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Adulthood

I’m no money expert, but these tips work for me!

Yet again another year has flown by and the countdown to Christmas begins. In fact, it’s under nine weeks until the fat fella comes down your chimney. Yep, nine weeks! I can’t believe it either.

With this in mind, I thought it would be very appropriate to focus this weeks blog post around money and my top tips on saving.

From a young age – when I was thirteen and had my first job as a paper girl around the village that I live in – I was always very conscious about money. I can remember sitting at my desk under my bunk bed (I was a very cool kid) and working out where each weeks pay would go.

I think I got twelve pounds a week and to a teenager that is a hefty amount. I’d put maybe two pounds aside for sweets, a further few pounds aside for something else and the rest would go into my bank to build up and eventually buy me a new top or a DVD when I had saved enough.

Of course, my priorities have changed and sweets have been replaced with wine but I still have the same mentality towards money.

I have targets that I want my savings to reach annually and work out how much of my wages needs to be put aside to enable me to meet these. I then divvy the rest up between what goes in my purse and can be spent along with a few stashes hidden elsewhere which act as a buffer between me running out of cash in my purse due to a few extra pints in the local and me dipping into my bank account and ruining all the savings I had built up.

With Christmas just around the corner I have began to look for presents, in fact I began my search in September and felt it was a great way to save. Christmas is expensive no matter how you look at it so any saving is a good thing in my opinion. If you buy all of your presents at once it becomes pricey and large sums of money exit your account leaving you feeling a little deflated after all the hard work you put in to earn it. Whereas if you start keeping an eye out early then little bits go out at a time and you aren’t left with a whacking great whole in your pocket come December.

A good way to keep track on your spending is to withdraw the cash, perhaps even give yourself a weekly allowance if you can be disciplined enough, so that you know exactly how much you’re spending. Using a debit card can become ambiguous, especially in this day with contactless payments making it almost impossible to keep track of what you spend.

Another great tip that I have found is to save a select type of coin. I choose two pounds and fifty pence pieces. It may sound sad, but hear me out. I have a bottle which can only be accessed once broken and the last time I emptied it when it wasn’t even full the total came to over three hundred pounds which was a nice surprise to come home to once I was skint post travels. It’s surprising how putting little bits away can add up and I was certainly shocked at the total figure.

So there we have it:

  • divvy your money – spending, buffer, savings
  • start Christmas early
  • be aware of what you’re spending
  • save a certain type of coin

Little things can save you a lot of money so consider my tips and feel free to send me some of your own!

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