Do you look at your bank balance and scratch your head wondering how you’ve already rolled into your overdraft having just been paid 5 days ago? I know we used to. Well paid jobs and very minimal financial responsibilities, mortgage, food and running 2 cars were pretty much all we had, yet still our money was siphoning away somehow, but we never actually did anything about it at the time, we just thought that everyone lived like this… didn’t they?

Fast forward over a decade and nothing had really changed, we still weren’t managing to plug that money spending, but didn’t really have anything to show for the amount going out.

Enough is enough, right. It was time to sort this out.

WRITE IT DOWN, WRITE IT ALL DOWN!

The very first thing we did was start to write everything down, and when I say everything, I mean everything. Every single penny you spend, pop it on a spreadsheet, budgeting app or even a written notebook, whatever medium you like, as long as you account for everything you spend. So rent, car payments, insurance, bills, gym memberships, subscriptions, travel expenses, clothes, tech, coffees, gum, lunches, supermarket shops, pub, takeaways etc. You have to commit to this or it won’t work.

Once you have a month’s worth of data, go back through your list and tally up how much you spend on each thing. For instance, if you buy a coffee every morning on the way to work that’s around £50 per month (I’m just going on an average Americano £2.50, I know a lot of you have slightly more expensive latte tastes!) so £600 a year, that’s just one coffee per week day. That’s just one item. Do this for everything.

Now, you have to have your essential spending so keep the list of your rent/mortgage and utility bills separate, as they’ll be pretty much fixed and, well, you need to pay them!

Everything else is fair game.

Where did I see my own personal money drain? Everywhere. I never prepared for things. I’d go to the gym 6 days a week, sometimes twice a day depending on when my classes were and each time I bought a minimum of 1 bottle of water. (This was a while ago and I’ve seen the error of my environmentally unfriendly habit!) So it was roughly £10 on water every week, that’s £520 a year. Why couldn’t I just invest in a nifty refillable water bottle and fill it at the water fountain? Because I just didn’t think of it until I saw how much I was spending on it!

So cutting down on just 1 coffee per day and buying a refillable water bottle has immediately saved me £1100 a year. Does that not just sound INSANE, two tiny changes and I’ve saved over a grand.

We were very free and easy with ordering takeaway too, no less than 3 times a week, minimum £15 spend, depending on where we went. So we decided to have a designated takeaway night instead and cooked for the other days instead. Saving over a thousand a year and also making life that little bit healthier!

So I’ve just given you 3 areas of my own life where I managed to claw back a minimum of £2000 a year, just by reducing one coffee per day, taking a refillable water bottle and cutting down on takeaways. There’s lots more of course, but your spending habits will probably be very different to mine, so it’ll be interesting to see what you come up with. Take the time to really think about what you spend your money on and the things you know you can quite happily cut back on.

So go on, indulge me, and give this a go and see if you can start saving this month, you’ll be amazed at where your money actually goes!!