To ask for your budgeting tips please?

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AIBU to ask for your budgeting tips please?

I’ve looked at the tips given on Budgeting for Dummies and have found them really helpful, but I was just wondering what advice you might have found most useful and what works best for you.

Thanks :)

Bump :)

I think taking the time to plan meals for the week is very important. It is so easy to waste loads of money eating out, even if you're just getting inexpensive fast food. The money spent really adds up. I take about 20 minutes once a week to check out the sales offered by my local stores and then I plan my meals based upon the best deals. I also keep a supply of basic proteins like inexpensive chicken thighs in the freezer so I always have something on hand to make a tasty, healthy meal for my family. A well-stocked pantry is important, too.

I created a spreadsheet with all our direct debits and a budgeted amount for all other normal expenses (food, fuel etc). I then note down everything we spend against these figures each month. What is left over at then end is split between general savings or allocated to specific savings pots such as holiday/mortgage over payment/new car. When it’s written down it’s much easier to see where money is being wasted.

Plan everything over a year. So your monthly salary needs to cover X for rent/mortgage, y for electricity and z for Christmas. Instead of getting to September and starting to worry about Christmas.

Meal plan every week and stock up on stuff that doesn’t go out of date/need using when it’s on offer eg kitchen rolls, toilet rolls, cleaning stuff etc

Don’t accept car insurance policy renewal quote- shop around- I took £300 off mine this year

Bulk bolognese out with loads of veg (I know this is trotted out on MN frequently but it really does help and make it healthier!)

Buy a family and friends railcard for £30 if you travel on the train often

Don’t fall into the trap of buying your kids too many toys especially for birthdays as they get loads if they have a party. They really don’t need so much

Look for deals on cleaning products- don’t be brand loyal- same for shampoo etc. Tesco had treasame on half price this week for example

Make one small change to something you so regularly, eg if you buy a coffee each day on way to work- stop that and you’ll save loads but it’s such a small thing to cut out.

Write a shopping list (using your weeks meal planner) remember to take the shopping list to the supermarket.

Cooking as much from scratch will keeps cost down too.

Take a packed lunch and snacks on a day out- Food at attractions is massively overpriced and usually not even that nice.

I find that many people recommend buying things for Christmas through the year, but that doesn't work for me at all - I just end up spending twice or buying nonessential stuff. I do now put a bit of money away in an account for Christmas, but I try my best not to buy anything at all apart from cards and stamps [retro] until about 10 December.

Be honest about how much you spend on presents through the year and who for. For many years I had a 'but it's a PRESENT i have to buy it/spend a lot' attitude. You don't need to spend much. But it's a good idea to budget for presents if they are something you do find yourself spending on. Books and bottles of wine for everyone are good. I am also a shameless regifter - if someone brings me a bottle of wine/box of biscuits and doesn't stick around to drink/eat it, it will go to someone else.

Bulk bolognese out with loads of veg (I know this is trotted out on MN frequently but it really does help and make it healthier!)

Chickpeas are your friend...they're cheap and healthy and bulk out in a really unobtrusive way iyswim

Anytime you buy anything on line, before going through the checkout just stick ' discount' into google and have a look if any discount codes pop up in the first few results.

I do this as standard now and probably have a 25% success rate of finding something, be it 5 or 10% off/free delivery etc. It adds up.

We have a direct debit account which is for bills only. So each month a certain amount is transferred to cover all the bills, x amount goings into a savings account and the rest is kept in our joint account to be spent on whatever extra is needed throughout the month, or for days/nights out. We have a weekly budget for shopping, I like to meal plan so nothing is wasted but normally it's the same stuff needed and bought each week, I do it online so I can see the amount.
My husband is also lucky enough to be able to buy shares each month through his work, it comes off before pay so we never miss the money and we find it a great way to save.

Save £2 coins. You won’t miss them ‘cos you don’t get many.

Round up to the nearest £ or £5 when shopping and put the ‘change’ on a gift card and save for Xmas.

Use Quidco or TopCashBack for all online purchases. I make about £200 a year to put towards Xmas. If whatever you’re buying isn’t on either of these sites, check Nectar.

Have points cards for everywhere. Even if you don’t shop there very often, it is ‘free’ money and the pennies are better in your pocket than the shareholders.

All clothes should be bought in sales.

A slow cooker is useful for batch cooking without the hassle of batch cooking. Just make double what you need and put the rest in the freezer. Consider a breadmaker (get one for £5 at a car boot if you’re not sure) if only for making dough for rolls, pizza bases etc. Perfectly passable cakes for children can be made with ingredients from basic supermarket ranges.

Hours of fun to be had for children with the Argos catalogue and glue sticks from the £ shop. Cardboard (inside of packets) is cheaper than keeping on buying paper.

Buy ahead in sales for Xmas and birthdays (just remember where you put it all!)

Martin Lewis is your friend.

