Money-saving and budgeting Samantha style!

I’m trying to win an iPad 2 in the iSave, iWrite, iPad competition from PlayPennies.com!

Money-saving is something I do alot of in this household, well I think I do.  Though at times I think I go to extremes as I even keep track of the money in my purse and hate it if I can't recall where it has gone.

Everytime I get my salary (4 weekly) I save some money.  I have different accounts to put aside for my Green Bin (£1 per week), school trips (£15), car maintenance and tax (£50), birthday and Christmas present (£60).  I also have a bank account that saves up the difference between the transaction amount of my debit card transactions and a pound (So spend £10.65, I save 0.35p).  This then goes towards my twice yearly hygenist visit at the dentist as its not covered by the NHS card.

I then know if I need to pay for a school trip, or the tax is due on my car, I have money put aside to cater for each event.  Christmas is so much easier.  I can take advantage of the early money saving events in September to start buying presents for my two children.  Last year I took advantage of the buy 3 toys for 2 at Argos in September.  Even better I split the transactions in two as I was buying 6 toys, and saved myself a further £5 by doing so.

In fact here is something else I do.  Where I work they have a 25% off their clothes every few months, so I make the children wait until then to buy new bits, though if they need something essential then I'll buy it of course.  I'm also able to put stuff aside if its about to go into a sale, so that helps too.  One time, I managed to pick up a pair of trousers (brand new, absolutely nothing wrong with them at all) for my youngest for just 70p!

Other ways to make your money to go further is to spend time doing competitons and surveys.  I like surveys giving the opinion on something and from time to time trying out a new product-great way to save money as you don't need to buy that product for a while.  I often get points which I can then convert into Amazon vouchers, which I then spend online on Wii games or DVDs for my two girls.  I can't recall the last time I bought something without my converted vouchers on Amazon.  It's a great way to get little extras at Christmas and easter-this year as an extra as well as Easter eggs, I was able to get 3 DVDs this way.

So that's how I budget with my money though I do more and will probably talk about that another time; sometimes I feel I go a little too far in counting the pennies in my purse too, but as they save look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.