Do you really need it

How do we make sure we don`t buy things we don`t really need ? By keeping a spending diary we can keep a check on where our money is going. At the end of each month your spending diary will show where your money is being spent as well as how much money if any, you have left. Most books you have read will now start telling you how to cut back and make a big difference quickly, off you go and identify ways you can make huge changes to your life style and become wealthy overnight. After a couple of weeks you decide that staying in every night in the dark and eating little or no food is having a serious effect on your wealth. So you decide to give up and start to think that all the people who post on money saving expert are losers.
Why did you find it so hard to make changes ? The answer is easy, we are looking to make a big impact and want instant results. By making small changes and often you can make massive changes to your lifestyle over time.

Are you getting ripped off

Each day are you improving or getting worse or don`t you know. The chances are that you don`t know, which means that you are becoming worse off each day. Most people just bury there heads in the sand when it comes to money. I`ll just buy that burger because it won`t matter, that new pair of shoes only costs twenty pounds so it won`t make much difference. Every day everybody makes loads of decisions which don`t seem to matter. They do, its these small things that added together over time make a huge difference to our well being, each one seems irrelevant. but if you took the time to make a note of your spending habits you will quickly see how that coffee here and that magazine there are having a tremendous impact on your life.

Daily thoughts. The magic ingredient

When I started to make small changes to my life style the hardest thing I found was that nothing seemed to change at first I seemed to be making loads of changes but couldn`t see any benefit.I felt like it was becoming like a new crash diet, loads of effort and pain, no weight loss then give up and go back to normal. I was looking for a big bang, instant change. I began to doubt whether or not it was worth trying to change my spending habits. I tried to work out what was the magic ingredient I was missing, attitude, willpower or luck. What do I have to do to make it work, I have read all the books and seen the DVDs, I new what to do but why does it not work for me. The answer, the magic ingredient, TIME. Small changes over time. Start to make small changes over time, two or three a week perhaps, at first nothing seems to happen but over a year your well being will have changed massively.

Why small changes

Switching a light off when leaving a room will not make a big change in your wealth, this is probably why most people don`t do it. They think it doesn`t matter. Walk past the TV left on standby, turn your heating up a little, hammer your car while driving to work, buy a latte on the way in, get a meal deal for dinner, smoke 30 cigs all these things don`t matter. What we all do is go through each day saying these things don`t matter because individually they don`t add up to much. we spend our lives doing things which we convince ourselves won`t harm us.Turn off the tap, stop money dripping away. Learn how to reverse the process of doing small things that damage your wealth. Begin to make small changes that improve your wealth. Cutting out on a meal deal today won`t make you rich the same as by buying a meal deal today won`t make you poor. That £5.00 a day won`t change my life you convince yourself. But it will, £5.00 savings a day can be invested and using the magic of compound interest  turned in to over one million pounds in forty years. For the next couple of weeks write down each day what small things you do which cost you money.Open your eyes and see how your hard earned money is dripping away.

Top Cash Back

Top CashBack the UK’s most generous website.


We do talk about this a fair bit – but then, we feel this is something to be very proud about. In fact, we’ll say it again - at Top Cashback we are the UK’s Most Generous Website.

But what exactly do we mean by this ? Well, when we launched, we were the only site to offer 100% of your cashback back to you whilst not charging any admin fees whatsoever – and this is still true today.

What is more, we are so determined to maintain our crown as the UK’s Most Generous Cashback site, we have continued to offer a better and better deal to our members whenever we can. We always ensure that we offer the best end deal to our cashback members.

Thanks to our members, we are now one of the largest cashback sites in the world. This means that we tend to get the best cashback deals from our merchants.

In fact, we are so certain of our competitiveness, we have introduced a ‘Highest Cashback Guarantee’. In the unlikely event that another cashback site has managed to negotiate a higher cashback rate with any retailer, then we will refund the difference out of our own funds (even though any other site is likely to charge an admin fee).

Even better, we now reward our loyal members for their… well, loyalty . Based on your cashback earnings in any particular month, you can now earn up to 110% cashback on your purchases in the following month

Free Holiday

Every year for the last 5 years I have had a free holiday thanks to Mr Tesco, the last one being a week in the Gambia. I have achieved this by saving the Tesco club card points and converting them to holiday vouchers which are worth four times the value of the discount voucher so that means that a £100 spend in Tesco which attracts double points can be converted into £8.00 worth of holiday vouchers which can be used with Cosmos to book your holiday. The trick is to look out for the offers to maximise your points balance.

Yearly saving £800

Car break down cover

This year I saved £35.00 on my car breakdown cover, when my cover is due for renewal I always check to see which is the best deal available and spend about 20 minutes on the Internet as well as calling my existing supplier to see what their best offer is.How many people are loyal to one company and just pay what ever the going rate is. This is because its easy to pay but its also easy to save.

Yearly saving  £35.00

A A breakdown cover for just £6.50 per year

A fantastic offer from Topcashback, sign up for AA through Topcashback and pay only £6.50 for a years basic cover. Thats a massive saving of £21.50.

