I don’t know about anyone else, but as the winter months start to approach, and the holiday season is upon us, I find that money seems to disappear more than normal. I don’t know if it’s because the colder weather makes me want to spend more, or I take my eye off the ball a bit as I enjoy buying gifts for others, but I find that money becomes more tight than normal at this time of the year. This post goes through some easy ways to spend less.
As I’m currently on maternity leave, it’s more important than ever to make sure our money is used wisely and not wasted at all. I think I need to remember what’s important; I don’t need any more items now that I’m at home all day. I need to cherish the time I have with our son and prioritise time with him over anything. Spending quality time with family members is free, which means I shouldn’t have to spend at all!
Linked post: How To Save Money When You Have A Baby
I have been thinking of ways to spend less which are easy to implement and make a big difference over time, which helps with our long term plan of early retirement and savings, so I thought I’d share them with you so that you can easily spend less!
Have NSDs during the week.
One of the easiest ways to spend less easily is to not spend during the working week. So, Monday through Friday are all No Spend Days. Now, this does involve some forward planning, but it is amazing how much money you can save by not spending whilst you’re at work during the week. I’m a massive fan of NSDs and attribute them to being able to budget so effectively. I track my NSDs using my NSD tracker, as I love the visual aid as a motivator.
Linked post: Why I Love No Spend Days!
Linked post: The Working Week Challenge
Stay busy!
This might be obvious, but you can’t spend if you keep yourself busy. Since having a baby, my spending has decreased even further because I simply don’t have the time to spend any money, even if I wanted to! Spend time with family, go for walks, read a book (currently reading this
Don’t take your purse/wallet or any money with you.
Another way to easily spend less is to not have any viable means of spending on you. You can’t spend money if you don’t have any means to! I keep an emergency £10 in my work bag which is there just in case I really need it, such as petrol on the way home, but apart from that, I have no way of spending during the week. It really is a simple way to force yourself to spend less.
Spend less time on social media
I don’t know about anyone else, but I can find myself spending wasting time on various social media accounts, particularly Instagram and Pinterest. I love looking at the beautiful pictures are there and can spend many a time looking at home inspiration pictures. Seriously, there are some beautiful homes around the world! I also like to look on there for homemade craft ideas and for new recipes. But, I find that I start to want more things in our home, the more time I spend on social media sites.
The influence of the “perfect lifestyle” on Instagram and Pinterest makes me feel like my home is not good enough. It’s a bizarre but very well thought out concept; many bloggers can make a lot of money by posting pictures and making people buy into that lifestyle. Although I have both a Pinterest account and an Instagram account, I am trying to limit my time on those.
Pay with cash.
Lastly, and one of the easiest ways I think to spend less, is to pay with cash wherever possible. Now, if you use cashback credit cards, then this might not be the best option, but I think that by paying with cash, it seems much more real in terms of monetary spending. If you are physically handing over notes to pay for an item, it makes you think twice about the amount you are actually spending, rather than just sticking it on plastic and forgetting about it.
I realise that cashback cards can be a good thing if you are meticulous about paying them off each month, but using cash to pay for purchases definitely reduces my spending. There’s something difficult about handing over wads of cash for something! If you follow me on YouTube, you will know I’m a cash budgeter!
Linked post: The September Cash Challenge
Linked post: Money Confession: I Don’t Use Reward Credit CardsÂ
What are your tips for easily spending less? Do you agree with the ones I’ve posted?Â
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Completely agree on the social media front – I see all these lovely homes on Pinterest and Instagram and feel like I need to buy to make my home look nicer. You never know how much debt these people might be in though to keep up the image/lifestyle!
That’s very true; they must spend a fortune on all the additional bits!
I haven’t properly told you how much I love the idea of no spend days. I haven’t officially implemented them yet, but I think it’s a great idea. And social media is great at attempting to fill voids through “Stuff” and “things” and buying more! Excellent words.
NSDs are great 🙂 and please share this if you’ve found it helpful!
poor people spend money on the indoors, rich people spend the money outdoors.
i bought my first laptop after 25 years of fixing old computers from somebody’s trash. my car is 19 years old. I buy my clothes at thrift stores. I buy things I might need like tools instead of things I might want. would never buy cable tv, paying for brainwashing/ lobotomy/ filth. Buy coffee if you can’t stay awake, don’t worry too much. It would suck to be a slave who can’t hold onto anything valuable.
I limit myself to shopping for food only twice a month, and then only for essentials, or stuff I’m running out of.my monthly food budget just for myself is £60.00 but I do have a roast sunday dinner at my daughters weekly which helps I batch cook and streetch my meals out as much as possible I rarely eat breakfast and never have but prefer lunch and dinner.
I’ve just watched your £10.00 a week video and it was interesting I would probably have bought some porridge and the small tin of beans I would have changed for a larger one.I buy a tin of pilchard the small Glenryk ones and at 50p they easily do me 2 meals as I add a decent dollop of mayo to streetch it out a bit I buy a loaf of wholemeal bread and portion it up into 4 slice portions and freeze but I don’t eat a great deal of bread anyway The eggs were good and an omelette or scrambled eggs were excellent,I would also have done poached eggs on toast as a change for lunch perhaps .Well done on your video though i also shop when the stuff is reduced in price if I can. My one ‘must have ‘ would be a pack of ginger nut biscuits and maybe 2 pints of milk instead of one But well done