Buy what you need and not what you don't

[attagirl]

I know that when you only buy what you need and not those things you think you need that you can save a lot of money that can be used for others later. What have you done to stop buying unnecessary things.

[APhillips86]

Sometime it is hard to buy what you don't need. I am at a point where I have no choice but to buy only what I need to get buy. I make between 150-200 a week, And pay 125 a week rent, I pay about 50 a month for my cell phone and I spend about 20-30 a week on food for the week. So basically I have no money to buy unnecessary things, hence my way not to buy them is that I can't :-P

[Consultant_Lorens]

Hello There,

Yesterday, was the first day of my experiment. I am going to try to go the entire month without buying anything unecessary.

You might think this easy, however, the last couple of months I have paid close attention to my buying habits and I am ashamed of myself. I have never thought of myself as a materialistic person. I never have to have the new trends, cool car, rad new phone. But I have noticed that when it comes to my children, I am a compulsive buyer.

So, day one, no problem. Didn’t buy anything.

Lets hope the month goes on like this.

[Aibo]

We've started to monitor our family spending more closely and we too are amazed at the amount of money we spend as a family on non essentials. We've found the best way to actually do this is get about 12 larger A4 brown envelopes and mark each with a month and place ALL reciepts in them every time you return from a trip out. It's very easy then at the end of the month to spot where your spending is a little losser than it should be.

As a family, we noticed some of our biggest expense was food. But not just grocery shopping. It was more treats and eating out. We could easily spend £100 to £200 a week on eating out when we could be saving a fortune by staying in an eating food we already had at home and paid for.

[Consultant_Lorens]

Hello Again,

A fantastic Month and a fabulous Christmas. I think i am on the right track now. My last month was an agressive saving month, where i ignored all unnecessary ependitures and only invested in neccessities. With this pace i could save a lot in this coming year.

Wishing you all a Very happy and properous new year and a good healthy financial year.

Regards