he weird thing about saving money is that we all know how to do it – you just stop spending it right? That’s often easier said than done and sometimes we need a few reminders about how to budget correctly. We all know daily takeaway coffees can add up to thousands of dollars a year, yet we somehow still fall into the habit of buying one or two every day, even though we’re trying to budget. Here are a few things you might want to think about if you’re trying to save money for a holiday or a house…
1. Everything except food and rent is a luxury
It’s easy to get confused about what constitutes a luxury particularly if you get into the habit of buying something regularly. Drinks at bars, dinners out, magazines, unnecessary clothing and general impulse buys are all luxuries. Pretty much everything except rent and basic food is a luxury. If you’re serious about saving, ditch luxuries.
2. If you can’t pay cash for it, you can’t afford it
Avoid paying interest on anything ever except for property. Never pay interest on appliances, cars or anything that will decrease in value. It’s much better to pay cash for a cheaper car than pay off a more expensive one because you will never get the money back for it.
3. Check your credit card statements diligently every month
Cancel any subscriptions to things you no longer use, check where all your money is going (electricity, gym memberships) and see if there are areas you can cut back on.
4. Decide where you’re going to cut corners
Being frugal all the time isn’t fun but unless you’re a millionaire, you’re going to have to scrimp on some things. I scrimp on everything except grocery food and clothing – I’ll pay good money for quality produce and clothing because it’s important to me to buy good quality, long lasting and ethical clothing and to eat nourishing food. I scrimp on everything else though. Entertainment, restaurants, beauty products, hair products, travel. Decide what’s important to you and allocate your funds to those things and go el cheapo on everything else.
5. Stop automating your payments
Automating payments is a big time saver but sometimes you might end up paying a lot of money for something you’re not using. Pay attention to where your money is going and if you physically have to pay your electricity bill every month it might make you more aware of how much it costs and it will encourage you to cut down on your consumption.
This week on Straight and Curly, Kelly and I are talking about our favourite budget hacks and how you can keep your dollars in your pocket. You can listen to it here, on iTunes and however Android people listen to podcasts.
Also just a heads up that Stacey and I are having a wee little break from Sweet Teen Club. It takes a lot of work and money to produce a weekly podcast so we’re looking at ways we can ease the financial burden of hosting fees and production fees without constantly begging for donations every week or chasing sponsors. If you have any suggestions – we’d love to hear it!
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Do you have any budget tips you’d like to share? Anything that helps you keep money in your bank account and not in the till at your local pub?
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P.S Also you should totally sign up for my newsletter. It’s full of cool stuff.
9 Comments
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My favourite money saving tip is to check out your local library. I save a fortune ‘borrowing’ all my favourite magazines and books rather than buying.
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Oh lord yes! I do that all the time – I also subscribe to online libraries! That helps a lot too!
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I always clean the coin out of my purse every day and put it into a jar. I make myself break notes if I’m buying anything with cash. Last time we went on a holiday we had saved $400. We’re about to crack open the new jar for our trip to Italy on Wednesday… I can’t wait! It’s pretty fully and I know there was a lot of gold coins in it. 🙂
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Oh we do that too! We have ‘the robot’ which is a robot shaped money box. We usually buy camping stuff with ours. Boring but necessary!
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The automated payments thing is a great tip – hubster and I are investigating all of ours at the moment, and are shocked at how it adds up. $50 a month for something might not seem like a lot but that’s $600 a year – and now we are really looking into things, we feel we just haven’t been getting our money’s worth. It’s too easy to just “set and forget” auto payments, we really do need a kick up the butt every couple of years to check we are getting the best value.
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Exactly! I also subscribe to lots of $5 per month things and that can really add up each month. I’ve just unsubscribed to a whole lot of stuff I don’t use.
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Automated payment checking is a great tip, we’ve both got storage units in the UK costing silly money for stuff we haven’t seen or wanted for over 10 years! Now if we add that up it will be frightening… Buries head in sand and goes back to housework!
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That’s the exact type of thing you need to be careful of! If you’re a country away though that’s understandable. 🙂
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[…] had a few people ask for more budgeting tips since I published this post last week. I’m a self confessed tight ass and a huge saver which is always fascinating to […]
[…] had a few people ask for more budgeting tips since I published this post last week. I’m a self confessed tight ass and a huge saver which is always fascinating to […]
