Saving tips

[GreyWalls]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some great MN tips to save as much money as possible.

I currently have about £800 left per month after I've paid my bills which sounds like a lot but this always gets frittered away in useless crap!

Does anyone else do this? If you did and have managed to stop, please let me know how as I would love to save a decent amount!

I'd set yourself a budget from the £800 to spend, put it in a spreadsheet or just notes on your phone and then you know how much you can spend... set yourself an aim of how much you want to save... maybe even transfer it into a savings account as soon as you get paid.

Also, not sure if it's just me but when we started 'seriously' saving.. seeing the figure go up made me more determined to save and I was a lot less frivolous when I could see the money in my savings account.

Good luck!

All sorts of ways you could change your spending habits. You could start by keeping a record of everything you spend, just doing that can be a real eye opener. Then allocating the £800 into different categories including savings. There is lots of good advice on the frugal threads on here and worth scrolling back through the credit crunch topic.

Save first (half) then the rest is fritter money, but savings go out day after payday.

I'd put all the bill money into one current account, then the £800 into another account & leave the card at home.

If you've got petrol in the car & a packed lunch there's no need to spend.

Move half / more of it as soon as your pay goes in then you don't have it sitting there to fritter ... and at the end of the month just before your pay goes in move anything above a certain buffer amount

What are you saving for? How much do you need by when?

I move half my 'spends' to a linked savings account. If I need more in my current I can easily move it but it makes me very conscious of what I'm spending so always have some saved every month

I have an account with a bank that has 'save the change' so when I spend 89p, for example, 11p goes into savings.
I have a regular saver account with a relatively high interest rate. I put about 1/3 of my 'fritter' money into that.
Anything spare at the end of the month goes into savings too - to be honest, I sometimes find it easier to move money into savings, then out if I absolutely need it.
My account also lets me set up savings goals so I can track how close I am to a particular goal and how fast I'll approach it at the current rate of savings.
I used to buy things fairly compulsively and now I think I save compulsively!

Is the £800 spare money, so isn't needed for bills or food or debts?

If so then give yourself an amount to spend weekly then save the rest. Withdraw the amount you get weekly on a Friday and only spend what's in your purse. On the following Friday, put whatever is in your purse into a jar/moneybox at home then withdraw the next week's amount and repeat. Count the money jar and bank it when it's full.

Leave your purse at home during the day, unless you are out shopping or need it. That way, you can't buy anything that you don't really need.

I also put anything that's "spare" in my bank account into my savings and as someone else said, it soon becomes addictive when you see the money building up!

Thanks for all the brill ideas, especially love the idea about withdrawing money at the beginning of the week and only spending that, i suppos of I don't have the money I can't spend it! I'm saving toward a house deposit and imagine it will take several years but I'm trying to hurry the process along! The £800 is spare so after all bills, food etc