A big, fat money waster - been sent over from the Old Style Saving board HELP!

epskie

Hi Everyone,

I just posted this on Old Style Money Saving board and they directed me over here:

Hi Everybody,

I need to save £7k this year starting from today. We are a family of 5 - me, OH, DS1 (15) DS2 (10) and DD (6months)

OH works full time and does a second job plus plays in two bands. I am on maternity leave (returning Sept 2016) and I also work for Lionbridge but the work is sparse.

We are hideous money wasters. We go to Asda almost every day instead of shopping once a week; we throw food away regularly; we have piles of stuff in our house that we need rid of; we do cook from scratch a lot but always using costly ingredients; we are huge meat eaters; we buy wine and ice cream a lot more often than we should.

I know it seems glaringly obvious what we need to do but I'd love some top tips from some serious old school money savers so I can deeply adapt our habits and make my £7k by next year.

Any help would be most appreciated


Any advice would be most appreciated.

Bobarella

Hi Epskie
Welcome to the board. Just wondered if you mean you need to physically amass £7k in a year, or that you have a deficit of £7k per year in your budget?
I think most people here will recommend you fill in a statement of affairs (SOA for short) Im not sure where the online form is though perhaps another poster can help with that?

As you rightly say you know where some of your shortcomings are. Which is helpful because its fixable once you know where you are going wrong. A useful exercise is to track every penny you spend over a specific time period like 1 month to begin with. You can use a software package or just a notebook kept on you at al times .
This will help you analyse where you are going astray.

Sounds an interesting challenge. Good luck!

Bob

epskie

Thank you Bob! That's great! Do I need a form or can I just put my incomings and outgoings in a post?

I need to amass £7k :-/

duchy

I'd start with keeping a spending diary each for a week - It's often quite startling how much disappears that way.

Aldi and Lidl seem like a painless way to cut the shopping bill but also meal planning. There's no need to shop every day......are you maybe going to ASDA daily as much to get out of the house as anything else ? Now the weather is nicer a trip to the park would get you out - maybe with a picnic lunch (from home NOT the park cafe ) feeding the ducks, even Mum and toddler groups or going swimming etc would probably cost less (and be more fun ) than daily trips to ASDA. If you meal plan you can get everything in one visit with maybe top ups of milk and fruit from local shops in between.

When you've made a saving - put that money into a seperate account so it doesn't just get swallowed up on other spends. Once you see the "saved" account start to grow it's a real incentive to continue .

Obvious things like negociating better rates on your utilities - gas, electric, Sky etc.

With a baby you probably have outgrown baby clothes- stick them on your local facebook selling group -and add the proceeds to the saved account.

I agree an SOA would be a good place to start -it helps focus where the spending can be trimmed.

tealady

Hi
If you are wasting food it sounds as if menu planning will help.
Have a look into how you can batch cook, stretch food by things such as "bulking out" meat with pulses, and the "rubber chicken" that means buying a chicken and having it as a roast and using left overs in other meals.
There are loads of ideas on this site, just remember Mr T (every little helps).
Personally I would look at every bill and see if it can be reduced or cut (ask yourself if it is a necessity or a luxury, smoking and extra tv channels (for me) are in the latter. Necessities are in the budget, luxuries may have to go.
HTH

crazy_cat_lady

There are lots of various challenges on here that I really find help me to focus. I'm saving for Christmas without noticing, and I am usually well in on the monthly Ninja challenge. It's nice to have a bit of company along the journey.
I echo the other advice about a spend diary...

Upsidedown_Bear

The link for the Statement of Affairs is here
http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

Bobarella

Upsidedown_Bear wrote: »

The link for the Statement of Affairs is here
http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

Thanks Bear. I knew someone would have it

Bobarella

epskie wrote: »

Thank you Bob! That's great! Do I need a form or can I just put my incomings and outgoings in a post?

I need to amass £7k :-/

So £583 a month to hit that figure. Do you have a rough idea of your discretionary spends figure at the moment?