To ask your top tips on saving?

[RetroFlowers65]

Dh monthly income after tax, NI and pension is £3750 and we never seem to have any money left at the end of the month. We should be able to save to take the kids on lovely holidays etc but we just can't. I know we are lucky compared to some but could I have your top tips at saving as I feel we should be able to save £1000 a month easily on our income.

The MSE site has a nice budget planner which is great for getting you to think about and account for EVERYTHING you might need to spend money on over the year. Be as accurate as you can - check bank statements and receipts if possible.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/Budget-planning#free

I also use YNAB to track spending and make sure we're within budget - or if not, that overspending is balanced by cutting back in another category - but I find that you do need an annual budget to to see what's coming.

If you are spending a lot of money on takeaways, get cheaper equivalents from the supermarket or batch cook to avoid the 'can't be arsed to cook, call a takeaway' scenario.

Work out how much you are spending and set a limit, both in amount and number of times per week/month. Eg no more than one takeaway per week.

Yes take away and eating out is me being lazy I have no excuse for that and as of today I will stop. We are not poor by any stretch of the imagination and I hope I didn't come across as I was pleading poverty. I know we are lucky to have £5500 monthly income and it my lazy behaviour and both dh and my money wasting habits.

Op

I would seriously recommend a spreadsheet

Put your exact outgoings
Put your incoming money

Have three accounts:
Mortgage and bills - salaries paid in here
Spending money account - 2k in here - you and DH get £300 personal spends each month. Withdraw the cash on pay day and put it in your purse. The rest is for fuel and food

Savings - pay the remainder in here

Once we did this we managed to save for holidays/birthdays/Xmas

How is it just your lazy behaviour causing takeaways? Unless you are reclining over the hob while your DP attempts to Cook I'd say it's both of you...
YNAB app (you need a budget) might work for you both.

What does your DH spend money on and is he on board with the savings plan? Does he contribute to cooking? You need to make sure he is also making efforts to limit spending and maybe cook some of the time, so all the burden isn't on you.

Open a savings account and set up a direct debit to pay money into it every month, before you can get your hands on it and spend it!

How about an equity ISA? Could you cope with the value of your savings going down as well as up? If so, then I think that equities would be the best option, as cash is probably going to earn you less than inflation.

Equity ISA to save for a holiday in the next year or two is a stupid idea. If the stock market goes down, they'll lose money.

They can get 5% on regular savers and 2-3% in current accounts and savings accounts.

Say NO!

Mum can I have a cd - no
Mum can I go to the pictures - no
Much can I have .......No No No

Friend saved £600 in one month doing this

Give the kids pocket money for their crap - they are better at spending their cash and £50 of yours USB easier to spend than £50 of their own

Yes, get the DCs involved.

Saying 'No because we're saving up to take you to Disney' should be a hell of an incentive for them to be happy with supermarket pizza instead of Dominos for example.

Fuck me sideways you must be super unhealthy and overweight from all the takeaways. My income Is fuck all but I manage to save £500 p/m by cutting my living costs to the bone. Xxx

No nobody has a weight problem eating out doesn't have to mean chips everywhere does salad!

There are banking apps that tell you how much you've spent on groceries, entertainment, travel, etc. Then your can reduce accordingly.

If you have debts, do an interest-free balance transfer. When the interest-free period runs out after a few years, you transfer to another.

We have a weekly menu, then we make a shopping list on this basis, as we're very good at putting crap we don't need in the trolley...

We usually do our weekly shop in Lidl. It's more or less the same stuff you get elsewhere just that you get two or three brands to choose from instead of fifteen.

I don't agree that Netflix is a luxury. It's pretty damn cheap as far as entertainment goes and TV is bloody awful these days, unless you're really into talent shows.

Looking back we waste a lot of money in short breaks as well, 4 days here a week there as well a 2 week holiday each year. I guess Disney is instead of these not as well as.

Stop spending it in unnecessary frivolous shiz. It's not rocket science. If you know you can probably save £1000 you've obviously already been through your figures.

