First of all let us understand the byrne-mind.
- I love getting things by post (I really really love this)
- I love frittery-type shopping
- I love having pretty, nice things around me.
- My spending is mainly done online while at work.
- My level of indulgence depends on my bank balance.
- I rarely spend more than £15 at a time. And often less than £10.
- Most of this frittering occurs on ebay. Runner up is wool shops.
- I know I don’t need anymore wool. Or Japanese fabric. Or purses. Or anything else.
- I want to save money for a really splendid holiday which would involve surrounding myself with a lovely place and probably buying lovely things when I am there.
So…..the plan.
- Try to stop idle shop-surfing
- When this fails, carry on but just think about the holiday and go to a holiday site instead.
- When I see something I *need* think about how much I want the holiday instead and immediately transfer the amount of money it would have cost (plus any p&p) to savings account. Hence bank balance goes down as if the money had been frittered.
- Think about holiday some more.
- Continue steps 1-4 ad nauseum, remembering not to actually buy anything.
- Only ever estimate how much has been put into savings account – do not work out properly as I will then fritter exactly this amount of money.
- Open a post-office account or get an ISA.
- Have no cash/debit card for this account.
- Periodically transfer money saved to this account.
- Be strong, byrne.
I’m wondering whether I should grant myself an allowance for frittering so as not to have to go cold turkey but then this would be open to abuse as well. I’ll try this for now and see how it goes.
Incidentally this will only actually start on 25th Jan when I get paid. La lalalala
No No NO, bad byrne. Will start today. Even though you kidn of actually maybe sort of did need that fabric you bought on ebay yesterday....you'd have more crazy patterns to choose from in Japan.
4 comments:
I would allow yourself a small frittering budget if I were you. Going on the principle of crash dieting versus steadily cutting the crap out of your diet. You know what I mean? I'm just the same though, I spend virtually nothing on clothes or shoes or 'big' purchases (i.e. over £20) all year but am constantly picking up another nice pair of bamboo dpns, some funny buttons, some luxury chocolate and before you know it you've spent a couple of hundred quid without trying.
I like your number 3 on the action plan. Very good idea!
Does that mean we're to make sure you don't spend anything on SkipNorth weekend?
All sounds too familiar to me... The way I tackled it (and still doing damn well!) was to a) open a savings ISA - passbook only - and standing order once a month with regular transfers of leftover cash...b) have a secondary bank account from my main one. Main one takes salary, pays bills, rent etc. Secondary account has allowed spending budget transfered into it without an overdraft facility.
When that money runs out, that's it, yet my savings are still safe (too much agro to make a special trip to the Halifax and cue for 30mins on a saturday morning just to raid it) and the bills get paid rather happily.
By doing this for the last year, I've saved well, stashed loads in our joint savings account, paid off the overdraft on my main account (£750 - good girl) and cleared a whole credit card. End the month quids in and still get the occassional chance at the odd fritter online....
Ramble ramble, blah blah... ;)
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