Let’s be honest, people who watch the pennies (out of choice) are always deeply, deeply annoying.
I’m trying to change my habits, though. Spent a decade at least just buying what i want, logic being that buying yourself nice things every day’s better for the ol’ mental health than depriving yourself.
Need to start putting a bit away now, though, which shouldn’t be too hard given i barely ever do a bigshop and go to the pub and bookies every day, but how do you convince your brain that it’s not grim going without fun things?
Has anyone got any productive tips beyond the usual batch-cooking bores?
The trick is to hate your job with a passion and mentally redefine money as time spent at work. You’ll start naturally gravitating towards free, rewarding hobbies like finding good deals on vegetables and defending Billy Corgan on the internet.
I find it helpful to stick away a small amount each week, basically like a bill or whatever. In about October least year I started sticking a tenner each Monday into a savings account, meant that by the time Chistmas rolled around I had like £120 in there. Didn’t really miss the tenner, was super helpful to have it an Christmas for buying food/booze/some presents etc. Imagine doing that would work as well for holiday spending money as well.
Also well into @ttf about weekly targets and budgetting that way. Been doing that for the last few years and found it really helpful to clear a huge overdraft I’d built up.
There are so many good apps to budget with nowadays. Once you start feeling like you’re reaching goals and can see in a nicely laid out/graphic way how much money you’ve saved and what you spend on stuff, it’s bordering on fun.
When I got better with money it was because I’d made two savings accounts; one as a proper rainy day savings account and one as a designated fun account. Have to spend it on holidays or trips or footy or nice things. Having the two separate helped work things out financially, and isn’t boring.
I use moneybox app. Its an investment app and takes the odd pence on your purchases (5p from a £9.95 purchase for example) and invests them. I do that and add £50 a month on payday. Beem doing it 8 months and have over £700. It’s kind of fun checking what rate you have (currently 4% growth but does fluctuate). You can lose money on it though