RE: It's not how much you earn. It's how much you spend.

[riverflows]

. It's just as nice to go for a walk and a coffee. Movie night in. It all ends the same way regardless.

Yep. It was nice spending money when things were good, but now I'm reassessing - especially as we are going to UK in 2024 and it's 51 cents to the pound. Fuck, well, I did that in 2001 and travelled for a year on 3000 bucks and the aussie single parent pension for six months of that before it was cancelled. I never ate out at all. I carried food around in a shopping bag. Best year of my life.

Goodbye Spotify, goodbye all the streaming services except for Netflix that I skank my sister in laws password, goodbye all the things I wasn't paying attention to but sure as hell are now.

I have this AWESOME bank account that has a 'maybuys' function. You put in the URL of the thing you want to buy, with the price (eg the DJ Mavic Pro 3 drone I want). You work out how much you can pay over time, say $100 a fortnight, and they work out how many weeks it'll take, and then take out that amount until the money is saved. When you save it, you withdraw it and buy the thing, or if you change your mind at any point, you just swap the money back to your account.

I love it.

And I decided to save the $35 i was spending on coffee every week. 1155 bucks so far this year. THe trick is having willpower to resist. We've said it's okay to have a coffee out as LONG AS YOU ARE SITTING DOWN TO ENJOY WITH FRIENDS. So the little clause there helps.

Maybe I should put this in a post.

Comments

[niallon11]

It can be done. It's just not that fun to do it.

And I decided to save the $35 i was spending on coffee every week. 1155 bucks so far this year.

But in the long run it's amazing to achieve bigger goals than a coffee. You have the right idea by cutting out the small stuff and it will pay off for the future. 51 cents to the pound is severe so you will need every cent of it.

I've never heard of a "maybuys" function before. but it sounds like a useful tool for budgeting. I have a change jar on my account. Every time that you use your card it rounds to the nearest euro and puts the loose change in your savings account. Our one goes towards the wedding and it all adds up over time.