We often overlook the simplest ways of getting out of debt and saving money - read on to find out about one of the simplest and most effective ways of doing this. Just make a list!
At the beginning of each month, I would just tear a piece off an old envelope and write my salary at the top and then immediately subtract the amount I want to save in order to pay off my mortgage debt. I could then clearly see how much I money I had to get me through the month. I then simply subtracted everything I spent, when I spent it and kept a running total. The key to this is to writing down absolutely everything, no matter how small. I found that it was really easy to do – I would either write something down on the list as soon as I spent the money or take two minutes to do it in the evening. Whenever there was a fairly large sum on the list, I would just write down what it was next to the amount, so that I could remember.
Once you have kept your list for a couple of weeks, you already start to make some fascinating discoveries. It was not the big amounts on my list that had to be dealt with, as I had imagined. These were essential things, which there was no way I could do without. However, the small sums on my list were doing the damage! I was buying something to eat every morning before going into the office, but I was totally unaware of what it was costing me. I was spending 2.75 GBP every morning and that was adding up to around 55 GBP per month! As soon as I realised this, I started making my own breakfast. In addition to spotting things like this, I could turn to my list at any point during the month and see how much money I had left until the next pay day. This way, there was never any danger that I would have to go into the overdraft on my bank account.
This in itself represented a real saving that I started making each month and once I did away with one or two other unnecessary expenses, I was making very significant savings, which I then put towards paying off my mortgage debt. Keeping a list of this type is a simple yet powerful tool because it will clearly and simply show you where your money is going, and give you the control to make some changes.
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