Are you wasting your time by wasting your money?
Your home finances ARE your business. The business of living, the business of working bloody hard and making sure you're not wasting your time by wasting your money.
When it's taken you a day of working to earn £80 why would you not ensure it's looked after?
Just letting it go into your bank account and not counting it, not deciding how best to use it or checking its all ok is just wasting your time in the first place.
Every time you fritter away another £10 on crap, just know that was an hours worth of work (or your equivalent)
If your boss handed you those items instead of your wages would you be thrilled?
Wasting food is huge in the UK, wasting heat in our homes because our insulation is poor, wasting money is also a thing.
"Intentional living" is a great philosophy and enables you to make smarter decisions. If what you are about to buy is going to (Marie Kondo) spark joy or be needed then that's perfect.
If neither should you really be buying it?
Bank Reconciliation
Simply the way that businesses double check their book keeping by comparing their bank statements with their accounts, their spreadsheets.
Why do this?
Mistakes happen. You forget things. Being charged twice for something. A refund not going through. Not being paid correctly.
If you're not doing this as a regular, say monthly habit, you will look back and realise you've effectively thrown money away. You can't easily go after or chase mistakes, after 3 months or so has gone by. Or at least it just makes it more stressful and less likely that you will.
An even more zoomed in approach would be to check your supermarket receipt. My nan did this every time. She would remove an item from her wheeled trolley, and strike off that item from her receipt. And in the 80's these just showed the prices not line itemised!
I agree it's a bit of a ball ache so I just scan read my receipts as I get into the car and anti bac my hands. I have been charged twice for something and was able go straight back in and get my refund. A fiver is a fiver right?
(I've also been undercharged for something but, you know, I needed to get home so...)
In a restaurant to save any blushes, I don't pore over the bill with a calculator, but I do scan over it just to be sure.
Having said that, splitting the bill with friends can be painful - everyone on their phones using the calculator app! No one wants to spend more than they have to, so if you're someone who does this, do you also do this with everything else?
How long does this take?
Opening up your online banking, logging in, line by line saying yes, yes, that's fine, yep, takes around 5 minutes.
When you hit a "what the hell is that?" then a few extra minutes until you realise you had forgotten about that thing.
If you're over spending regularly in an area, then tweak your budget to suit.
Adjust your categories so that you arrive at the right numbers for next and future months.
There's no point saying you need to spend less on petrol because that's the price. You can't affect it.
You can start sharing cars, walking more, getting a bike, using public transport IF it's cheaper but when petrol is £1.90 a litre there's not a lot you can do to spend less on it unless you change your usage.
So HAVING to spend more on it means that something else has to give.
Visibility to your personal cash flow is the key to your sanity.
Until next time
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