Hey everyone
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!
Hey everyone
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!
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
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.
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…
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
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.