So a Facebook friend messaged me today.
Alison shared with me what she does to save physical cash. She sets herself a weekly cash grocery budget and if she hasn’t used all her budget up she puts the remainder in a savings jar. She does this each and every week.
I use my debit card a LOT. I’ve read over and over that it’s a LOT harder to spend when you have to physically hand over cash. It’s more painful to do so.. (I’ve been watching Dave Ramsey videos!)
So today, after hearing of Alison’s idea, I got cash out of the ATM and put my monthly budget into a jar and worked out what I could withdraw every week from the jar and keep in my purse for daily expenses.
Looking at my monthly budget I created I could see that that the total amount designated for groceries, household (toilet rolls, bin bags, toiletries etc), entertainment and petrol/travel was £280 per month. This includes the £15 per week I spend on an organic veg box from www.riverford.co.uk (which comes out of my bank account). So taking off the £60 for my veggie boxes that leaves £220 for 4 weeks for all of the above.
Each week I will put £55 physical cash in my purse and pay by cash and see if a few £’s remain at the end of the week for the cash savings jar.
I’m determined to face this year head on, as prepared as I can be, work any overtime if I can, take control and feel safe again.
It’s kind of an oxymoron really, while losing lbs I’ll be saving £’s 🙂
C xxxxxx
I’m getting brutal with my budget. I’m cutting back to the bare bones and automating payments for all bills. Any extras(outside meals, entertainment) will be paid out of the $40 I’ll take out of the bank at the beginning of the month. The library is an excellent resource. I can use internet, get books(including ebooks) and movies.
Automating bills def seems to help me… I have a list of what date all things come out of my bank account. My rent comes at an unfortunate time in that its 4 or 5 days before monthly pay day! Thats handy for you to have a well stocked library and lending service nearby! Good luck with your coming months budget! We should share our experiences… might be able to get tips off each other! Alisons idea today I think was a very good one. xxx
Oh, something I forgot to mention, I got an Amazon gift card for Xmas and I use it to buy myself a 3 month membership to amazon prime. I suspended my Netflix and Hulu streaming services and will stream from Amazon for those 3 months.
Good idea! My Amazon Prime is cancelling from Jan 10th, my gym membership cancelling from Jan 30 which will save me about £55 a month! Keeping Netflix as its the only TV/media we have, I can access catch up TV through my internet via my Amazon Firestick which is all free 🙂 xxx
Sounds like a win win situation to me Carolyn!
I’m really so enthusiastic about this all…. I’ve done a forward plan tonight of where I want to be by the end of 2018 regarding paying off the old debts I have and the emergency fund I want in place, pension savings (need to increase once I get through 2018)…feel like I have a good plan xxxx
What a great idea. I am anxious to see how this works out! I think I may give it a go with you! It will be hard because online shop is such fun!
Oh I know!!! Online shopping is my life line to be honest as I don’t have much time to go out shopping!!! Look forward to hearing how you get on!!! xxxx
love that you are going the “jar” route Carolyn, keep track of your spending (it will surprise you) and stick to it! good luck, ann in BC
you may want to consider jars for each type of expenditure, one for food & paper goods etc, one for gas, and so on. one big jar with all of the cash in it is quite a temptation!! ann
at month end I find a big budget book very useful, it should be all lined, with expenditures along the left hand top to bottom, months are across the top, with two colums each month one for “$$ spent) and one for “amount remaining” at years end you can add up total amount for groceries, cash, rents etc. all useful information. You will have to work with this a while to get all your payments, expenses etc worked out. don’t despair, it is an ongoing project. ann
Yes…good idea. Having given this some thought I’m going to increase the amount of jars but keep it simple and divide my household cash expenditure between three.
£90 a month for food (£60 in total also comes out of my bank for weekly organic veg boxes)
£80 a month for entertainment, clothing, toiletries, treats like odd bottle of wine etc
£50 a month for petrol/travel/anything car related.
I’ll put those three amounts in the three jars and take the weekly amount out every week from each and clip these in my purse.
Any leftovers at the end of the week goes in the cash savings jar 🙂
That will work for me, any more complicated than that and I’ll lose interest!!! LOL! xxxx
Although I will diligently write out my monthly budget each and every month as per my last blog post…..I know when each and every bill comes out of the bank and exactly how much I have in it! It does feel good to be more in control even if that does mean having to go without the little expenses that soon add up!!! xxxx
Every month my grocery money £80 (which feeds me and my dog and buys cleaning stuff, toilet rolls etc), is transferred onto my pre-pay debit card. I use that for all my groceries, any money left rolls over to the following month and helps absorb the bit extra that I spend at Christmas/New Year. In January I’m hoping to spend very, very little, I am sooo close to paying off my mortgage and just want it over and done with now and then that frees up some money for saving every month
Wow that’s really good!!!!! 🙂 I hope to cut mine down more than I’ve set it at than I have but figured start with something with a bit more wiggle room and see how much I can save out of that with the jar. Baby steps 🙂
Great idea, Carolyn! I’m sure you will be successful! New year, new you!
I’m doing the same for this year. I did this years ago and it worked well for a while. I find that like with eating properly, sometimes something that works just doesn’t fit right anymore and I have to change to a different way of doing things but a few years later can go back to the old way again. I actually broke it down to days. If I remember correctly I had a tenner a day but for the weekend, just had whatever I hadn’t spent during the week.
This time I feel like I need to start with so much per week that I’m guaranteed to not actually spend all of it. Sometimes you need the easy wins. I’ve just signed up for a veg box/CSA-type scheme so that will actually cover the bulk of my food costs. For the first two months of the year I won’t be going out much in an attempt to build up a bit of a buffer from the cash left over every week. Good luck with your jars!
Since my husband left 8 years ago and I have complete control over my salary (ie. I don’t have him spending us out of house and home) I switched to envelopes in a tin under the armchair in my bedroom (shhh, don’t tell anyone). It is so silly but that is what worked for my parents who had very little income and 7 kids. Budgeting was never taught to me but I guess watching them using the envelope system sunk in to me. The silly thing is I actually work in Switzerland (so I have a Swiss bank account – not one of THOSE kinds of course) but while the level of income is vastly different to the UK so is the cost of living, so it’s envelopes for me. And you know what, it works. Like a previous commenter said, I split up my cash outgoings into separate envelopes because I wouldn’t be able to keep track of it all in one big jar/envelope. But good luck to you. And I love your blog by the way. Anna