Morning Peeps!
I hope you’re all warm and safe where you are? Our road is like sheet ice, so won’t be going anywhere today!
I wanted to talk to you about the things I think are worth buying branded (as a follow-up to 10 Things I Always Buy Cheap I posted the other day) but I also want to talk about our new savings plan. (New as in around midnight last night!)
So first things first, the things I always buy branded:
- Stock Cubes: Oxo to be precise, I’ve tried other brands and supermarket own ones but Oxo tastes the best.
- Weetabix: I don’t mind the cheap ones but it’s pointless buying them if my family won’t eat them because they taste different, so Weetabix it is. Same goes for other cereal actually, it’s just I had Weetabix on the brain as we’ve just had some. 😉
- Popcorn: Butterkist is the best but usually, I wait until it’s on sale. 😉 Also, the sale thing does apply to other treats like Cadbury’s chocolate and such, but not very often.
Can’t think of any others off the top of my head…I think everything else is Sainsbury’s own. A word of caution; I don’t buy the basic bin bags or kitchen foil (I buy the regular Sainsbury’s ones) because they’re thin and it’s false economy if you have to use twice the amount.
OK, that was what I wanted to say today but then we sat talking last night and changed our game-plan for our finances so I thought I’d share that too:
We have been saving money into an account for emergencies and bills (like the car’s MOT a couple of weeks ago) and Mr.B has always had a saver to put money in temporarily for bills- we put money in there for the rent or TV licence at the start of the month to separate it from what’s left in the main account.
Last night we decided to work out some details of our financial goals for the next year, but all together they seemed a lot to deal with… and it’s a lot of money to put in one place in case of card or identity theft.
So we separated our big savings goal into separate goals and took 2 each (emergency will stay as it is, as per Dave Ramsey‘s suggestion). Then for each of our goals, we worked out where we want to be with them; it still seemed too big to deal with so we started with smaller goals along the way. For example, if I want £500 for something and that seems a long way off, I start by aiming for £100.
Then using the amount we have available each month and how long we have to reach each goal, we set an amount for each one per month.
One of our smaller goals is £685, which can be done quite quickly, so then another goal (a big one) can wait until that’s done so we can put in the first goal’s monthly amount too… ‘A’ per month towards the £685 then gets added to ‘B’ for the big one after we reach the £685, like debt-snowballing. Does that make sense?
So now we have 4 goals with little first-step targets to meet. We have some monthly money to put into each, we know which ones are the highest priority, and we have the drive to make it happen as fast as possible. So if I go car-booting or sell something online, I get to my goal quicker! 🙂
It just makes it simpler to reach a goal if you have a plan…so we planned (albeit at 1am) 🙂
So today’s tale of two halves has 2 morals: 1. Don’t buy anything brand-named unless you have to. and 2. set some savings goals in manageable chunks.
I hope that’s helped- if nothing else you now know our best ideas and conversations always happen after 11pm! 😉
Stay safe and warm my lovelies!
Anna x
A Peace of Life 