Do you find there's too much month left at the end of your wages?  Are your purse/wallet and bank account emptier than you thought, and you have no idea where the money went?  It's so easy to spend money without paying much attention, but not really that hard to take control.

 

Save all your shopping receipts for a whole month.  At the end of the month, tally them all up.  Try setting yourself a target - to spend, say, £20 less on supermarket shopping the following month.  On the 1st day of the next month, take out the amount in cash you spent on shopping the previous month, less the £20 (or whatever amount you set) you feel you could save.  This, then, is your shopping budget for that month.  Try to use only that cash, without supplementing it from your bank account or credit card.  It's best to keep it in a separate purse or wallet, used solely for your supermarket shop and not for anything else.

 

At the end of that month, again add up the total amount spent on shopping and see if you can set a new target.  If the money saved on shopping isn't needed for bills, perhaps you could set it aside in a savings account towards a major purchase or a holiday. 

 

All those cappucinos and sandwiches bought for a quick working lunch cost a small fortune.....add up the cost of every drink, bacon roll, sandwich, packet of crisps and chocolate bar purchased during one week and you'll probably have an unpleasant surprise.  Plus, going to the shop to buy them inevitably means having to walk past other shops, where you might be tempted to spend yet more money - a magazine to read with your sandwich, perhaps?  Or even that gorgeous pair of shoes in the window that just happened to catch your eye!

 

Try making your own sandwiches - obviously much cheaper, and you know exactly what's gone into them.  If you don't want to get up 10 minutes earlier, then make them before you go to bed.....wrapped in foil and kept in the fridge overnight, they'll still be fine by lunchtime, especially if you invest in a small coolbag if there's no fridge at work.  Of course, you don't have to restrict yourself to sandwiches - make up a salad, or flask of soup and a roll, or even some risotto/pasta bake/stew etc. left over from the previous night's dinner and packed into a plastic lidded container.  If you've got a microwave at work, the possibilities are endless.  Don't forget cutlery, if needed.

 

Nearly all workplaces have a kettle, so there's no excuse for not making your own coffee/tea.  Or take a flask!

 

Buying bottled water, especially the small individual bottles, is another way to get through your money quickly (and quite unnecessarily).  If you really don't like the taste of your tap water at home, then consider buying a water filter (but then you have the expense of buying filters for it).  If you must buy bottled water, most supermarkets do a budget range of it.  Buy it in the biggest bottles they do (usually the cheapest way) and decant into a small individual bottle for taking to work.

 

If you're trying to save money, impulse buys are a definite no.  Stop and ask yourself if you really need it, or if you just WANT it.  If you really can't resist spending, then don't take any money or cards out with you, apart from the amount you need for fares, etc.

 

If you feel you can't live without your fix of the gossip magazines, then get together with a group of friends.  You can all arrange to buy one magazine each (a different one, obviously) and then swap with each other.  Same applies with newspapers - better still, read them online (although there are plans afoot for some papers to start charging for online viewing).

 

Make it a project to see just how much money you can save over a period of time....perhaps promising yourself a reward at the end!