Money Saving Tips - March 2022
Happy March Everyone and welcome back to The Luxury Mum!
Firstly I would like to say thank you to you all for your interaction and amazing feedback on my most recent Budgeting post and for those asking, yes there will be more budgeting posts coming. Today's post is a request from a few of your that read my budgeting post and wanted some money saving tips that I feel work and that I use. I will try to make this a monthly post going forward if it is something that you enjoy and find helpful.
1. Create A Budget & Stick To It
This one will be obvious to any of you that read my most recent budgeting post so I will keep this short and sweet but the first step in saving money is to know where your money is going. If you want to use my budgeting spreadsheet you can find it on this post by clicking here.
2. Check Your Bank Account Often
I personally don't know anyone that doesn't have instant online banking and if you are reading this and have an interest in saving more money but don't have online banking or a banking app I would personally say to make sure you do get it for easier visibility.
I think I check my bank almost every day and for me this tip is essential to make sure I am aware and keep myself accountable with my spending habits. I remember a time where I used to spend without even thinking and it did not bode well for my money saving journey at that time AKA I had no savings. If you can see where you money is going in real time it will be easier to stop yourself if you feel like you are spending too much.
3. Cancel Unused Subscriptions
I think at some point most people have signed up to an app that they have then used for a very short period of time and then no longer use it. I reviewed mine a few months ago and I had been paying £6.99 a month, FOR A YEAR, for a children's app that my daughter had not used for 11 months and in all honesty I was really annoyed at myself for not realising. So this is my his my reminder you to go and check your subscriptions and unsubscribe to the ones your are not using.
4. Save Your Change and Round Up
There are lots of banks now that have the option to automatically round your purchases up to the nearest pound or five pound when you are spending using your bank card. This money can then be sent directly to a savings account. I have been doing this for a while now and I was completely blown away by how much I was able to save doing this and I hardly noticed that the money wasn't in my current account as it was going out in such small amounts. There are also other places you can do this that isn't with your bank such as Money Box and Plum.
5. Shop With Cash
There is something about shopping with physical cash that makes it so much harder to part with it when you are in the shop. I advised to do this in my budgeting post for your food shop but try to do this whenever you can and your mindset about money will change.
6. Split Your Meal
When me and some of my closest friends became mums we had to admit that our budgets were a little tighter than they normally would have been beforehand but we all still really wanted to socialise and meet up for coffee's, food etc and having this social aspect in your life is is really important for many. Luckily I have an amazing group of friends who are all really open when discussing finances and so we would still go out and split our lunch opting to share picky bits for the table instead of paying for large meals, you can also do this with your significant other when on dates. This also leads to my next tip which is....
7. Make Your Food & Drink When Going Out
Before you venture on your day out try to plan ahead. You can save so much money by taking pre packed food that you have made at home and that goes for drinks too, especially hot drinks. My guilty pleasure and if I'm honest unorganised crutch used to be a drive through Starbucks, I used to get 4 a week and at £4.20 each and £16.80 a week, before I knew it in one year I have spent £873.60 ON COFFEE ALONE. When I really took a moment to let that sink in it really hit me how wasteful I was being with my money and so now I make myself a cup of coffee everyone morning to take on my school run drive and forego the expensive but delicious coffee and have now reduced to only going two times a month.
8. Divide Daily
Something that I like to do once I have created my budget and know my personal spending money for the month is divide this by the amount of days in the month. This gives me a daily spending limit that I do my best not to exceed and gives me motivation to spend no money five days of the week. This is a huge motivation for me as instead of spending my money on small and more convenience products, I instead save as many days daily allowance as possible and am able to by myself a treat at the end of each week. So, if I want those new shoes I know I can have them I just need to have a few more no spend days.
9. Envelope Or Cash Wallet Sinking fund
When I first started my savings journey I found this very helpful to keep me motivated as I was able to see in cash, the amount I was saving every month to go towards something I needed or something I wanted to do. We all have those things that are big payments in our year, wether they be necessity, like car insurance or a want such as a holiday. If you, like me, pay your car insurance yearly you will know this would be a huge chunk of your cash gone in one month, as would a holiday and would be likely to leave you short and struggling. I like to set my sinking funds aside from my savings and have them as smaller goals to reach. I set myself the amount I need to save for each thing at the beginning of the year and then each month I put a little aside into each sinking fund, this way when it comes to what you need to pay for you have all of it saved, or al least a large part of the amount which means you won't spend one month far shorter on money than others. Lots of people are happy to use just good old paper envelopes but I know some of you love pretty money saving wallets so I wanted to link some options of Etsy below.
10. Boost Your Income
There are many ways to do this but this tip will be completely time dependant and based on your circumstances. I understand as a mum that finding time to do a part time job on top of my full time job outside of my house would be impossible. If you can get a part time job or side hustle that helps you to bring in extra income this will automatically boost your savings if you are intentional with the money you get from this. If however another job is not on the cards for you it is time to get creative. Do you do anything already that you can monetise, teaching, music lessons, tutoring cleaning, blogging, market place selling and boot sales. All of these things will help you increase your money and hopefully help you meet your savings goals faster.
I hope you found these tips helpful and I will post these every month until I eventually run out of ideas!
What are your best money saving tips, leave them in the comments below.
Have a great day everyone.
Jordan
x
Comments
Post a Comment