Savings Guide Australia

The nightly ritual that will save you money

Francesca Sidoti — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:00:16 +0000

Research suggests that you shouldn’t read or watch TV just before bed as it will leave you over-stimulated and interrupt your sleep.

That pretty much cuts all of my nightly activities, so I’m on the search to find myself a nightly ritual for the half an hour before I get some REM action.

Here’s what you’ll find me doing before beddy-byes from now on.

30 minutes before bed

Toting up my day, in financial terms. This means adding all my expenditure into my financial journal (without sparing details about the chocolate purchases or the taxi that I caught due to extreme sloth and wet shoes), and making any necessary alterations to my income in the journal.

I’m a pen and paper kind of girl, but if you like computer versions, maybe check out the Savings Guide Budget Spreadsheet.

If you don’t need bells and whistles (or don’t like giving up passwords to your bank accounts, which is a fair concern) maybe Excel is the simplest way to enter your financial details in your computer.

Make a note of when bills need to be paid. It’s not necessarily a pleasant experience just before bed, but if you haven’t gotten to it earlier in the day, now is the time to pay the bills that are due.

25 minutes before bed

Comparing my expenditure with my budget, and making the necessary alterations. Again, online tools are great in that you can automatically make changes, instead of the scribbling that are required with pen and paper.

Knowing your finances intimately is key to improving them. Making sure you’ve checked your budget reflects your actual day-to-day financial dealings will mean your budget is realistic and there are no lurking nasty surprises.

20 minutes before bed

If you find some savings between what you’ve budgeted and what you’ve spent, save them.

Put spare coins in a piggy bank, a surprise $50 into your savings account or pay off a little bit of your credit card.

This doesn’t have to be a part of every day, but constant reminders that you are making advances will keep you determined and motivated.

15 minutes before bed

Get up and move about. Check that your appliances are off, not on stand by, and save yourself on electricity costs. Turn appliances you don’t use often off at the wall, and disconnect the cord.

Make the preparations for the next day; they may seem trivial now, but will save you having to make emergency purchases. It’s the little things- like bottling and refrigerating your own water. If you never have time to make lunch in the morning, then make it the night before so all you have to do is grab it and run in the morning.

10 minutes before bed

Now is the time to find some Zen. You may scoff, but research about the benefits of ten minutes of mediation a day shows that it reduces your stress and makes you healthier, all of which ups your happiness levels. On top of which, it’s the perfect way to drift into the land of sleep.

What are the benefits for your finances of meditation?

It’s free and it helps you to make decisions, free of the usual distractions of stress and anxiety. If you want more reasons, this is a good list.

And on that note, off to bed I go!

What are you daily money rituals?

You don’t need a large income to be debt free

Alex — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:00:52 +0000

It’s not about the income level, it’s about the daily choices we all make with money.

I really admire the writer at Savings Advice. Living a debt free existence, she gets to the heart of the issues surrounding debt and becoming debt free. As the above quote shows, it’s quite clear that becoming debt free isn’t about having squillions upon squillions (although that would be nice).

Becoming debt free has a lot to do with the choices we make on a day-to-day level.

If you like moving from coffee shop to coffee shop or ‘investing’ in new season boots at an alarming frequency, then go for it. Just don’t then complain that lots of people have so much more money than you, which is why you’re in debt.

I hate acknowledging it too- that my debt is my fault. Maybe there should be a support group. We could have our own version of the Serenity Prayer. We could call it Debtaholics.

Short of finding such a wondrous place of support and meaning, maybe we should think about how we can get out of debt with the income we have, not the one we want.

Get smart

Think about what you’re doing with money. This lovely gent talks of his days in debt with an emphasis on how unthinking his financial decisions were. It wasn’t that he didn’t earn enough money, he just spent it unconsciously.

Get smart about your financial decisions, and you’ll start to see the savings potential.

Spend last year’s income, not next year’s

I know, this is my favourite spending maxim and I use it all the time, but the point remains. Every raise you get, bank as much of it as humanely possible. It’s remarkable how frequently you come across advice that suggests the best way to get out of debt is to borrow against something- your life insurance, your home, your friends and family.

