Last year was the year of all our big life events.. a house move, a new baby and a wedding/ honeymoon... needless to say our savings are pretty much non existent. This year, we aren't planning on anything big like that happening, so we want to start saving again. We aren't the best at managing our money, but we have an easy money saving plan & I have a good feeling about it so thought I'd share it incase saving money is on your 2017 'must do' list as well.
Get a joint account
The first thing we've done is get a joint account. This way all our money can be in one pot. It's easier to manage this way and we can see our money as a whole and budget properly rather than having separate accounts.
Cut back on luxuries
Cutting back on luxuries is the easiest way to save money. We are only cutting back, not cutting out completely as we still want to enjoy life and not turn down every opportunity to go out or do something. If we go without these, we can put that money in the savings and use it for days out of family holidays.. thing we're likely to enjoy more and make memories from. We've also tried to cut down our monthly bills and are trying to remember to use sites like voucher slug to get discounts when we shop online if there is something we really do want or need or for birthdays etc. They have discounts and vouchers for over 5,000 shops so there is bound to be lots of opportunity for some money saving!
The first thing we've done is get a joint account. This way all our money can be in one pot. It's easier to manage this way and we can see our money as a whole and budget properly rather than having separate accounts.
Cut back on luxuries
Cutting back on luxuries is the easiest way to save money. We are only cutting back, not cutting out completely as we still want to enjoy life and not turn down every opportunity to go out or do something. If we go without these, we can put that money in the savings and use it for days out of family holidays.. thing we're likely to enjoy more and make memories from. We've also tried to cut down our monthly bills and are trying to remember to use sites like voucher slug to get discounts when we shop online if there is something we really do want or need or for birthdays etc. They have discounts and vouchers for over 5,000 shops so there is bound to be lots of opportunity for some money saving!
Do the 365 savings challenge
We are doing the 365 saving plan where you start at 1p on the first day, 2p on the second day, 3p on the third day etc. It seems a bit pointless to begin with but by the end of the year it equates too £667.95 which is great considering it doesn't feel like much! It feels so manageable as well no matter what your income.
We are doing the 365 saving plan where you start at 1p on the first day, 2p on the second day, 3p on the third day etc. It seems a bit pointless to begin with but by the end of the year it equates too £667.95 which is great considering it doesn't feel like much! It feels so manageable as well no matter what your income.
Save 'loose change' at the end of the day
This is something I saw on Kerry's blog Oh so Amelia and again thought it seemed like a pretty manageable way to save. The idea is at the end of the day, you check your bank and transfer any 'loose' change you have left under £5 or £10 to your savings. You can do it to the nearest £5 or £10, depending what you feel is manageable for your earnings. For example if I had £104.96 sitting in my account I would transfer £4.96 to my savings account. If I had £80.75 then I would transfer the 75p. When checking my bank, I always round things down to the nearly £1 anyway so hopefully I won't notice this too much!
This is something I saw on Kerry's blog Oh so Amelia and again thought it seemed like a pretty manageable way to save. The idea is at the end of the day, you check your bank and transfer any 'loose' change you have left under £5 or £10 to your savings. You can do it to the nearest £5 or £10, depending what you feel is manageable for your earnings. For example if I had £104.96 sitting in my account I would transfer £4.96 to my savings account. If I had £80.75 then I would transfer the 75p. When checking my bank, I always round things down to the nearly £1 anyway so hopefully I won't notice this too much!
Write down our spendings
My mum has always been an advocate of this but I never really saw the point, but now I have started, it's quite addicting to keep going and see what you actually spend your money on. It also makes you think twice about spending money on something when you have to write it down in your little book & put the price.
These are all pretty simple things we can do to try and save some money to have a bit more of a cushion when the unexpected happens. We're going to really try and stick to this, I'm intrigued to see how much money we will have at the end of the year!
MORE MONEY SAVING POSTS:
Wedding planning - How we're saving
3 ways to lower your monthly bills
How to save money on fun, family days out
*PR collaboration but all thoughts are honest & my own
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