What's the biggest single thing you've done to improve your finances?

[OldMotherHubbardsBigBottom]

I'm starting to get control of my finances and I'm curious as to what others have done to improve their relationship with money.

I almost feel like I tell my money what to do rather than the other way round- still a bit of ground to cover before I'm finally there though.

What did you do/are you doing?

Looked around and realised that everything I can see used to be money. So I've pretty much stopped buying "stuff" beyond the essentials.

Went vegetarian.

Invested in a stocks and shares ISA (this one's a long game).

On the back of this thread I went on MSE and did an energy price comparison. I've just switched our supplier saving ourselves £30 a month

To treat my rental income not as earnings but savings so it either pays for house improvements or builds up.

Stopped buying magazines has helped the surplus cash

Monzo is a full current account, but I don’t use it as one. You apply for it online via the app if I recall correctly.

Every Sunday I transfer my spending money for the week into my Monzo account. It arrives instantly. I then move £30 for petrol into a separate pot within Monzo as I don’t need to fill the car up every week but if I save weekly it smoothes out the cost.

Then I use my Monzo card to pay for everything. It debits instantly - you hear it chime as the transaction finishes on the card machine. Monzo separates all the spending into different categories so you can see what you’ve spent on groceries/eating out etc every month. It has helped me no end to live within the budget I’ve set for myself.

I check my account daily on the NatWest app on my phone. I also use Plum to save.

We did a major overall a few years ago in order to buy a house. The first thing we did was start saving regularly. Each payday we put money in a regular saver account. At the same time, we gradually reduced our overdraft. From always living in our overdraft to never using it took about a year, that was nearly £2000 of debt repaid that really changed our attitude to what we spent. Finally, we gave ourself a food budget and stuck to it. I wish we had made these changes 10 years ago, life would have been considerably better.

Divorce my husband who spent loads on crap!

Get a partner. We're both high earners but two wages are always better than one.

That monzo sounds brilliant.
However also drawing cash out, and only having that cash means you don't go over budget.
Eg 60 for weekly food.
Z

X cash for petrol

Write down what I spend. It’s really easy to mindlessly spend £10 per day on crap. I’ve also lost weight as I’m not just popping to shop and picking up chocolate and wine whilst I’m there!

I'm another YNAB user. I can't imagine living without it now - it's transformed our finances since 2013.

What Sarcelle said earlier:

When I want to buy something, I translate it into hours of work and decide if it's worth it. Ditto, to a certain extent, I work out how much hassle and time it would take to sell something versus the income made from the sale- you know, the no-shows, the trip to the post office to post it, etc. So I can say 'Is the £5 I'm going to make, but which will take me an hour of my time to sell, worth it?'

Also, I don't have a clothes, daily Costa, smoking or makeup habit, and my phone costs me £7.50 a month. I think these things hugely ramp up outgoings.

But I do like nice wine!

Took up a second creative career that gives me royalties that have paif off my mortgage. Bit niche though.

Monzo was a game changer for me.

Also, creating monthly budget - which informs how I arrange my monzo pots.

Plus buying a chest freezer and bulk filling it. Sainsbury were getting all my cash with lots of unnecessary shops.

I Have tied to get on with YNAB several times and I’m just not getting it. Firstly it always tells me I’ve overbudgetted but I’m not sure how to fix it. I know for certain my outgoings are less than my income. Also I hate having to constantly “approve” or “clear” transactions. In my mind if I’ve entered that I get £34.40 every Monday from child benefit then it should automatically update. But it doesn’t until I go in and manually clear it.

When I was single I had a 2 bedroom flat so I rented out the second bedroom on my spare room. Com . Getting a lodger helped me financially and she was a really nice person too.

I got 0 percent credit cards rather than ones that charge interest.

I recently had a clear out of books and dvds selling them to music magpie and Ziffit.

Good luck OP!

Weird thing, as this prompted me to look at our family finances:

We have a Santander CC. We put everything on it (that we can). It automatically pays out in full every month, so we never pay any fees or interest.

In the past three Decembers, there are no CC payments that have been made out of the A/C. January's isn't double the amount and we haven't paid out any interest.

Just one of those mysteries?

Or, as DH thinks, we had another card back then! Which doesn't explain last December, but heigh ho!

WeshMaGueule Give us a clue!

Changed my food shopping habits

Shop at Aldi
Meal plan
Batch cook
Don't waste

I set up a cashflow for the house account and one for me. I account for everything I possibly can and update it weekly using the online bank account.

Have a separate account for the house bills and grocery shopping that we pay a set amount in to every month. If it's not a bill and we can't eat or drink it we don't pay from that account. That means the bills are always up to date and we won't starve.

Then set up monthly standing orders to savings accounts, one long term and one for general use eg: car tax, holidays, etc. Whatever is left from the above is 'play' money.

Take your own lunch to work, saves a small fortune over time.

Meal plan, go through cupboards and use up what you already have. Give Aldi/Lidl a try.

A few posters have suggested asking yourself if you really need something when you come to buy it, want and need are two different things, and when you start to save and you see the amounts building in your bank account it becomes addictive!

I really like your ideas Champagne. We do budget at the moment but I think we need to shake it up a bit. Bills and food/drink being together is a good idea. What about fuel? Which one would that come out of for you?

About two years ago I started using an old fashioned envelope system. I get cash out of the bank around payday and portion it out into envelopes. I worked out all outgoings, regular and annual, divided the annual by 12 and calculated how much to out in each envelope. I now have about 20 envelopes for everything from school uniform (£15 per month) to winter fuel (£110 per month for oil/logs) family fun, £80 etc... It has transformed my life. I can do things like pay car insurance upfront and we have managed to have holidays. I have a white goods envelope so when something breaks I can replace it without too much bother. It takes about 1-2 hours a month of admin but is completely worth it. A spanner has been thrown in the works recently however as my bank has closed, leaving no banks in my town, so my husband gets my cash out where he works about 30 miles away.

redeye I used to run an envelope system but found that the cheaper of most things was to be found online which meant waiting until I could get to a branch to lodge in the cash from my envelope to pay for it. Not easy when you’re working full time and not in town near a branch (they closed all the local Halifax branches here) so I ended up opening up a gazillion bank accounts and treating them like envelopes.

I take out a sum of cash each week and that pays for what we need, bills done by dd / transfer as can't really avoid it.
Never had a credit card.
No monthly subscriptions.
Only occasional treats and luxuries.
Shopping in Primark, or high street sales.
Shop around, stick to a budget, don't borrow or lend money.
Don't update phones and succumb to add ons.
Don't browse for or buy stuff we don't need on internet.
Run one old car.
Don't buy coffees, magazines, lunch out, (takeaways, as one of the occasional treats)
Tat the kids/ grandkids don't need or want.
Treating others for the sake of it, leave it for xmas/ birthdays or special occasions.
Don't earn a lot.