Weekly Budgeting – 2014 Saving Guide
If you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to save money and shop a little smarter this year, then well done. Good intentions aren’t enough on their own though – now you’ve got to put it into action.
Saving money might sound like a huge challenge. But, the best way to tackle it is to break your spending down into a weekly budget.
Here’s some easy pointers on how to set up a weekly budget. Hopefully, this should help you stay on top of your spending this year.
Be realistic with your numbers
Before you get stuck into a frenzy of cutting costs and looking for big savings, it’s important to know what you have to play with. That means a cold, hard look at all your incomings and your essential outgoings.
Bills, utilities, a weekly food spend all need to be in your “going out” budget. Look at how much you’re actually spending now. Before you cut out anything, decide what is “essential” to you. Is that morning coffee run to the fancy cappuccino joint next to work a must-have? Do you prioritize a drink out with your mates mid-week? Could you be cutting out that weekly trip to the movies? These are some of the tough questions you have to ask yourself.
Look out for everyday deals
There will always be special offers and promotions. These are designed to lure new customers to spend some of their hard earned cash. Don’t fall for the hype.
Do some research, especially when it comes to big purchases like choosing one of the latest contract phones or your internet provider. Shop around and look for the best deal. Read the small print to find out if you’re on a long term good offer. If not, you may get a nasty price hike coming your way.
Nourish yourself well
It’s tempting to go for the cheapest thing on the shelves in the name of saving money. However, you have to learn where it’s worth spending a little more to save in the long run. Skip the cheap as chips value ready meals and instead invest in some basic whole food ingredients. You’ll be surprised at how many meals a few cupboard essentials can yield. Plus you get to enjoy a far healthier lifestyle, resulting in a happier you.
Treat yourself – within reason
When you’re on a budget, life can sometimes seem a little grim. All those tantalizing things that are out of your reach can test your willpower and lead to a binge that could waste all your hard work in one shopping spree.
But if you really want to stay on top of your budget, you should factor in a little ‘fun money’. Whether you love a night out at the cinema, dinner at your favorite restaurant or splurging on a new pair of shoes, work it into your weekly budget so you can spend without feeling guilty.
Weekly budgeting can be tough. But, its necessary if you are serious on saving cash. I hope that our top tips to creating a sustainable weekly budget helps. In the long term, this will help you have the life that you want – with plenty of fun things thrown in along the way.
Being realistic with our numbers and treating ourselves a bit have been crucial to successful budgeting for us. Last year our budget numbers were WAY too strict, and we’d feel guilty when we couldn’t meet them. We’ve gotten more realistic this year and it’s going much better.
I’m definitely serious about saving, so I make it a priority. I budget but I also ensure that I track my spending.
All good suggestions, but before all of this starts I think you need to define “saving money” and what it means in your situation. It sounds straight forward but is it really?
If you buy a TV on sale have you really saved any money? Maybe, but only if you were actually planning to buy a TV and had saved up the money and were able to get it for less than planned, and here’s the key, you put the money “saved” because of the sale into your savings account. In other words you were able to reduce your planned spend and put the difference into your savings.
If you are currently spending more than you earn and are adding to your debt on a regular basis, then cutting your costs by any method isn’t really saving. It’s just reducing your spending to live within your means.
If you currently spend all you earn and you manage to reduce your spending, I’d suggest that everytime you avoid or reduce what had been a normal expense, that you transfer that amount to a separate savings account. The money isn’t really “saved” if you leave available to spend on a something else.
Many years ago we were making minimal contributions to our retirement accounts because we felt we couldn’t afford to do more. Then we got serious about cutting and reducing our spending. We cut the cable, and added that amount to the monthly retirement contribution. We negotiated a better cell plan and added the savings to the monthly contributions. Switched to a bank account with no fees – added the normal amount for monthly fees to the contribution amount. By the time we’d finished cutting things we didn’t really value, and negotiating better deals on the things we kept we discovered we were “saving” several hundred dollars per month. The catch was we now had to move those funds into our retirment accounts every month. Unless you have a plan of where to save up that saved money it’s just likely going to get spent on something different.