Budgeting Tips
How can I work out how much I should be spending on food?
I used government figures issued in late 25 in my book Smart Spending with Jane Furnival. The average UK home has 2.4 people in it, and the disposable income of around 464 pounds a week. Each person spends £43.50 on food and soft drinks, £11.70 on alcohol, and £34.90 on restaurants and hotels. The average single working person has £281.40 per week and spends £21.80 on food and soft drinks, £9.20 on alcohol, and £23.80 on restaurants and hotels. Working couples without children spend £45.70 on food. Pensioners spend £21.10 or, if they have private pensions, £45.90 a week on food.
Should I use a price calculator as I shop?
If you have a price calculator and need to use it to help with budgeting, then use it when you shop. If you've got a calculator on your mobile phone or you want to slip one in your pocket, why not?
Should I plan for Christmas throughout the year?
Try to plan for Christmas throughout the year. It makes it a lot easier to grab a bargain when you see it, rather than spending a huge chunk of your budget over Christmas. If you only spend at Christmas, you end up facing everything in the New Year - other bill like the television license, council tax, etc. It does make sense to try to plan for Christmas throughout the year. I shouldn't, however, pay into special Christmas savings schemes of any kind at all. If you have money to spare throughout the year, pay it into a building society and get the interest.
Is it more cost effective to shop weekly, fortnightly, or monthly?
Does it make better budget sense to shop weekly, fortnightly or monthly? It's more important where you show than how long the intervals between shopping are. Buy your fresh fruit little and often, preferably open markets for the very cheapest things. Farmers' markets tend to be a bit more expensive these days. But don't buy fresh fruit and stuff at places by busy roads because of pollution. Then you can bolt buy other things like cleaning fluids when you see special offers in supermarkets or even warehouse shopping clubs or, I recommend, foreign known cheap supermarkets where the items for sale may not have familiar trade names but they're certainly very good value. Guard against the impulse to try to have everything that's possible to have in your cupboard. You are not a restaurant. Your family will and can make do with what there is there.
How can I split my money up effectively each month?
The most important and probably the largest bills you'll have to budget for each month are your mortgage or rent, travel and power. You can pretty much predict these how much money you'll need to budget for these each month. Then, you can make a spending list using the budget planner in my book, "Smart Spending with Jane Furnival", and you can also download one for free from my website, smartspending.co.uk. You can use that to work out where your money is going, and how to budget in order to cut it down. If necessary, take cups, flowerpots or even empty envelopes labelled with different categories and actually a put cash sum in it for the month, if that might help. Remember, shoes for women and tools for men are the two most wasteful purchases when spending money. Try to save three months' money in a building society in case of emergencies like illness or redundancy.
How can I stop myself spending money on unnecessary things?
The hardest thing in life is to stop yourself spending money on unnecessary things because when you're actually spending it, you've convinced yourself that that thing is utterly necessary. The easiest thing to do is, don't go shopping. Plan to go and see people, walk in the park, go to the library instead. Walk away if you are shopping. Walk away from something in the shops. Walk around a bit. Can you actually remember the shape or the color or the price of the thing you thought was absolutely so necessary? It really helps when you're shopping to concentrate your thoughts, if you make a list before you go and take a dog, a baby, or a man who hates shopping. That way, there's no time to browse. Shopping lists are fantastic, I'm great fans of them. Swap your shopping list with a friend's shopping list so that they have to do your shopping with your cash in their hands and you have to do theirs. That way, you're not tempted to fritter. You could also hold a family competition to see who can feed everybody most cheaply for a week, or who can shop and cook most cheaply. It's amazing what you can save by taking a long cold look at various things on your bank statement like club memberships, magazine subscriptions, and going out to restaurants. If you cut those out, even if you have takeaways instead of restaurants, you'll save a lot of money. You can save hugely every year by just not going away on holiday because when you're on holiday, the brakes are off. Have weekends, long weekends, or days out based at home. And also, never shop when you're away from home because you're always on a holiday mood away from home and things just don't really count, do they?
