Temple Meads: I used to be like that, quite a lot of people I know are also like it. However, I got fed up of constantly being skint, so I did something about it. It's quite simple really, and I address this to yourself and anyone else who cares to read it:
1) List everything you HAVE to pay for every month (whether that's every 4 weeks, the last Friday of the month, the 28th of every month, whenever), and make sure it's a comprehensive list. I know that sounds obvious, to make sure you list everything, but it's easier than you think to forget Direct Debits and Standing Orders. Trust me on that one!
2) Take said list and keep it somewhere convenient for checking or just referring to. In my case I keep mine as a memo file on my phone. I haven't had to refer to it for a while but it's handy to have it there.
3) Let's say you've got a bill that weighs in at £28.50. What would I log this as? £30. Why would I do that, I hear you ask? It's very simple really. One, it makes it easier to make calculations. Two, no matter what happens, you've always got that little bit in the bank to fall back on if things do go belly up.
4) I'd imagine this one is obvious, but get the calculator out and total it all up. Even if you think you're good at arithmetic, mental or otherwise, it's handy to have the calculator there to confirm your figures or correct them if necessary (I've had that happen a few times, easily done!)
5) Now work out what you get paid every month, and any other income (Working Tax Credit etc) that comes in.
6) This one should be obvious. Take your total for your mandatory outgoings (all the stuff you HAVE to pay out for) and deduct it from your income. Whatever's left is what you've got to play with, but I'm not quite done yet, and while all of the above should only be common sense it took a long time to get it into my head so I hope the above helps someone.
7) We're nearly there now you'll be glad to know. What's made a bigdifference to me has been logging every single transaction I use my card for. No matter how big or small it is, it's logged. A memo file on my phone does that for me, and once a pay period is over I'll check it over and make sure all is good. I lay out said file a little like the below, with things like dates obviously changing and the below is just an example:
Spending Log 03/04-03/04 p1
03/04
£8.43 Asda
(£21.57 left)
Obviously this goes on for every day of each pay period, and I've been doing this for several months now. I don't know why I didn't do this before, it's brilliant! In the above example, I've only put Asda as I know which store it is. If it was a non-regular purchase I'd add in the town/city I visited, which makes it a lot easier to track on a bank statement!
8) Last one, and this is the biggest difference I've made and is how I'm never skint these days. It took a while to get used to it, but it does work if you're willing to force yourself to adapt. What's this huge change, the change that sounds like you've got to give up everything?
Budgeting, quite simply. For the first week, don't commit to it straight away, have a normal week and then, after that 7 days is over, count it all up. Everything, leave no transaction out. Let's say you spend £57.45 that week on day-to-day living (sandwiches, drinks, visit to the pub, whatever), for the next week give yourself a £60 budget. If you can live within that budget, taking into account unusual activity (Burger King vice McDonalds, evening out instead of a night in, etc), try going down to £50 the week after and see if it can still be lived within.
If you know you've got a tight few weeks ahead (birthdays coming up, trip away etc), then knock your budget down a bit (£40 instead of £60, £30 instead of £50 etc) and be tight fisted for a week or two. That's what I do, like with my next weekly spending budget, I'll allow myself a £50 spending budget (the upper limit in my mandatory outgoings) as I know I'm going to be away from home so will be eating fast food, obviously bringing in an expense I don't normally have on an average week. I'll also not have the opportunity to pop the kettle on for a coffee when I want to either, so have to make visits to Costa outlets wherever I'm going, another non-average expense. I'm sure you can see what I mean about allowing extra money now. This week I'm budgeting to spend no more than £30 (Friday to Thursday I do my spending budgets), which means I'll then have an emergency £20 should I need it next week when I'm away. I don't always need it, but you don't know what's going to come up!
So yeah, it's incredibly easy to spend everything on a card and not become skint. You just need willpower! I know I've gone into quite the long post here, but it's also somewhat relevant to the 'shove it onto the card' mentality a lot of us have these days. It IS easy to overspend when paying for it all by card, but as I hope I've detailed above, it IS easy not to do so if you apply common sense and log it all. I'm not perfect, I still waste money on stuff now and again, I get lazy just as much as the rest of us from time to time. Still, if you make yourself be sensible with card use, and log it all, you can still 'see' it going out via your logs. Trust me, it becomes rather sobering when you see how much you spend in one shop, how much you spend in the pub! Been there done that, watching the numbers fall away as I tap it into the calculator!
Anyway, I hope this post is of benefit to someone at least!
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I did that in January. Spent £580 that month without realising
:cry: and a few weeks later didn't realise that a weekly travelcard would have been at least £5 cheaper than PAYG for peak travel on four consecutive days, let alone the remaining days.
I direct you to the above post I've just made. Follow it to the letter and you will stop having such problems. Plus if you had asked on the forum, I'm sure the Gods of Ticketing could have provided you with the cheapest way to do things! As the saying goes, if you don't ask you don't get!
Should you require any expansion on the points I've made in my last post on this thread (should be just above this one), feel free to ask. Tweet me or PM me here if you should so wish.
, it means awkward amounts of money so you end up with a bunch of coppers. Oh, and I'd rather have £2 coins than coppers 
