What are your best squirrelling money away techniques?

[YourCalmRoseCat]

It’s a new financial year and I want to try and get better at saving. What little tricks and systems do you use to quietly build up savings? Not so much strict budgeting but things like moving money out of sight, automatic transfers, any little habits that make saving easier. Basically anything that helps you save without overthinking it?

Send back any ordered items that don't fit/are not nice immediately the next day. Don't shove them in the wardrobe and forget about them.

Correct, often your employer will only match your additional contributions up to a certain amount but it is still a great way to save for your future as you do not pay tax or NI on your contributions.
Of course, one argument against this is that if you retire at SPA and receive both your work & old age pensions, you will be paying tax on anything over your tax free allowance anyway (no NI though). If however you retire early and depending on your scheme, you will receive your work pension free of tax up to your TFA and pay tax just on anything above this. Along with your TFLS it does make a real tax saving.

As for "taking the lump sum" and "getting their money out of the pension", that is two different things.
Quite understandable to take the TFLS and then invest it but I am sure they are not "getting out of the pension ".

When you die, your spouse will get a (reduced) pension if you have a DB scheme but will get all the remaining funds if it is DC (depends on your expression of wish).

Account for annual and irregular expenses and put money aside for them. You should be saving for Christmas now. You should have money set aside to fix your car, pay vet bills, replace white goods etc etc. The same for holidays, school uniforms, extra spending in the school holidays etc.

Look at where you spend your money and see where you can reduce the cost. Food and drink out of the house can be a big spend, so if you buy lots of coffees, lunches etc, try to reduce this as much as possible.

Anticipate things that cost money - take a picnic on days out instead of paying ££££s for poor quality overpriced food that you have to queue for in a cafe. Have ice creams at home, keep easy food in the freezer instead of getting takeaways.

Get the Moneysaving Expert weekly newsletter and take advantage of any freebies like money for switching your bank account.

Review all your bills to make sure you're paying as little as possible and always on a deal. Sometimes you also get a freebie when switching - recently we got a £150 M&S voucher when signing up to new broadband that was also £20 pm cheaper than the price that the previous supplier went up to after that deal ended.

There's a rule of thumb 50% for essentials, 30% for living and 20% for saving. That might not always be achievable depending on your income and essential costs but it's something to aim for.

Get away from the living 'month to month' mindset. People think this means not having enough money to save, but it can also mean getting to the day before payday, having £50 left and thinking 'we'll get a takeaway' instead of 'we could save that'. Do the latter a few times and suddenly you've got hundreds of pounds in savings that could pay to replace a broken washing machine or a weekend away instead of greasy disappointing pizza.

Pay for all your spending on a cashback credit card that's paid off in full every month.

I’ve started claiming more on my health insurance than I thought I could by educating myself on what it covers and actually reading the small print! (I’m in the US.) Things like contact lenses and tretinoin - used to pay out of pocket, now I don’t. Saved an awful lot in the last year.

We started saving when we first married and my husbands employer offered a sharesave scheme. We realised we couldnt lose money until we actually bought the shares after 5 years, so started with £10 a month. That went out of his paypacket so that made it easy.

There are lots of different schemes available and some buy shares immediately, so need research.

We saw the share price increase so the following year we did some more, and then at 5 years we had an annual payout. We used to spend half and save half.

The saved shares are now in ISAs and weve changed the portfolio to cover different industries as we have to be prepared to losr our money. Currently they provide a decent annual tax free dividend income and will allow my husband to retire early if he wishes.

Weve also saved in additional pensions, other shares, and cash savings too but all of these came a bit further on when the children were older and our costs reduced.

Lots of pots with the money transferred over on payday.

Currently have Xmas, birthdays, car (insurance, tax, mot, repairs and saving towards a new one), holidays, teeth and eyes, ISA, and a save the change with Halifax. I've just finished paying one big loan so that is going to be redirected to home improvements account.

I (now) don't have anything on credit or finance and I've always been careful with cash (having not had much, ever). Sorting it on payday means it's gone straight away and I don't need to think about it. Saving for Xmas, birthdays and holidays means I don't have to worry a out skinting myself afterwards.

Work out roughly what you need for the following month. Add 10% leeway. What you have decided you can save put away as soon as you are paid - don't make the mistake of deciding you'll save what's left at the end of the month. If you get a pay rise and you can, ignore the increase as part of spends, but include it in the amount you save at the start of each month.