Personally, these are risks I wouldn’t relish taking. I would much prefer to chip away at the debt, say with the money I get from a raise, than risk something like life insurance.

Get healthy

If your medical bills are costing you a fortune, think about trying to become debt free. It is suggested that debt stress is a contributor to health issues, from ulcers through to heart attacks. Your income can only stretch so many ways, so think about reducing your repayments at the same time as carving up your health costs.

Sounds like a sensible savings idea to me.

Money savers

If you’ve got a modest income and some liabilities, it can seem an impossible task to tackle your debt. But changes that can be made have no need to be drastic, it’s about your daily choices. Some quick money saving tips include combining your cable, internet and telephone service or investing in that wondrous new telephone technology called VOiP.

Having a small income doesn’t mean you can’t tackle your debt. Making a couple of small changes on a daily basis and understanding the true nature of your finances are two essential steps to becoming debt-free.

Are you aiming to become debt free?

Tell us the exact date and leave your email below, we will email you on that date to see how you went!

How to be debt free the simple way

Francesca Sidoti — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:00:31 +0000

Imagine a life where there were no repayments on your home

Where there was no Mastercard, Visa, Amex and Diner’s card panic at the end of every month. I can’t imagine that becoming debt-free is easy, but it is a major goal of my life.

Here are the ten steps I’m going to take.

1. Budget

I sound like a broken record, don’t I? I’m sorry to harp, but an effective budget is the key to financial security and a debt-free existence. We have released the budgetspreadsheet by Savings Guide, should you want to track your expenses in an orderly (cyber) fashion. If not, an exercise book will probably cut it.

2. Understand and attack

Prioritise your debts. As Paul Clitheroe suggests here, comparing your liabilities to your income is a good starting point to improving your finances and understanding what you’ll need to do to become debt free.

3. Pay it back in kind

We know that financial gurus differ on this point, and the choice is yours. You can pay off your debt first or bolster your emergency fund. Personally, I like the idea of chipping away at them both simultaneously. It may take longer, but it makes me feel more secure. The most important thing is that you repay over the monthly repayments and make it punctual- late fees will end up costing you.

4. Curtail your credit cards

Again, this is a personal decision. As Man vs. Debt elaborates, choosing whether or not to cancel your credit cards must be a process of weighing pros and cons. Cancelling your credit cards will hurt your credit rating.

Personally, that doesn’t affect me much as I’ve sworn off the things, but it might be something you want to think about.

5. Pay cash

Yep, cash. Even for big purchases, like cars. If I can get some good habits going on now, I think they’ll stand me in good stead in the years to come. There’s nothing wrong with saving up and paying cash. In fact, you can bargain your little heart out if you’re paying cash for a lot of items.

6. Do not submit…

… to store cards. I’ve never had one, and hopefully I never will. Store cards are an effective way to spend a lot more money than the item is worth. Yes we know they can help with interest free terms etc, but trust us – they will eat you alive if you are not super careful.

7. Pay off your student loans

It’s only a little debt, and the interest is low, so it’s easy to forget about your student loan. That said, it remains a debt and one you’re paying interest on, so why not work at repaying it above the compulsory repayments?

8. Bolster your emergency fund

At this point, you might be a lucky little vegemite and living debt free. This is the time to add some money to your emergency fund.

9. Means test your house hunt

America, and now Australia, is full of empty houses that people couldn’t afford to make repayments on. I’m not planning on that being me.

When I buy a house, I would hope to save a reasonable proportion of the cost and ensure repayments are feasible and can be achieved quickly.

10. Save

A good piece of advice is to invest every raise into your savings. It’s the best kind of saving- the kind where you don’t even notice. That way you can build yourself up a nice little nest egg.

Done! How do you plan to be debt free?

We want some hard hitting comments below!

Convenience shopping – The enemy of savings

Francesca Sidoti — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:04:19 +0000

Convenience has become a dirty word. We all know it’s something that pretends to make your life easier and instead makes us more stressed and probably more wrinkled.

