This was my turning point for going from spending to saving. I literally don't know how people can do it month after month. I hear people at work saying they have £8 left to last them a week and they are on very good money...
Same - I've always been lousy with money but last month, I sat down with a spreadsheet and planned out the next six months up to and including to the end of December.
Quite frankly, I wish I'd done that years ago and I'm kicking myself now that I didn't. On the spreadsheet I've allowed for all my regular outgoings ie. all my DD's and SO's, set aside a percentage (based on what I normally use) to cover petrol each month, a percentage to cover Tesco food shopping and entered one-off stuff like the road tax being due on the car at the end of September.
That then gives me a disposable balance, so all my sundry expenditure comes off of that. I hated having to be so analytical about things, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that if I rein in that sundry expenditure for a couple of months and there aren't any nasty unknown things I have to stump up for between now and then, I won't actually be touching my overdraft for the remainder of the year.
Indeed, I'll actually be carrying over an increasingly large surplus each month, to the extent that if I continue watching what I spend up until April 2013, I'll pretty much have the equivalent of a month's salary already in my account when I get paid at the beginning of April.
After months of living payday to payday, I cannot tell you what a boost that has given me, not to mention an incentive to see it through. It's become part of my daily routine now to sit down with my laptop and update the spreadsheet with any expenditure I've made that day. So simple, but as I say, I'm now wishing I'd done it months ago.
I made an adjustment to it a couple of nights ago as well - anything I spend on petrol is logged in another part of the spreadsheet and it shows me as a percentage how much of my petrol budget I've spent so far.
The only annoyance is that I'll have to wait a couple of months to start seeing the benefits: unfortunately I got hit with £210 of unplanned-for spending this month - the car needed work done on it (£170) and earlier this week, we had to have one of our cats put to sleep (£40).
