What’s an “unpopular” spending or money decision that actually works well for you?

[HonestTealPoster]

For me, it’s not budgeting. I’ve tried it before and found it quite stressful, I ended up overthinking every purchase. These days I don’t follow a strict budget. I just spend fairly naturally and because I’m quite frugal anyway, I still tend to save more than I spend.

Is there anything you do that might go against the usual advice but works for you?

I did this and also ignored Location Location Location so that I could buy a detached house.

A smaller house costs less to run in so many ways. A friend of mine, who lives in a huge rambling, money guzzling house once questioned how I could afford my lifestyle. I laughed and said that my residual income after the usual expenses was probably 3 times hers because of our meagre outgoings. I think she was truly shocked that I had so much money to spend on myself.

Bought a house in London rather than moving out to the home counties. I think for us the combination of not needing to run a car, let alone two, plus tfl fares rather than national rail, makes it a lot cheaper overall. Plus we then own a house in London which we could sell and downsize in retirement

Same. Lost count of the number of people who’ve asked us why we haven’t moved. One friend years ago actually said “I’m surprised you don’t live in a better house, you could afford it” 😂

It was good to get the mortgage paid off by 40 and DH retired at 55 so it was a good decision.

Not having all our funds in a joint account. We have one and the bills come out of it, but we also have separate ones so what we spend our 'fun money' on isn't subject to comment from the other person. 😄

Edited to add another: I don't beat myself up for buying the odd ready meal or things like pre-prepped veg, or placing the occasional Deliveroo or Whoosh order. I am time-poor (work nearly full time plus caring for elderly mum who lives with us) and have chronic health issues, so while I'm not cash-rich as such, doing these things helps me keep going. (My MIL would be absolutely horrified if she knew any of this, though. 😄) I do of course realise I am lucky to have the wherewithal for this and am thankful for it.

I started buying my cocaine from my prostitute, that way I only pay 1 delivery charge. Saves me a fortune.

Agree with this. I like takeout coffee, and all coffee in fact.

NEVER get takeout/ delivery. It’s all lukewarm (whether it started hot or cold!), sweaty plastic boxes. I’d genuinely prefer egg on toast.

We both retired early. I have no private pension, DH has a small one. We lived off that and topped it up with some savings for 2 years, now we live off my DH state pension and his small private pension. I have another 4 years until I get my state pension. We have some savings which we use for holidays. We have a lovely peaceful life, and don't regret it for 1 minute. Most people would despair of our decision, but it suits us, we have a great life, and I got to spend those 2 years seeing more of my lovely mum, who died after a short illness.

Same. We thought we'd have 'upgraded' to a bigger house by now, but we realised we would rather spend money on holidays and experiences with the kids that would ultimately have gone on the cost of moving and mortgage payment, tax and utilities increases. Plus, the additional time and expense of cleaning and maintenance. No thanks.

In addition, we bought a year old car 13 years ago. We will run it into the ground and do the same again.

No judgement to others who make different decisions. We've all got different priorities.

I bought a very small house because it's just for me. I'm retired and I have to heat, maintain, decorate and furnish it, so I didn't want to overstretch myself. At least one of my friends thought it was a bad decision to buy somewhere small and not at all fancy, but I saved enough money to do it out nicely and buy some lovely new furniture so I'm perfectly happy with it.

Not ‘buying’ brand new cars on PCP finance or leasing them. I buy used cars, generally around 3 years old, for 50% or less of the new price & pay for them in cash. Drive for 4 or 5 years, then rinse & repeat. This saves me a lot of money in two main ways:
1, I let someone else (usually the person who ‘bought’ the car new on PCP) pay for the biggest initial depreciation hit. A big thank you to everyone who does this.

2, I pay no interest or finance charges.

The main trade offs are:
1, I never have a brand new car.

2, I pay servicing, repair & maintenance costs myself. To mitigate this I buy extended warranties. Most modern cars are actually very reliable, the main exceptions being Jaguar Land Rover & Italian brands. So I don’t buy those.

What do you count as attractions? Theme parks? Merlin type places like London Dungeon? Historical sites of interest? I would feel a bit bad for the DC if we had never been to an aquarium or a castle or a an indoor wave pool or anything. That said, my DH would rather die than do to Disney, so the kids have missed out on that experience.

