Many of us are now looking for ways to save money. It seems like everyone would like more money or is finding things expensive these days and therefore learning how to spend less can be very useful.
Identify Necessities and Luxuries
These days we spend money on lots of different things. In our grandparents time they bought electricity, landline phone, food, rent, insurance, tax, TV licence, clothing, basic homeware or repaying loans. These days we have a lot more things that we consider to be necessary such as a car, mobile phone, the latest electronics, convenience foods and alcohol, entertainment such as TV packages and going out and all sorts of other things. This means that our basic spending is much higher and if we want to treat ourselves we spend even more. It can therefore be worth thinking about what we really need and what we do not. If we start to see some of these items, such as convenience foods, TV packages and mobile phones as treats, then we may not feel the need to spend money in treating ourselves to other things as well and we will be able to generally reduce our spending. It can be worth just looking at everything we spend and consider whether we actually need or want all of the items that we are buying as we could find that we are getting things that we are not really using or enjoying that much, such as TV channels, magazine subscriptions etc. Sometimes we can forget how much these things cost and we could easily save money by giving them up without noticing much difference.
Learn to Budget
It is good to make sure that you know how to budget. Keeping to a budget can be tricky, but once you make sure that you have set a realistic budget and you focus on sticking to it, it is not too difficult. Start by looking at your income and all of your necessary expenses. You can do this by looking back over current account and credit card statements. It can be interesting looking at where your money is going as sometimes it can be very easy to spend and not realise quite where our money is going. You will be able to make a note of all of the things that you buy which are necessary and then see whether you can cut back on your spending on other items. Then based on this you should be able to set yourself a budget for each week or month to make sure that you do not overspend. You can then reduce the chances of you going into debt before you next get paid and you may even be able to have some money left over each month so that you can save.
Compare Prices
It is important to compare the prices of things that you buy so that you do not spend more than necessary. This can take time, but it can make a considerable difference to how much you spend overall. If you do not want to spend too much time on it, then just do it for the really expensive things, such as insurance, utilities and things like that. By switching to a different company, you could end up saving a significant amount of money each year. However, if you compare all prices, then you can save a lot more. You could do this while you are shopping in the shop that you are in or you could compare prices of different shops and go for the cheapest. This can be easier to do online as you can do a search more easily than visiting lots of different shops. There are even comparison websites, which can make it easier, but they will not include every possibility.
Avoid Places Where you Spend Money
If we walk into a shop, town centre, shopping centre or whatever, we may be tempted to start browsing and then to spend money. The same may happen if we visit certain websites where we shop regularly. It can be wise to get out of the habit of visiting these places so that we cannot spend money. It is even better to make sure that you are not automatically spending money there without really thinking about it. It can be wise to make sure that you step back and think about every transaction before you make it and you may get out of the habit of spending money without really realising that you are doing it.
