h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

if you spend something that costs, perhaps, £4.99, and you pay with a £5 note, don't through away that 1p change, put it in a money box at home. Also, if you see some money on the street, even if it is just a penny, then pick it up, and put that in a money box. In the end all these coins will add up and you will have some money to spend.

spook

i do that...by the time my piggy bank is full, I usually have about $50, and if you also stick in any tens or twenties you aren't desparate for at the moment, stick those in--that gives me about $80-$90 when the bank is full. It's nice to suddenly have cash you didn't know you had!

Amen. To repeat my post in the "credit card" discussion, my wife & I pay for everything we can with a Discover credit card - food, gas, everything. We pay the balance religiously every month, so have never paid a finance charge. And Discover sends a check every year for 1% of what we spent - a couple of hundred dollars typically.

I think my piggy bank is a lot smaller than yours but the principle is the same!
If you can, bring food from home to eat during your lunch break at work, it is so much cheaper than buying something readymade every day.
And budget - decide how much money you can afford to spend and be strict with yourself. That way you can gradually save up to treat yourself to something.
Lastly, don't let peer-pressure push you into overspending. Be honest with your mates - don't spend simply to keep up with others.

We were absolutely flat broke a while back. Rent was paid, we were a bit short on groceries, but not too seriously, completely out of coffee - a staple around here! We scrounged the house, emptied out pockets, opened the penny banks, and spent a whole Saturday afternoon rolling coins. The sum total - with a loonie ($1.00 coin) I found on the bedroom floor, was $35.00. It got us through to payday. The penny banks are being gradually filled again, in case it happens again.

Get a notebook and record every penny that you spend. And I do mean every penny because you need to reconcile outgoings with income at the end of each week. It's an awful experience to go through but it really does show you how you can't afford to overlook the small, casual purchases.

We had to do this when we were first married (one student, one unemployed) and we would have never been in the state where we had £35 sculling around the house in pockets and piggybanks. We kept all our money in the Building Society gathering interest and drew out the bare minimum we needed. This too was exact. If we needed £17 for groceries then we drew out £17, not a nice round figure like £20.

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This is exactly what I do. It makes me much more conscious of what I spend, and a lot of possible impulse buys are prevented because of it. I am on a pretty low income but find I manage incredibly well on it, and that money can stretch further than you think.

I budget for everything, for an entire year, and keep an eye on how my spending is running in each area. It can get a bit tedious, but I always get through the year still in the black.

Ten years ago I had a much higher income, but I always had huge credit card bills. Now that never happens, but I don't feel that I'm going without much. I'm just more aware of where it's going.

Just an aside, I particularly like the "Quicken" software for tracking spending and all things financial. Every dollar spent - checks, credit cards, cash - gets entered with a category - food, gas, utilities, hobbies (you can create as many as you want) - and then all kinds of summaries can be easily generated. Not just comparisons of spending vs. budget, but trends like an increase (or decrease!) in frivolous spending.

I'm using an old version (4) but it does more than I'll ever need, so Amazon's $27 price for the current version could be avoided by a trip to the used software aisle.

Wow - you guys are inspiring! I feel a New Year's resolution coming on..

H***, I'm just resolving to get a better job, so I can afford to live in the style I'm accustomed to . Besides, I hate my job.