When a store tells you something is for your convenience, you can bet your house on the fact that it doesn’t really assist your convenience at all. Or, the very idea of convenience stores themselves- ostensibly built to provide you with all the things you need, and yet mostly provide confectionary, cigarettes and slurpees and yet seem to consistently be out of bread.

Proof of this is in the IBIS report, proving that cigarettes constitute over a quarter of convenience store sales.

Convenience shopping at a supermarket has two major forms:

Easy access convenience: This kind of convenience is where you really should go to the next store because the item is cheaper there, but it’s really too far to be bothered so you buy the more expensive version
Convenience items: These are your convenient items, like your frozen meals and canned soups. They pose as a threat to your resolve, where you can buy an entire meal in one swift move as opposed to scouring three aisles and then realising you’ve forgotten an item as soon as you get home.

Both forms of convenience shopping can be dangerous. There are great elements to both – 7/11s have on occasion saved me from near-starvation in the pitch hours, and some convenience items (like popcorn) are now an established part of our existence. Usually, however, convenience is not really all that convenient.

The numbers have it

According to research,consumer behaviour is shifting. As our schedules become increasingly flexible, we are less likely to plan meals over a week and shop accordingly.

At your convenience:

As much as is possible, plan your meals over the week, or if your schedule is moving around dramatically, spend a ay off making meals to put in your freezer. They’ll have all the convenience of a store-bought meal, without any of the cost.

Time is money

It’s not really surprising, but as shown in this article, if you can afford the time, you will save the money. Buying the ingredients for a meal from scratch is cheaper than buying a frozen meal with the same ingredients. Nothing can be quicker than fish fingers, but with a tiny bit more time, meals can be made in no time and for very little money.

At your convenience:

Convenience meals are a result of an increasingly frenetic pace, but a little bit of planning should make it fairly easy to get them out of your life. You’ll see the results on your food receipt.

Want, not need

Convenience shopping satisfies the needs of a generation used to Facebook and online news- it satisfies our needs immediately, whether a close store or a meal that averts all need to cook. It caters to wants, not needs.

At your convenience:

Ask yourself if you need or want it. Do you need to stop off and buy a chocolate or a late-night pack of cigarettes at the store? Do you need that 20 minutes it would take to make pasta, has your life really gotten that frantic?

Do I need it- this is our mantra. You’ll earn yourself a more convenient life, and some savings in the bargain.

How do you avoid convenience shopping?

Drop a comment below!

10 useful tips for staying on budget

Alex — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:00:56 +0000

Yeah yeah, we all know setting up a budget is important, but something often overlooked is how important it is to motivate yourself to stay on track and actually follow through with the budget.

I have created myself many budgets over the years, often only to be let down by splurging on one of the expenses I promised not to (e.g. taking my lunch but still going out with work people and eating, effectively spending twice as much on lunch!).

Today we are looking at some of the useful tips you can remember to help you stay on budget. In fact, we have 10 of them and this article is part of a month long campaign on budgeting to celebrate the release of our budget spreadsheet – so we hope you enjoy!

1. Treat your savings account as a bill

Once your budget is created, ensure that one of your expenses listed is paying your savings account. As we have said before, treat it like a bill that must be paid and don’t even think about it. Act like you will get a fine if you don’t deposit!

After doing this for many months, I am excited about checking in and seeing how much I have saved. The interest will be there and I am hoping for a nice little surprise!

2. Try and use cash over cards

If you live off cash during your budget period, it is much harder to hand over pure cash for a splurge purchase as you won’t have any more money for the time! For example, you see a handbag or belt you like, sure it is only $40 and you tell yourself you deserve it – BUT it will severely limit your cash on hand. Wouldn’t you rather a train ticket to work for the week??

Plus, cards can be expensive if you don’t use your own banks ATM.

3. Get rid of the bad habits, quickly!

You don’t need a glass of wine EVERY night, you don’t need to smoke (easier said than done I know!) and you should really consider what dropping these bad habits could do for your budget. Maybe it would let you buy that belt above?

I strongly suggest considering dropping these habits, both for your health and your finances.