Expensive cars and jewellery. Love them. Cannot be doing with old bangers and cheap jewellery. Big house too - all frowned on by MN frugal brigade.

I bought a house to rent out. People say “there’s no money in it these days” and it costs a fortune, tenants will trash it etc. It did cost a lot in the first year or two while I did the renovation but since then it’s given me enough income to allow me to work part time while my child is small. And the “nightmare tenants” haven’t been my experience. Just one settled family who I’ve rented to for 8 years.

I buy takeaway coffees almost every day

my husband and I share a mortgage, pets and a nursery aged child and have separate finances (albeit with two joint accounts for day to day spending and set bills). It works for us.

Not sure if they are unpopular choices but:

I have never leased a car, always bought newish (2-3 years old) outright and then replaced once it starts to fall apart.

And like a pp we live in a smaller house than we can afford, now without a mortgage, rather than a bigger one with a still outstanding mortgage.

And I've started borrowing books from my library and paying for reservation fees rather than downloading them cheap on kindle.

Edited: DH and I have separate finances except for a joint current account for bills.

The main one was not having joint accounts when I was married. We tried it after our daughter was born but it just didn't work for us, two financially Independent people in our 30s and 40s. We just reverted to our own account and split the bills proportionately. We never once fought about money. He supported me without question in the lower pay months of mat leave and I supported him through periods of unemployment. We didn't need a joint bank account for this. I will never understand why people get so het up about it.

Other than that, I actively choose to live in a disadvantaged area (which has somehow become quite a nice section of it over the years). When my daughter is up and gone I hope to stay here because I consider it home now. I've had many snide comments and side eyes about where I stay and I just let them wire in. It's been a good choice for raising our daughter.

Yes! I got a Sage in 2019 and it's going strong. We use it everyday.

I had a decent travel mug for Christmas a couple of years back. It was expensive, but it’s saved me a fortune when out and about. I only drink tea, but was paying £3+ for takeaway tea, it really mounts up!

Same as a PP, interest only mortgage for a while. Allowed us to have a bigger house when we needed it, ie with the kids.

We might be able to pay it off later if things go well with other investments, but if we can’t, we’ll just sell up and downsize. In the meantime we might have paid more interest, but we’ve also had the benefit of the price increase on a much bigger house than we could have afforded on a repayment mortgage.

You just can’t think of it as a “forever home”, But we can’t see why we’d want the same house as a family with growing teens than as a retired couple. We”ll be going for a centrally located flat with lots of things on our doorstep and easy to lock up to go travelling, as opposed to lots of bedrooms and bathrooms and large garden…

DB laughs that we go to the airport for a long haul flight on public transport and a colleague once said to DH that he's the type who would barter with a taxi driver over 50p then give him a pound tip.

God, I've got one of these.

My husband got annoyed in Thailand because he "overpaid" for a taxi - we were in it for an hour, and we spent a tenner! He was generous with his tips everywhere, but couldn't stand that he paid more than the quoted estimate online.

Then when we were in Turkey I looked up booking via Uber, the trip out a tenner, the return twenty quid. He insisted we'd do better booking via the hotel - £75 return! He almost refused to pay it, but I pointed out he would be stranding us in the middle of nowhere, and it was his fault we hadn't got the cheaper option.

Sometimes it's cheaper to just accept the price quoted.

"I don't need to budget because I spend less than my income" is surely the new "how can you eat more than a single lettuce leaf, I'd be full for a week if I saw a slice of cucumber" when it comes to the Mumsnet Moral Hierarchy 🙄

Same here. Morgage free in a smaller house has worked well for us.

I actually stopped celebrating xmas for a few years after the boiler broke one October and cost hundreds to fix.
I decided xmas was a drain on my money that I was happier not bothering with.

I don’t do direct debits. The only one exception is mobile sim card. I use an IFA. Small house zero mortgage. Older, second hand car. No tv/ subscriptions.
No finance/hp/loans etc. everything is saved and paid for at initial purchase. No holidays - prefer days out and craft workshops.

Don’t do Xmas or birthdays unless I really really really really have to. Like on pain of being made redundant or death type really.