Every week I share five frugal things that I’ve done during that week just to show you that the small things you do all add up to a great frugal lifestyle where you can learn to live a fabulously frugal life. Today’s post is a little bit different though as I’m going to share five things that I plan to do this year instead of five things I’ve done this week…
I have some very definite plans for 2020 – they’re written down in a notebook and everything. 😉
1) I need to get serious about getting old! 😉
I don’t want to be working until I’m too old to enjoy my retirement and when I do retire, I want to do so comfortably with enough money to enjoy my old age. This means reviewing my pension properly to make sure I’m paying as much into it as I can afford to and working on making it look as looking as healthy as it can be. The pension scheme that my work offer is really good and I already pay more than I need to into that but I think I can probably pay more into it if it’s worthwhile.
2) I also want to start saving and investing more each month into a savings pot that I can’t get at because I’m really bad at saving money when I can get to the money easily – I see a holiday I want to go on and end up spending my savings on booking it which isn’t grown up at all (although we’ve had some amazing holidays).
I currently save £100 a month into a share scheme at work which I think is over 5 years (or I might have picked the 7 years option) so that’s a good start but I really want to do more. The problem is that I have no idea what the best thing to do would be so I need to figure out how much I can afford each month and then take some advice.
3) I’m going to continue my slow but steady decluttering of the house, selling what I can and giving away the rest to charity. We’ve accumulated a lot of ‘stuff’ over the years and if I’m honest, we’d never miss most of it if we didn’t have it.
I’m starting 2020 with a clothing cull this weekend as my wardrobe is pretty full and honestly, there are lots of clothes in there that I don’t really like anymore. My plan is to get rid of anything that I don’t feel comfortable in or that I haven’t worn in the last six months (with the exception of ‘special’ outfits).
As well as decluttering, I’m also trying to make a conscious effort not to buy things that we don’t need. I’m not planning a no-spend year (or even a no-spend month) but I am going to buy less and think more about the things that I do buy.
4) Meal planning has been pretty relaxed lately which has had a bit of an impact on our budget over the last month or two so I am absolutely going to need to get myself back on track where that’s concerned.
I’ll also be getting back on the batch cooking bandwagon so watch this space for that too!
5) I am going to go through all of my insurance policies and add the dates into my diary along with a reminder for the week before to shop around for a better price. You can absolutely save a fortune by comparing and switching every time you’re due to renew so if you don’t then you’re missing a trick.
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I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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