4. Get the family involved, it will help motivation

Having a support network is vitally important to keeping your budget alive. Share your thoughts, concerns and ideas on budgeting with your family and you will be much more likely to succeed in staying on budget.

5. Pay your debt down when you can

If you have multiple cards, firstly try and consolidate into one low interest credit card. If this isn’t possible, focus on the cards with the highest interest and pay more than the minimum amount each month to that card. If you can’t do this for all cards, pay the lions share of your money to the high interest card and the minimum allowed on all others.

6. Remember to keep your receipts handy

When you first created your budget spreadsheet, you would ideally have kept records of your spending prior to arrive at your expected expenses tab. A good tip is to not stop doing this after the budget is made, your spending is ever changing and in turn your money budget should also be ever changing.

7. Check your accounts regularly

You should login to your internet banking daily and monitor what is going in and out. You would be surprised how much fraud and accidental purchases go on under the radar. It is up to you to notify your bank or speak up when you find an issue.

8. Check your spending at the end of each week

Do you think you will make it to the end of the month? Taking a second to double check everything you have spent on is the best way to not be caught short a week or so before the end of the month. Check for trends with your spending, look for items you can cut the following week to help keep that money active (active in the sense it can be use for more important things than your ham/cheese/tomato on turkish you order for breakfast!).

9. Is your savings getting pillaged frequently?

Are you withdrawing money your promise to save? Get a Raboplus account, it is VERY hard to withdraw the savings without having to wait a few days and enter a million security codes! The moral is, get a different account and ensure you can’t just easily transfer money from it on a split second.

10. Remember, sometimes costs can pop up out of nowhere.

In your budget, you should have a rainy day fund or emergency fund. Things simply pop out of nowhere that involve spending money and it will help you prepare for these. Nothing worse than the feeling I got this month when I realised my car was now 1 year old and in turn required new rego, new CTP greenslip, renewed insurance and a service. Talk about a budget blow out!

Check out Savings Guide’s Budget Spreadsheet

We have released our own budget spreadsheet that looks great, works easily and can be as intricate or simple as you want. We hope you liked this article!

Savings Guide’s Budget Spreadsheet

Procrastinating your money saving goals

Francesca Sidoti — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:00:54 +0000

Every morning, I wake up with a goal in my heart. By mid-morning, I’ve had three coffees, read the paper and gone for a dog-paddle swim. And my goal?

Consigned to the back of my mind until tomorrow morning, where I can repeat the whole process again. Saving money, getting out of debt, buying a car with cash- whatever your goal, you have to start it today. Whatever it takes, however small the start may be, today is your day to shine.

I’ve written about strategies to cope with procrastination before, because I’m basically an expert.

Here are the top 5 procrastination excuses and how to banish them from your life.

I have no money

Are you unemployed? Are you a slave? Are you giving every cent you earn to a Mafia boss as a protection racket? If you answered no to these questions, then you have enough money to save. Procrastination is all in your head, just like this excuse.

Try it for a month- take savings out of your paycheck first. Then pay your bills. Use whatever is left over for entertainment.

Start today- put aside today’s cappuccino money (piggy banks are good for this). You may not think you have any money today, but cut out a few normal expenses and you’ll realise this isn’t true.

I’ll fix it tomorrow

While you’re thinking this, you’re spending more money on interest, on penalty fees and on items you don’t need.

Today is your friend. One last spending hurrah before a strict savings plan is never going to work- why not save the money you planned to blow and buy something for yourself in a month’s time should you stick to your budget?

As Jane Austen well knows, delayed gratification is a wonderful thing.

I don’t know how to start

I love the STRING strategy espoused in Union Plus. This is the best way to start and end your days of procrastination.

Select just one task you’ve been putting off.
Time yourself. Give the task one full hour, using a kitchen timer.
Ignore everything else. Focus on doing just this one task.
No breaks allowed while the timer is ticking.
Give yourself a reward when the job is done.

The bills can wait

They will wait, with an upsettingly large late fee attached to them. If you’re doing nothing else, at least ensure you’re meeting your monthly payments because the late fees will end up mounting up and making financial security more and more difficult to attain.

