31 days of money saving and stuff - day two

My tip for today

Use cash.

Each week we withdraw the shopping budget amount in cash and it goes in my purse. As the money decreases through the week (yeah, I'm one of those shop a few times, not do a big shop sort of girls most times), I start to think "do I actually need to buy this, or is it just a want". We did recently agree to slightly increase the weekly budget as I was regularly getting to day five or six and realising oh, we still need milk/bread/loo roll (the three most bought items in our house, probably) and the money was gone, or nearly gone. But if I'd been buying on the debit card all the time it would be a lot easier to go over budget/not keep track of what I was spending (and I'm talking from past experience)

The other thing I do is when I get the new money (usually crisp notes from the cash machine) I empty anything that is in my purse out into a jar. If I didn't already spend it, I clearly didn't need it that week. If I leave it in my purse, likihood is I will spend it the next week. But if it's out of the purse I can't spend it. Those dribs and drabs add up and can be used for treats, or, ad I often do, to go towards other money needs, like we pay our water bill by having a card scanned at the shop and giving them x amount to add on to our account, so having cash around to do that is a bonus.