratch is particularly good compared to the shop-bought version.

I eat pretty well, possibly not as frugally as I could but that's fine by me as long as I can meet my savings targets ... Food is one of life's great pleasures.

Good news about the pension, Lomcevak - complicated things, so good to get them organised. How is your running schedule going? ... I didn't run today, did a weights workout instead, only about 40 minutes but I was sweating heavily by the end so that's got to count for something.

cathybird

Re the saving £3 a day, I'm just sticking it in a jar for now. I always seem to have coins knocking round the floor and in the laundry basket so haven't run out of those as yet When I do I'll rethink.

Lomcevak

cathybird wrote: »

How is your running schedule going? ... I didn't run today, did a weights workout instead, only about 40 minutes but I was sweating heavily by the end so that's got to count for something.

First of the 20-milers today, so in to 'monster month' where the miles peak before tapering off towards the end of March. 17 miles last weekend was a bit grim in force 10 winds so nice to wake up to a dead calm this morning

Not quite keeping plan though, long hours at work for the last few weeks and that means no running after work - can't wait for longer evenings when it's not dark at 6pm. On the plus side I had my annual performance review and got 'significantly exceeded expectations' which is as good as it gets in my place, so that's a decent pay rise and more to put aside in savings :rotfl::T

atush

We've been having an eat up the freezer month so haven't yet spent anything on groceries in Feb, will probably end soon though.

how do you spend nothing? At the very least we need milk, eggs and sliced bread every week and every other night we need a fresh baguette. So i'd have to at least spend that even if I ate my way thru the freezer ( I have a few hidden gems there like a rack of Venison

Of course I could bake bread instead, but I am drawing the line at buying a cow and some chickens even if I do live in the country lol.