Organise yourself, and you can avoid spending unnecessary money on procrastination punishment.

I don’t need to think about these things

Sounds more like you don’t want to think about these things, which isn’t really the same thing. Sally Berger said “The secret to getting ahead is getting started”.

At the risk of sound heinously clichéd, the only thing that’s stopping you is your mind frame. Get on top of that, and you’re on your way to getting on top of your finances.

Procrastination has a lot to do with avoidance- no one really enjoys dealing with their finances, hence the desire to delay the process as long as possible. Bite the bullet and start today- it’ll probably end up being the hardest part.

What are your procrastination excuses and how do you overcome them?

Top 10 excuses why you aren’t saving money

Francesca Sidoti — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:00:00 +0000

I have said every single one of these things. Read on and weep.

I don’t earn enough money

As someone wise said, unless you’re working in a sweatshop, that excuse really doesn’t fly very far. Firstly, you’re probably spending money on unnecessary expenses. Consciousness in what you’re spending is important, tracking your spending will reveal where the money pits are. Save first, then spend.

I’m too young to save

It was a heartbreaking day when I realized I currently have the most disposable income I’ll probably have for the rest of my life. When is better to start saving than when you have no mortgage, no debts and no children?

Your retirement years will be infinitely better if you start providing for them now.

I deserve some luxury, I work hard enough for it

Yes, you do. And a life without little excesses would be miserable. That doesn’t mean that you have to blow every pay check on Dior perfume and chocolate. Remember when you were a kid, and you needed to save for an item?

You could do it then, you can do it now. Earn your luxuries through saving, not through your attendance at the 9 to 5.

I’m not good with money

Mmm, just not true. This is the one I really liked to use. The sad thing is, you’re either not good with money because you deliberately avoid thinking about it or haven’t learnt how to deal with it yet. Read a book, read a blog, talk to your friends.

Getting informed is step one, and it really is only a matter of learning. No one is genetically poor with money. So unless you are a new kind of genetic abnormality (and you should tell a geneticist about that, so they can start researching), this reason is just self-deception.

I’m waiting on the Lottery.

I’m not even going to engage with this one. If you like mathematical proof that this will never happen, read here.

I’m living on my own

Wow. I am deeply shame-faced writing this one, courtesy of Studeconomics. I whinged constantly that I couldn’t save because I was independent, irregardless of the good wage I was earning at the time. The 5 night a week entertainment I was scheduling probably didn’t help that whole savings gig.

You can’t take it with you

No, you can’t. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should live a life where all you do is scrape by. This is not about the relentless pursuit of wealth for its own sake, but about the need to live a life comfortable and free from debt.

I can save when I need to

Ok, so when is that? When it’s crunch time and you’re skint? Living like a king for three weeks of every month and starving for the fourth does not count as an ability to save.

I’ve got rich relatives

Ok, I can honestly say that I’ve never used this excuse, potentially I don’t really have anyone to inherit from.

Relying on someone to cark it so they can make your finances easier is a bit bent. Ditto on marrying someone for money. Definitely avoid saying these things out loud, and probably work on not even mentioning them to yourself.

Why save? I’ll just spend it

I think the answer is in the question on that one.

What excuses do you give for not saving money?

Keeping a money diary to record your spending

Francesca Sidoti — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:00:37 +0000

I have problems with keeping journals. I start out with a lot of commitment on January 1st, or on the first day of a trip, or when something really exciting has happened, and end up with five pages written in a 195 page exercise book. Dear diaries just aren’t my thing.

So imagine my despair when I found that an important part of my savings plan was a journal. Not a confessional, soul-searching journal. This journal was to be more bracing and more invasive than love life dissection. A financial journal is where you record everthing you have spent every day. It’s the Liz Taylor to the Richard Burton of budgeting. Without a proper financial journal, you’ll have yourself a sub-standard budget and hamper your ability to save efficiently.

Luckily, they’re pretty simple things to start. The trick of them is to keep consistently making entries. Here are some tips on how to make a Dear Diary entry save you cash.