Thug is you don't need to cut back on your Netflix etc-your an afford it... you just need to be stricter about not going over the fun money budget you have set...so you diverted a thousand quid to savings now-good stuff-I would then give yourself the task of giving you and dh 500 quid each to spend on what you like/the kids...make sure you keep track of it, don't go over it...it really makes you co spider what you are spending when you write it all down as you are doing it and remove it from your budget tally so to speak...

We have no debt apart from small mortgage which we do over pay by the max allowed each month so it will be paid off well before the term ends.

It is true that it is impossible to get cash returns anywhere near inflation. The 3% and 5% accounts are only on a few thousand, earn about £200 a year . stock market also very high so very risky.

And Carney wonders why so many people have rental properties...

Well we have a slightly lower household income. We have saved £100k in 5 years. We do household accounts every month, money is allocated to funds; holiday, car, house, child (she has regular savings put in her account), utilities, mortgage. There is a small amount of pocket money which goes to me and DH to spend on what we want, clothes etc the rest goes into savings. We live well but cost effectively. Incidentally we never do coffees, takeaways or magazines. If we want a holiday we wait until there is enough in the fund to pay for it. The car fund is building up with the view in a few years DH will need a new one and we can buy one outright rather than on finance. I recommend having a shit hot mortgage broker and pension advisor. Also check your insurance policies, read the fine print and make sure they are solid so they will actually pay out if you need them to. A cheap policy with a million loop holes is a false economy.

Look at the poster who posted the You need a Budget (YNAB) link.

It sorted out my finances and changed my life. It makes you budget where you are going to spend your monthly income, then you can compare what you actually spent Vs what you thought you would spent.
Also allows you to budget for annual expenses and build the pot of cash up, so the money is there when the expense falls due.

Ok I hadn’t realised how much income you have. Why don’t you set a goal of saving £x000 extra for the holiday over x time. Get everyone on board. Make a takeaway a special treat, do something other than go away at the weekend, geocaching or something new in your area.

Take a picnic or take a step down in the kind of place you’d eat out. Still can be nice.

And track your spending. Toshl is a good app, others are available.

Exactly the set up that BillyCongo describes.

We earn a significant amount but a series of events last year coming hot on the heels of our house purchase has dimished our savings and we need to build them back up.

I pay everything on pay day including us which means I treat our savings as a bill and transfer it straight over. The rest I divide between 3 accounts, 1 is the main account which I leave $800 for groceries, money for gas and final small direct debits going out. The other 2 accounts are individual accounts for spending money for DH and I and we each get allocated the same.

It's ours to spend as we wish - DH is probably more frivolous than me, but I'm saving up to buy my beautiful white piano so I'm watching and logging everything I spend. If it takes me 3 months to "save up" rather than dip into savings then so be it.

We have absolutely zero excuse to be using any of our savings so hopefully now we have Christmas out the way (and visitors), we can spend the next few months getting on an even keel.

The only way to do it is to pay yourselves first and then work with what you have leftover. Good luck.

Do every single thing it says in Money Saving Expert that applies to you. Just start at the beginning and work through it.

It's lifechanging to see both how much money you are wasting (take-away, coffee, lunches, general shit) but how much you can save extra that you didn't even know about - swapping utilities, cheapest deals on everything, bargaining on the phone etc.

We have a similar income to you and are currently saving about £1250 a month. I have a spreadsheet that lists every outgoing, we save for annual expenses such as insurance and car tax, car maintenance, Christmas etc in a separate account to the main household account. The £1250 is made up of 2 x 5% regular savers accounts for longer term savings and a normal savings account for short term savings (ie for this years holiday and weekends away).
We have a very comfortable lifestyle on that, plenty of days out, reasonably regular meals out etc. I do only spend £350 a month on food though (2 adults, 2 under 10 and 2 cats, no weekday lunches) so I think you can save there maybe?

Billy yes we do same.

Talking about writing down expenditure is cart before horse.
You need to budget your expenditure.
We have x amount of money for weekend... That could go to take away, or entrance costs somewhere... Parking... A coffee out.... But that is allocated to it.
Savings is different and so on.
So much nicer because you know that money is for weekend treats, you don't feel guilty.
Savings for holiday, birthday all separate too.