Money is one part of my challenge. I decided to have a good look at it and that’s what i came up with.
I wanna stop using my credit card. It’s good to have a credit card for emergencies, like if you’re out of a job or something and have to pay the grocery bills, but you gotta make sure you’ll be able to pay it off. I used to use it when i wasn’t working, before that i left it at home.
If you have control over your spending you should be alright with using it.
Some people seem to be really into impulse purchases and buying crap.
I’m not one of them, so i don’t have to worry about that. If i don’t totally need an item i will think about it for days if i wanna get it. I will think about it for ages.
Some people use the interest free days on their credit cards for investing, paying off their mortgage quicker for example, that might be handy and if you wanna do that you should speak to an expert about that and do some research.
I’m still unsure about debit cards. Is using cash better then using debit cards? What do you think? I think i will stop using my credit card and only use it for emergencies and use a mix of cash and debit cards. I don’t like being in debt, mortgages are freaking me out, coz they are so expensive and i don’t take out loans for cars or furniture or shit like that.
Happy Cash
We normally don’t spend money on anything else. Nevertheless, to find out where exactly our money goes and where we can make cuts, we started a spending diary. Good idea, right?! Which means for us to write down everything we spend money on for 3 months.
I don’t wanna do this for ever. And i hate budgets, i don’t think they are necessary for us as we always pay our bills first anyways. The plan is to sum everything up by the end of each month and have a good look at it. Figure out what’s happening. And then do it again after the 3 months are over, decide on changes and implement them.
Another thing we write down is where we buy stuff, for example groceries, which supermarket, farmer’s market. That gives you an idea where your money goes and you can then decide where you do or don’t want to spend your money. I mean you can do this anyways, that’s just gonna make it clearer for us though. Definitely wanna use more farmers markets, see if we can spend more money on them after we saved it at the supermarket.
Have you got any cool savings/budgeting tips? How do you get your finances under control and spend less?