Be honest

Diaries are often exercises in self-justification. We omit the things we’ve done wrong, or soften our role in a situation so we look better. That can’t happen in a financial journal. Honestly recording what you’ve spent and where your money is going is fundamental to the success of the journal.

Set it out

A financial journal doesn’t have to be complex. It can be as simple as an exercise book with two columns and a tally of the daily spending down the bottom. What’s most important is that you set out every dollar you spend in a daily basis, and what you spend it on. You can also use one of the many online finance tools as your journal, such as this one or the aptly titled, Spending Diary. Both are free to use.

Get trendy

Once you’ve started entering figures and items into your financial journal, trends will start to appear. You’ll notice things that regularly crop up, like coffees, which you probably don’t need to spend money on. Work at eliminating that expense. Your journal should provide you with a list of all your unnecessary expenditure. Try to rid yourself of them one by one.

Get inspired

This article in the New York Magazine brings together 6 New Yorkers to keep a financial journal on their spending. It’s well worth a read to hear their experiences and what effect keeping the journal had on their savings plans. It’s voyeuristic but totally fascinating how other people spend their money.

Be consistent

The most important part of a financial journal is keeping it consistently. If you can maintain the journal over a month of more, then your budget will improve as you become more aware of where your money is actually going. Once your consciousness is raised about different expenses, you may become more loath to spend the money.

Get challenged

Bloggers who have struggled with debt suggest taking the financial journal challenge for one month. If you only do it for one month, at least you’ll leave your finances in better condition. Hopefully, you’ll end up with a habit that’ll last you a lifetime. Why not try it, and send in your stories about how much money you end up saving?

Have you ever kept a financial journal? Was it an effective savings measure?

Be sure to check out our budget spreadsheet if you need a way to track spending using visuals and comparisons!

Creating a zero dollar budget and the benefits

Alex — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:00:33 +0000

People often talk about zero dollar budgeting, but do you actually know what it means or how it can benefit you?

A zero dollar budget basically refers to the concept of ‘spending’ every single dollar you earn in your budget spreadsheet or paper spreadsheet, BEFORE the month begins. This means that every dollar in your earnings is accounted for on or before pay day.

The idea is that you will assign every dollar you have to each of your expenses, even a savings account should be seen as an expense. If you reach your limit for your category, like I did with my ‘transport’ costs this month – simply stop spending in that category and find a way to reduce the costs.

You may wonder how I can reduce the costs of transport – though really it was simple, I caught the train and will continue to catch the train until the end of February.

If the zero dollar budget is going to work well for you, you MUST organize time in your monthly activities to sit down and figure out the following months expenses. This can be done by making it a fun task, organize the husband/wife/kids or whoever and sit down for 45 minutes on a Sunday morning.

Quick zero dollar budgeting tips:

Always include your savings accounts in your zero dollar budget
Always pay yourself at the very start of the month.
Seperate your savings from your everyday account – this will reduce spending
If you earn extra money in the month, ensure you account for it in your budget
Consider having an account or fund that is for fun things and spare of the moment activities. Don’t lose your fun in life simply for a few dollars!

Starting your zero dollar budget

Now that we have explained what a zero dollar budget is, it may be good for you to actually start using a proper budget spreadsheet.

You have two options:

Do a Google search for ‘budget spreadsheet’ and try and download a free template for Microsoft excel.
Buy the Savings Guide spreadsheet for $29.95

We do suggest you download a free template first, as you will quickly learn that most of them are not good enough. That is why we released the Savings Guide Budget Spreadsheet which can be located on;

http://www.budgetspreadsheet.com.au

Living within your means or below your means

Francesca Sidoti — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:20:35 +0000

If there has been one change in my personality since leaving education for the first time in 16 years, it has to be my perspective on living within my means. Scraping by has been my standard for many years now. I was happy if I could pay rent, my bills, buy some food and have some fun with my friends. I lived in a dive, I ate baked beans and it was great.

But all things must pass, and living just within my means doesn’t have the same appeal any more. In the long run, the difference between living within and living below my means may just be the difference between financial freedom and financial jail.

