Withdrawing cash each week to avoid over spending - does it work?

[CatKisser]

I've been paid today and am determined to finish September with money left. I've studied my bank statements and it seems most of my money goes in bloody Morrisions - £12 here, £17 there. Not good. I think I go in there to buy wine and then lazily decide to pick food up for dinner, instead of sensibly eating stuff I've already got or things from the freezer.

This is STOPPING. I've given up wine, as of over three weeks ago, which will save at least a fiver a day and will mean I don't need to go into the shop on the way home.

I'm desperate not to overspend this month. Does anyone do that thing where they take, say, £50 out at the start of the week and use only that for purchases? If so, is it helpful?

I do a version on the jar method - first work out abudget including saving leaving mmoney in different accounts. Then just have my spending money in my current account. Get in a monthly shop first and split what's left over into weekly amounts. I don't take out the cash as I would spend it faster but do check my balance regularly so I don't overspend each week.

That's a good idea about just leaving spending money in the account. Luckily all my DDs come out by the 6th (apart from Natwest account fee and OD charge which they DELIBERATELY take on 22nd when they know I'm skint) so after the 6th, everything left is mine.
I think you're right about not taking it out actually - it does burn a hole in your pocket. I'll just have to be religious out checking my account.

I'm quite interested in this as I am very similar. I go to the shop daily rather than doing a 'big' shop. I really need to stop this as it is costing a fortune. My downfall is the same as yours, going to the shop for wine!

It's naaaaht gooood, is it?
Going to be completely ruthless this month. The no wine thing will help a LOT, I think. In my shopping list I've also added plastic food tubs so I can batch cook in the slow cooker.
I think I need to reluctantly invest in a microwave too.

I'm doing it this month (my pay day is mid month). A bit too early to say it works but it has made me really think about what I'm spending. I took £100 out on pay day and aim to make it last.

I should add that doesn't include any food or essentials really as we have a joint account for them which we both pay into on pay day.

I've been doing this with spending money.

When I get paid, I take out xxx for the month, divide it into 4/5 weeks and give myself a weekly allowance. It's great as it means I always have money.

I think that's the way forward for me too, as soon as my DDs have all gone out. I've just done what I think is MOST of a month's food shopping (excluding fresh fruit and veg obv) and spent
Morrisons - £36
LIDL - £9
Home Bargains £6
Butcher - £20
I think this is not bad and only anticipate a couple of top up shops for lunch bits. I do only have me and 3 cats to feed though.

I take out a certain amount of cash once a week to cover specific expenses (gas and electric meter, groceries, and petrol), make sure there's enough in the current account to cover any incoming bills, and anything above that in savings right away. Otherwise if it's sitting in the current account, I tend to whittle away at it.

I'm alright with cash to some extent, because as soon as I get the cash, I go pay for those specific things right away and then it's pretty much all gone.

I have started to do this as I was using my laser card and had no idea really how much I spent on food per month. I now take out cash weekly to cover childcare, grocery for the week and an amount for misc. I have forced myself to stick to this amount and so far it works.

I plan our meals for the week ahead and do my shopping based on that.
Only started in middle of August and already have spent a lot less than I would normally and we have not starved!

Yes, I do exactly that and it works for me to cut down on small spends when money is tight (and when it isn't!)

Hi,

We have separate accounts for spending money, bills and savings. I always make sure there are sufficient funds in the bills account at the start of every month (I am paid the last Wednesday of each month, DH is paid every 4th Friday). I transfer a set amount to the savings account but make sure the spending account has the same amount in each month.
Food/fuel/spending money is in the spending pot. I have a set amount each week for each. £80 for spending money each week. I draw it out each Friday.
If we have earned over what we normally do I add a bit more to the spending fund and a bit to the mortgage as an overpayment.

Yup. We do food orders online but have a weekly limit for those.
After that we have a bills account and then draw out a certain amount, depending on the number of weeks in a month.
This is then split into an envelope for weekend fun, a envelope for kids clothes, an envelope for mid week stuff with kids.
We also save twenty pounds a month for present buying as we have lots of birthdays from September to march and nothing for the rest of the year, so it helps budgeting a bit more.
Took some getting used to buy I now love not feeling guilty when I spend something.

i had stated doing this when my income went down alot. To keep a real eye on spends. Income went up a bit, and i started sliding into using my debit card for everything.

I am going to start the cash thing this week. I will try to stick with it, there have been more expenses over the summer, so now dd is back at school i am prob more able to stick to it.

Will do my shop on monday, then the money budgeted for the rest of the week I will do as cash back at the till.

We used to get the weekly money changed into £1 coins as well, so we only ever took out what we needed when leaving the house. I'm sure it's just us, but if we change a £20 note to buy something for £2.00, the change just seems to disappear. £1 coins go on forever...

How's it going?.

In theory it works brilliantly. We work out how much we need to cover direct debits etc. The rest is disposable income. We divide that by 4 and that's our weekly disposable income. Then DH forgets and buys groceries and puts them on our debit card (without me knowing). So we accidentally overspend the first week or two of the month and then we're very tight the last two weeks of the month. Sometimes we ended up dipping into our meagre savings. It's really frustrating as most months we have adequate income to cover our expenditure .