When I was young and just had one account, I set a floor for my account. Treat X as zero. That serves 2 purposes. First, if you have accounting issues, you don’t slip into the negative. Second, it is savings. Over time, increase X.

now, we still use a floor in all our main account, but we also pay our savings before we pay any other bills. If we have an expensive month, we can always pull some of the money back (not all as some of it is locked into long term funds), but the psychology of setting it aside is important.

This is a good point. My own wages pay for some of the bills, a fair amount of our food and some savings but then there's maybe £200 left which I do normally spend on things that make life pleasant. Such as a flight to go and meet my friend's new baby last month for £80 or meals out or the weekly work coffee van. Those are worth more to me than having the £200 in an ISA.

What's a LISA?

When I was earning under £9k per year in my first full time job, I started putting £5 a week (paid weekly) into the credit union at work by a salary sacrifice. It was amazing how that small amount grew over time. I changed to a different job 9 months later who also had a work credit union, so I continued to do it.

As my salary went up (annual increment, occasional pay award increases), I allowed myself 1 or 2 paycheques of the increase to enjoy a treat, but then increased my salary sacrifice by about the same amount - I had been managing on what was in my current account up to then so I didn’t want to get used to managing on more and just frittering it away. At this stage, I put £700/fortnight into the credit union and have 2 other standing orders monthly to other savings. The credit union is what I use for holidays, Christmas, presents etc rather than going into debt.

Lifetime ISA.

https://www.gov.uk/lifetime-isa

You can use a Lifetime ISA (Individual Savings Account) to buy your first home or save for later life.
You can put in up to £4,000 each year, until you’re 50. You must make your first payment into your ISA before you’re 40.
The government will add a 25% bonus to your savings, up to a maximum of £1,000 per year.

Mine is for retirement. I opened mine just before I turned 40.

Things have been really tight for us for a long time. Over the last couple of years I’ve started trying to save, even if I need to dip into those savings. This is what I’ve been doing:

I get paid weekly, so I have 2 standing orders set up for £10 a week each into 2 different savings accounts. Initially it was 1, then I got a high interest option that you can’t put a lump sum into, and you’re limited on a max amount per month that can go in (otherwise I’d have moved it all there) and started doing the £10 a week there too.

I decided I wanted to look at investing after a talk at work about it all. I started off by putting £100 into a pre-built “pie” of various tech companies. I think there are 50 companies and 2% of your money goes into each. After a couple of months watching it, I decided to set up a £50 a month transfer to it. After about 6 months, I had made around £50 on its value, which I would never have gotten in a standard bank account. The value has obviously dropped a little these last few weeks, but I’m still up if I were to cash in today.

I set my debit card to round up to savings - so if I use my debit card to buy something for £2.50, it will put 50p into my savings account. It does that on all transactions as long as you are not in your overdraft.

I try to use Top Cashback where I can. The money I get from that is my “treat” money so that my savings stay as that. I used it last year, along with my reward account money from my bank (money it gives you for free for things like having direct debits etc) to buy myself an iPad outright!

I have some credit card debt I’m trying to clear. I am using a 0% balance card and pay £100 a month to it. That way, I’m actually clearing the balance, albeit slowly. I do not use the card for purchases at all, so no interest being added. Once I reach the end of the interest free period, I will look to transfer to another 0% deal if I can. I’m about at the point where my savings are enough to clear the credit card debt… but whilst I’m not paying interest, I would rather keep the savings where they are to earn interest for me and be available in the event of an emergency, rather than clearing a card that I’m not paying interest on then if an emergency comes up, I’ll end up paying interest on it as I’ll need to use a credit card.

A jar for loose change is good too. I used to have this when younger where any money left on a night out, even notes, would go into it. If I budgeted £30 for a night out but only spent £20, that tenner went into the pot. Over the course of a year it was surprisingly high! This was pre kids though and when you’d use cash for everything, so it might not work as well now.

Good luck!

I have 2 savings accounts - a one that I consider long term (which is currently premium bonds) and just the one that comes with my current account, which I consider as usable for any unexpected/additional monthly expenses.

I do automatic transfers into each, a larger amount (I think 350?) into the premium bonds on the same day all my other bills comes out, and then a smaller amount every Monday into the 'casual' savings, I think it's about £30/40 a week. Then I use that one for things like car tax or the bi-annual water bill once it's added up a bit - even if it's not enough to cover the total, it helps to take the edge off. Often I find that actually I don't need to use that account for a few months and then when I do I have a few hundred in there to help out with things like MOT repairs/a new tyre or whatever.

I don't even think about it now, that money just goes out with everything else and I live without it until I need it.

I save all my TopCashback money all year and use that for my Christmas food shop.