How To Start Saving Money

Hey everyone :wave:

What advice would you give to someone that was trying to save money for the very first time?

We’ve written a few suggestions here, but keen to hear what tips everyone else has!

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The biggest thing to do is to make saving fun.

Apps like Chip give fun gifs as you save and keep things light.

Or use the 1p savings and £1 savings challenge to make savings less of a chore and less noticeable.

I am obsessive about “what I have left” so when I get paid, I put it into a tonne of pots (rent, bills, credit card balance offset, holiday 1, holiday 2, investment, and a few others).

Then I take what is left and divide it by the number of days until pay day. So if I have in my main pot £1,600 left and it’s the 5th and payday is the 25th, I will be able to spend £80 a day and still pay my bills.

I love seeing this go up, so if I hold off spending for one day, now that’s £84.21 a day I can spend.

Keep doing that and you will soon enjoy not spending and you’ll end the month with a nice pot.

Golden rule? When you get paid, anything left in your account goes into your savings and you start again.

This sounds like such a good idea. What do you use to split the money out?

I do a similar thing except I don’t use pots, just different bank accounts (one for savings, one for bills, etc). Not really sure why I haven’t adapted to using pots yet :older_woman:t3:

This is interesting! So you know that you can spend £80 a day if you wanted to, but you still aim to spend as little as possible so have money leftover?

Definitely here for making savings fun!

I just use pots in Monzo. I have every account under the sun but still revert to Monzo each time.

The idea for me of knowing I could spend £80 is because I don’t like the feeling of restriction of “you can spend £20 a day.” If I can feel unrestricted (up to a decent amount) then I won’t worry about treating myself, buying a takeaway.

My better half and I decided no takeaway for 3 months this year. Failed after week 1.

Sniff tip - Don’t make spending bad, just try and enjoy saving more than spending. :heart_eyes:

I feel like when you set these restrictions for yourself it just makes you want them more. Like telling yourself you can’t eat crisps/ donuts and then all you can think about is crisps and donuts… :sweat_smile:

As a side note to this, I also think that leaving some wiggle room for impulse buys in your budget can help - that way you don’t feel bad about spending, but you’re also not going wild and spending too much money :woman_shrugging:t2:

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Exactly!

If you can’t enjoy at least some of your salary from working hard, you’re not going to have a happy month and want to save.

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