I've heard of a website called Approved Foods that sells food past their Best Before date, or near it, for pennies. Not tried it yet but keep meaning to as I hear you save tons on grocery shopping with them.
Growing your own vegetables, herbs and even flowers for the house. I do this- organic produce almost for free.
Making your own cleaning products- very cheap and better for you.
Attend clothes swapping parties.

Thanks, everyone! These tips are great - please keep them coming :)

Ooh clothes swaps/swishes. Absolutely brilliant. We have an annual one at the local primary school, it's much bigger than most and therefore has lots more clothes to choose from. Really fun and even makes a few quid for the school, though it's mostly social.

We found that a reasonable set of hair clippers paid for themselves many times over. Also having waterproof trousers, coats and a thermos flask meant we could always go on free trips out whatever the weather.

I have an automatic amount set that comes out of my bank account and into savings just after I get paid each month. It’s an affordable amount but as I don’t really see it, each month I start out with the budget of what’s left so it’s easier to save that way.

As others have said, packing meals for work/ days out and we often take our own hot drinks in flask/travel cups at the start of a journey so don’t have to buy Starbucks etc. We buy supermarket sweets and take them into cinema as well as cinema food is a massive rip off!

I used the daily budget app which was a useful way of tracking outgoings/income - you can set a savings target and then it gives you a daily ‘budget’ to track against.

And because I’m a nerd I keep a Christmas gift spreadsheet which lists all recipients and what I’m thinking of buying / bought for them and the amounts and totals. I don’t set a specific budget as such but it’s useful to keep tabs on it as Xmas spending can easily escalate. Gift ‘amnesties’ also help. I sometimes do them with friends / family members, particularly when we’re already buying for kids and neither of us really need anything (though often give them some homemade cookies as a token).

I stopped shopping as a form of entertainment. I try only to buy things when worn out items need replacing.

We mostly stopped giving Christmas presents to people over 21 a long time ago.

Make a list of everything you have in your freezer and cupboards and plan your meals around that before going and stocking up. Do this for evening meals and lunches

Another £2 coin saver here. If you can't trust yourself not to spend them, put them in one of those money tins that you need a tin opener to open

Topcashback and quidco

One that I've started doing is buying a 3 litre bottle of diet coke from Iceland for £2 and filling 6 x 500ml bottles with it. I get 6 bottles for the price of 2 (don't flame me for my diet coke habit lol).

Yellow label shopping and plenty of freezer space

Batch cooking look carefully in supermarkets at "offers". Quite often they'll have say a jar of mayo for £1.50 on offer but the next size up will be as cheap or a few pennies more expensive!

Make use of places like B&M and Home Bargains for everyday items - the teabags I buy are around £3-4 in most supermarkets but £1.99 in B&M!

Places like Lidl and Aldi sell multipacks of crisps very cheaply and are quite often nicer than the branded stuff (I prefer Lidl but that's down to personal choice)

As another poster said, if you're able to, grow your own veg and fruit. Saves a fortune in terms of strawberries, raspberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, beetroot and anything else you eat a lot of! You will never get a better tasting piece of fruit/veg when you've just picked it

If you get through a lot of potatoes, consider buying them from a local farm - I get them at £5 for 25kg and kept in a cool dark place they'll last ages.

Don't be scared of "wonky" fruit and veg in the supermarkets. There's absolutely nothing wrong with them other than they don't conform to society ideal images

Always keep a bag each of self raising and plain flour in the cupboard. You never know when it will come in handy

Walk more. It's free and good for you and saves money on petrol / parking or bus fare

Half an hour a week is all it takes to get yourself into good habits 😀

Thanks so much everyone - these tips are fab.

One thing that helped me was to set budget for other people’s birthdays and gifts. I was always being caught out with an unexpected birthday party invitation and having to go and buy a present/card/wrapping paper. So I decided to set a £5 budget for children’s presents and £10 for adults. And figured on maybe having one of each a month on average so I saved £20 a month into a separate saving account purely for gifts outside of the family. The extra £5 covers cards and gift wraps although I do try and buy bulk bargains when I can. There’s usually around £20 floating around that account so I can always get something when caught on the hop and it’s not coming out of my normal expense budget.

I use Money Dashboard to monitor what we spend, it tags the transactions into categories so you get a better idea of outgoings. It'll help you identify behaviours which make you leak money (mine was Sainsbury's meal deals and croissants for breakfast).

A boring activity, but I'd suggest saving your grocery receipts for a month and doing a spreadsheet of what you bought, how much it cost, and what went to waste or was leftover.

Use that to consider what you could bulk buy, cut, and look for sales/coupons or find alternatives for. We cut huge amounts by doing this and started buying loo roll, meat (via Muscle Meats), pasta, flour, dried pulses, my DH's snacks, and spices in bulk.

Anything you think you need to buy (clothes, household items etc) write on a list and then spend time thinking whether you truly need it, or whether you can borrow it, get it second hand or make do.

I have a rule to always buy things second hand (charity shops, eBay, Facebook marketplace) unless we're absolutely stuck without it.