The advice that you should live off last year’s income, not next year’s, has to be some of the soundest wisdom I have ever heard. It’s another way of expressing that living below your means is the key to financial security.

Why? Because living within your means makes no allowance for emergencies or long-term goals. Surviving month to month may seem fine when you’re in your early twenties, but what happens when you need to pull together some money for a hospitalisation or you unexpectedly get retrenched and finding work becomes difficult?

Learning how to live below your means at a young age will set you up for life. So how can it be done?

Save money first

Great advice I have heard is that people who live below their means fund frivolities only one their savings accounts are funded. Hence, if there’s a little less money this month, frivolities are the things to go, not savings.

Get Tracking

Track your spending (with, for example, a financial journal) so as to understand what you’re losing money on. Eliminating unnecessary expenses (smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol, buying lunch every working day) may be the difference between living within or living below your means.

Try it for one week: eliminate all unnecessary expenses, and put the money into a savings account instead. Extend the challenge to a month. Once you see the money piling up, you’ll be much less likely to return to your unnecessary expenditures.

Think it through

So much of what we spend is spent because we haven’t thought our purchases through. Have you ever tallied up how much more you spend when you buy brand items instead of store items? Sure, it’s only a dollar per can of tomatoes but add that up across the year, and you have some major savings that can be made with no effort. Plan your finances, so you don’t end up losing money on ATM fees or having to pay late fees on your credit cards.

Get habitual

Habits can be chosen, worked upon, changed. If going to the local Westfield is your current form of entertainment, change the habit. If you’re likely to spend tonnes of money on a night out, why not do a DVD swap with your friends and have some movie nights at home? Learning new habits may be the key to living below your means.

If keeping up with the Joneses is the reason you’re only just living within your means, it’s time to re-evaluate what you’re looking for in the long-term. Living below your means can mean a wonderful retirement or taking the trip you’ve always dreamt of. Keeping up with the Joneses can’t give you the most important thing- some peace of mind.

Do you manage to live below your means?

Drop us a comment below!

Savings Guide Australia

The nightly ritual that will save you money

30 minutes before bed

25 minutes before bed

20 minutes before bed

15 minutes before bed

10 minutes before bed

What are you daily money rituals?

Related Posts

You don’t need a large income to be debt free

Get smart

Spend last year’s income, not next year’s

Get healthy

Money savers

Are you aiming to become debt free?

Related Posts

How to be debt free the simple way

1. Budget

2. Understand and attack

3. Pay it back in kind

4. Curtail your credit cards

5. Pay cash

6. Do not submit…

7. Pay off your student loans

8. Bolster your emergency fund

9. Means test your house hunt

10. Save

Done! How do you plan to be debt free?

Related Posts

Convenience shopping – The enemy of savings

Convenience shopping at a supermarket has two major forms:

The numbers have it

At your convenience:

Time is money

At your convenience:

Want, not need

At your convenience:

How do you avoid convenience shopping?

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10 useful tips for staying on budget

1. Treat your savings account as a bill

2. Try and use cash over cards

3. Get rid of the bad habits, quickly!

4. Get the family involved, it will help motivation

5. Pay your debt down when you can

6. Remember to keep your receipts handy

7. Check your accounts regularly

8. Check your spending at the end of each week

9. Is your savings getting pillaged frequently?

10. Remember, sometimes costs can pop up out of nowhere.

Check out Savings Guide’s Budget Spreadsheet

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Procrastinating your money saving goals

I have no money

I’ll fix it tomorrow

I don’t know how to start

The bills can wait

I don’t need to think about these things

What are your procrastination excuses and how do you overcome them?

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Top 10 excuses why you aren’t saving money

I don’t earn enough money

I’m too young to save

I deserve some luxury, I work hard enough for it

I’m not good with money

I’m waiting on the Lottery.

I’m living on my own

You can’t take it with you

I can save when I need to

I’ve got rich relatives

Why save? I’ll just spend it

What excuses do you give for not saving money?

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Keeping a money diary to record your spending

Be honest

Set it out

Get trendy

Get inspired

Be consistent

Get challenged