Budgeting Tips for 2026

 I have talked about money saving tips before on this blog here.

Today I wanted to talk about the basic budgeting techniques that I carry out every day in order to make the most of my money and make it work for me.  I have one budget for my personal money and another for the joint account for my partner and myself.

I have a monthly budget for every month for the next year.  Sounds excessive?  Probably, but it works for me.

The biggest things to factor in are the things that you don’t think about at first glance.  For example, some months of the year have five weeks in them.  There are four this year.  So what does that mean?  An extra weekly food shop at a minimum.  A five week month will typically require an extra £150 to my budget when you look at all the extras.

What I do to counter this is at the beginning of the year I look at the number of months with the extra week and work out the extra money needed.  So this year, an extra £600.00 was needed.  This equates to £50.00 per month.  Every month as part of the budget, I transfer £50.00 to our savings account, using when needed on the “extra months”.

Another thing to look at are subscriptions services like Amazon.  We have regular subscriptions set up for things like coffee, pet food etc which are all set to different frequencies.  Some can be every six weeks, every three months, etc.  So at the start of the year I check the dates (Amazon helpfully projects the dates for you) and I incorporate these figures into the appropriate month.

When it comes to food, make sure that you have the store clubcard.  With mine, I pay an £8.00 per month subscription, but this saves me 10% of two of my shopping bills.  On average, after taking the subscription payment into account, I usually save at least £20.00.  Over the year, that is a saving of £240.00.   Every little helps!

Other things to think about are things like home and car insurance.   It is usually cheaper to pay annually for these things, so I set aside an amount every month (based on the previous year’s figure with an increase of 10%) to go into a specific savings account to pay for them when the time arises.  This accrues interest and means that when the time comes, the money is ready and waiting to be paid.

I tend to use a cashback site when arranging the yearly insurance too, which can gain you around £100 if you shop around.  I use the cashback sites for many things, but the big earners are home insurance, car insurance and pet insurance.

I also incorporate a “slush” section into my monthly budget.  There are the inevitable things in the month that come up that you need (or want) to buy and having some extra money available helps.  I account an amount of money every month and anything we don’t spend is moved into a savings account.

Forward planning for the year ahead means that I am never surprised by the extra food shop in the month, or when the bulk orders from Amazon come out of the account.  It is there, ready.

This type of planning absolutely takes time and I am much more vigilant than I need to be.  I update the budget when bills come out, food is bought etc every few days so I always know where we are at any given point.

Here is an example of the accounts I use for our joint account in order to keep everything running perfectly.

 Current Account                      All bills are paid from here

Insurance Savings                    Money is transferred here by standing order each month

Regular Savings                       Any money left over from the “slush” money goes in here together with     the monthly “five week payment”.

 These are just a few of the ways that planning out your budget for a year can save you money.  I would estimate that doing everything the way that I do saves/earns me £400-500 a year.

What top tips do you have for your budget?

Your Spending Habits

Money may not make the world go round (that would be love), but it sure does help with the journey.

There is a question that many of us face each month when it comes to money. Despite our best efforts and forward planning, a week before pay day (or even sooner if you are me) the question shouted out across the country is "Where did my money go?"

The intentions always start so well.  You write down each of your bills, when they are due, figure out how much you can spend each week and yet somehow,  it disappears.

I blame the bank account fairy.

For me it has to be make up and beauty products. You know how it goes. You wander into +Superdrug looking to buy a £1 MUA blusher because you are oh so thrifty. Somehow, you walk out £30.00 lighter with make up and products that seem absolutely essential, right up until the point when you get home and wonder what the hell you have bought.

Legal & General recently created a handy little tool, a habit cost calculator to see just how much you really do spend on those items that you forget about.   Your weekly lottery, a coffee; half of the products in Superdrug, it all adds up.

I would say that I spend approximately £50.00 a month on makeup and beauty products. Let's see what that adds up to.

So, for the price I spend each month on makeup and beauty, I could buy a new laptop, go on holiday; put money towards a festival.  An extra £600.00 pound to play with at the end of the year sounds like a great idea, although maybe lets look at something smaller to cut out.

£2.00 a week on the lottery and £3.00 for your Monday morning coffee does not sound like a lot at all when you spend it.

Even the total cost of around £260.00 a year still doesn't seem so much when you weigh it all up.

When you look at the bigger picture however, cutting out these tiny luxuries starts to make more sense.

If I cut out my Monday morning coffee and stopped buying a lottery ticket, instead putting that money away, look at what you could buy.  Over the course of 15 years that money would send you on 9 holidays or get you a car deposit.  Hell, it could even buy you a car.

How is that morning coffee looking like now?

* In collaboration with Joes Bloggers