Show me the money




I don’t know about you, but I’ve never thought of myself as one to waste money. I mean, I’m a self proclaimed bargain hunter. But when does it stop being about spending wisely, and starts being about trying to stop yourself from buying everything you don’t need? Any one else know what I mean?

The problem is I find those “sale” prices. EVERY TIME! And then I end up feeling pressured, by myself no less, into buying everything. Towards the end of 2018, I realized something had to change. Because I had new responsibilities, like paying rent for the house I’d just moved in to, I ended up being more conscious of my spending.

Like I mentioned earlier, I have always thought of myself as someone who’s quite good with money. Maybe it was because I didn’t really have much to spend those times as opposed to now. But it was a shock to my system when I began to take stock of my finance at the end of 2018. This was prompted by a post on here in December called Realistic Stock Taking (if you haven’t read it, I’ll encourage you to do so). In the post Uche spoke about being honest with ourselves and that’s exactly what I did. After I sat myself down and had serious words about my spending habits, I decided to put pen to paper and come up with a reasonable plan on how I could change this year.

Realistically speaking, there are a number of ways to ensure you don’t end up like me; spending what you don’t have in reality. I’d like to share with you a few of the things I wrote down, but feel free to add any ideas you might have that I don’t mention in the comments below.

So the first thing I wrote down, which I ended up doing as soon as I had finished making my notes, was to open a new bank account that would be used solely for my expenditures. The idea is that my current account would be for receiving payments and this new account (I got a Monzo card as my second account. It’s amazing and I think everyone should get one too! )
will be used for my spending. Which has been working well so far and ties in perfectly with number two on my list.

The second thing I wrote down was to make myself a monthly budget. This is surprisingly not something I’d done before. I mean I set up a monthly food budget for my house about 6 years ago, but nothing for myself personally. Don’t worry, I see how silly I was now.
I’ll put my hands up and say it now, following a budget is SO HARD! The amount of times I’ve had to stop myself this month because something was out of my budget is actually scary. Considering it’s only January! It really helps that I transfer my monthly budget to the Monzo card and I can see exactly how much I have left to spend. I’m still trying to stick to my weekly budget and I’m also praying for grace to carry it on too.

Something else I put down was to make the conscious effort of remembering to take lunch to work from home. Honestly so far, I feel like this should have been at the top of my list. The amount I’ve saved has surprised me. I know this is something most people do already, but this is my first proper job and I honestly never thought about it seriously. It was easy to just buy my lunch at work. But when it costs me £5 to buy things I already have at home, I actually got mad at myself for it.

Anyway, enough about me. I’m sure you wrote down some resolutions for this year, like I did. I’ve just shared some from the finance part of mine. Did you make any resolutions concerning your money?

Do you have any tips on how we can spend with wisdom? Please share in the comments below.
Bee

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