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!