Ideas for reducing my monthly spend long term please?

[Carrotsandcelery]

I have just had my card declined at the supermarket again. I used to be good at this but seem to be struggling lately.

I need to cut the monthly budget long term.

What are your tips?

I realise I need to use up everything in the freezer and can cupboard and meal plan very strictly.

We are already vegetarian so I can't cut out meat.

We already have a tiny, high efficiency car for dh's commute.

I have a bigger but efficient car for our running around (rural area with expensive and very irregular bus service so no car is not a realistic option).

Dh's phone contract is £15 a month.

My phone is pay as you go. (ancient but functional handset)

The main problems seem to be the supermarket and Amazon really.

What do you suggest/have found works well?

Mrsmarmite - we got our Wii from Blockbusters, second hand and comes with a 6 month guarantee and 6 weeks free games rental.

Hi, what i did the other day was - get my diary and add up all monthly outgoings , direct debits/car tax/ kids after school subs etc - i added up how much they all came to and then worked out what i had coming in.

Divide outgoings by 4 and that's how much you need to put by each week, i have done this for a few months in advance.
I've found that bills are so high these days i've had to do this.
The money i have left after bills each week is what i have to spend on food/petrol.
I then put a fixed amount of petrol in a week and then try to make that last for that week.
I do a decent shop once a week starting at Aldi, and then things i can't get from there top up from Tesco/Morrisons/Asda.
I buy loafs for the week and freeze them( so i dote nip to shop for a loaf and end up buying a basket full of other things:) ) and try to make sure when i do shop i menu plan for the whole week and not what i have done previously ( throwing random things in a trolley and nowt to make a meal out of:) )
And i have days of not spending - it's hard, but i feel like im in control of things now.
Best of luck :)

try e2save for mobile phones - i swear by it. my current phone works out as totally free! I pay around £17 per month, but every three months get a cheque for cashback. you need to remember to send them your bill every month, and they give you cashback. i also went via quidco to get the phone, and they gave me cashback too...so overall for an 18month contract, it works out free (and i get 300 mins, 300 texts and unlimited data...on a samsung tocco lite).

I keep a monthly budget planner on the laptop on an excel spreadsheet. I divide it into money I manage to save, treats and household expenses and direct debits. This month I can see I've spent £14 on Kindle books from Amazon - i usually try to spend no more than £10 so it does make you aware of your spending.

beaten I like the idea of "no spend" days. How often do you do that a week? I imagine it would concentrate the mind massively.

I have been doing really well until I got to the school holidays.

I have started selling on ebay and have made about £200 selling so far, which does make a difference to the budget.

I have also been scouring ebay first if the dcs are in need of clothes (dd outgrew her entire winter wardrobe and ds is now looking like he will too) which has saved a fortune and the things I have bought have been immaculate and really like new. I do choose carefully though which does take a bit of time.

I have weaned myself right off Amazon. I have only bought 2 birthday presents since I started this thread.

I am going to try to digest the mobile info as I do need a new phone sometime soon (my phone is 4 years old and becoming a bit unreliable)

I very much appreciate everyone's great ideas. Thank you.

I try to not spend money on Mondays, Wednesdays and then one other day. That's just what suits me. Basically I do my weekly shopping on the weekend, make sure I have everything I need, so really there's no need to buy anything else. During the week I might buy one or two little things (a coffee, a snack from Sainsbos) if I'm out in the evening and get a bit peckish.

Or get a manicure for example (this comes out of my weekly budget so if I have overspent, I miss out).

So then it's only big things (clothes, hair, dentist etc) that I budget for and know is coming out of my account.

Not sure if this helps, but generally I brew a hideously strong coffee in the morning and then I don't ever have to buy one. It costs me about £5 a month (max) on coffee beans and I get all the caffeine hit I need .

There are so many great ideas on here. I am struggling to absorb it all. I think I will take one idea at a time and work from there.

As well as going all cash and leaving the cards at home I personally have found having the CTC and CH paid weekly makes budgeting so much easier...(you might do this already, or you might not get ctc at all, but anyway) I found having it come in every 4 weeks was a pain as it didn't fit with the monthly budget. Having a drip drip of money each week might mean your card is less likely to be declined.

I do the shop on line too and sit there working out the very very best buys (sad cow), if it is delivered at about 10pm its usually free delivery. If I am feeling extra zealous I'll even do my shopping in 2 supermarkets and buy the best deals in each (I worry I shall be thrown out of one local supermarket for only buying the loss leading lines that I am sure they put on offer to get people in so they will buy expensive stuff at the same time).

Great idea Phyllis- monthly is good for direct debits but not for shopping etc.

Sorry, not read everything as about to go to bed...

We did our budget. I sat down with our bank statements for the last couple of months and put all the regular bills into a spreadsheet with our income at the top. Minus the bills out, leaving the excess (hopefully!). Divide that up into food shopping and other expenses. We moved to cash for food shopping. I took out the designated amount every month and stashed it in a jar in the bread bin. When it was gone, it was gone. Same for fuel. DH gets x amount and he goes straight to the petrol station to fill up. Any extra has to come out of his business. It was a hassle but we soon got our overdraft under control, it just needs some will power.

all of your idea's are great, I read recently that if you fill your car when its half full yuo get better consumption as less causes fuel to evaporate meaning you have less than you shoul, also if you fill up in the morning when the fuel is cold you get what you pay for as a rise in temp even +1 causes evaporation also. I also switched all my utilities to one company, www.telecomplus.org.uk/H29301 , they do my gas , elec, phone, internet, and mobile, and they guarantee to be the cheapest. Ive even got a cashback card from them that gives me money off my bill every time i use it in places like asda, toys r us, mothercare, sainsburies, M&S, argos as well as online. It can reduce your bills by a further 25%, its saved me a fortune.

I joined a few paid survey sites (Valued Opinions, Ipsos, Mysurvey, Panelbase, Toluna, Harris Polls, GlobalTestMarket - google them) and they usually pay cash, Paypal or vouchers. I usually choose Amazon vouchers and haven't spent any "real" money on Amazon for over a year now, I just use my voucher balance.
I have an Excel spreadsheet and put each item from the bank statement into it each month, have Freeview, grow a lot of our fruit and veg, borrow from libraries a lot.
Re. the audio books, you could record yourself reading using an MP3 player. An MP3 file should be easy to burn onto a DVD-RW, or your DS could just listen on the MP3 player directly.