Standby

How many things do you have on standby? Each product left on standby costs about £2.50 per year. I found I leave 5 things in the house on standby so that's wasting £12.50 per year, Now that doesn`t sound a lot but that is the whole point of learning to save its the small changes made over time that will make the difference . Its easy to switch them off its also easy to leave them on. The way I look at it now is I would rather have £12.50 in my pocket than let an electric company gain from my laziness.

Yearly saving £12.50

Daily thoughts

I have been listening to all the people moaning on the BBC about yesterday`s budget. The experts have worked out that poor people spend one in every seven pounds they earn on items that are effected by the increase in VAT. That means they are spending £14.28 from every £100 they earn on items that have gone up. So that is 36 pence increase for ever £100 of money they earn. It makes me think that a lot of problems are caused by peoples ignorance when it comes to money. We are are country that is too reliant on benefits and handouts. The opposition party has cried foul and not taken responsibility for how its created a culture of what can the state do for me rather than teaching people how to improve thier own lot.

Petrol, speed

By reducing your speed on motorways from 70 mph to 60 mph you can make a saving of 15 % on your fuel bill. It just means you have to plan your journey a bit better so you are not constantly having to rush every where.

Yearly saving  £250.00

Petrol, cheapest in your area

One of the easiest money saving ideas is to reduce the amount you spend on petrol. By making small changes its possible to save over one quarter off your fuel costs.
 Make sure you are buying the cheapest fuel in your area check with petrol prices petrol can vary by as much as 11pence per litre are you paying the lowest price.


Yearly saving £200

Why doesn`t saving money work for me

Ninety five percent on people can`t save money, That's one in twenty of us just throw money down the drain each month. When we try to save most people read a book or read an article which shows us how to make a massive saving of perhaps fifty pounds a week on our supermarket shop. Off we go full of good intentions and buy every value brand possible and make a huge saving but within the first week we start to find a lot of the stuff we bought we don`t like and start throwing it away and by the next week we just go back to buying the same old items and rather than saving any money you have wasted money by throwing stuff away.
If you look at what you spend your money on each week you will find you have spent years developing your spending habits, trying new products , taking in recommendations , your favourite childhood treats and all of a sudden you try to completely change and you  are surprised when you fail.
Rather than than looking for the big changes learn how to make small changes and over time you will  be far better off without noticing.

Bank Account

Changing your bank account can actually make you more money. If you have a least £1000 per month paid into a Halifax reward account they will credit you with £5 each month which adds up to £60 each year for nothing. Switching is very easy now and your new bank will transfer all your direct debits and standing orders just let your employee or pension company know your new details and as long as you stay in credit you will earn your free £5.00 per month.
Tip. Keep your old account open for a few months to make sure nothings been missed.
Yearlyl saving   £60.00

Spending diary

Why keep a spending diary? The first part of becoming wealthy is about taking control of your money and spending less than you are earning. It will be very hard to control your spending if your are not aware of where your money goes each month. Every day for the next three months make a note of your daily spending which includes both what you spend in cash as well as payments you make through your bank. The idea behind this is that you will be able to identify where you are spending and look for ways to reduce how much you spend on each category, The less you spend then the more you will have to reduce debts and invest. Just as in any business your bottom line needs to be as low as possible.

Reduce your weekly Shopping..Top Cash Back

Get paid every time you spend, use a cash back site every time you spend on the Internet. Money saving expert suggests that Top Cash back is the best site for this. Before you purchase anything check to see how much you can save and make sure when you renew your contracts for your gas, electric, insurance and phone you use the cash back site. There are also a lot of ways you can get money for nothing.




Yearly saving... £250

Reduce your weekly Shopping..Toilet rolls #1

How much do you spend on toilet rolls ? Up until now we had been using Andrex at a massive cost of 49.4p per roll, when I thought about why I spend this much on a roll of tissue paper for home when whenever I go out I just use whatever is provided. When we are on holiday for two weeks at a time we just use what is in the hotel the same happens when at the work place. This got me thinking why spend so much on toilet paper for the home. I have now found a paper which is suitable and costs a fraction of the price (9.1 pence) this makes a saving of £73.54 per year.

Save 7

Save 6

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Save 4

Save 3

Reduce your weekly Shopping

Follow my daily tips to see how much you can save by just putting in a little bit of effort each day. It is the small tasks which you carry out each day that will make you massive savings each year. How much can you save let me know.

1. Toilet rolls                                   Saving :  £73.54
2. TopCashBack                                           £250.00

3 Rules to increase your wealth

Rule 1  Motivation
                        Why doesn`t saving money work for me

Rule 2  Action
                        Spending Diary

Rule 3  Savings
                        Bank account                           £60.00
                        Toilet rolls                                £73.54
                        Topcashback                         £250.00
                        Petrol, Cheapest                    £200.00
                        Petrol Speed                         £250.00
                        Standby                                  £12.50
                        Car breakdown cover             £35.00
                        Free holiday                          £800.00