Money Saving for Birthdays

Financing Special Occasions

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A simple search online will reveal hundreds if not thousands of informative posts about the need to save money for specific times of year. Saving money for Christmas, saving money for summer holidays, saving money for birthdays are all titles that we have seen here it Tyne Gateway financial when we have completed a research around money-saving advice. Whilst it is acknowledged that it is important to ensure that money can be saved for specific times of the year, particularly time such as Christmas where costs can far outweigh any potential savings a person may have. Similarly, birthdays are another period of the year where additional funding may be needed and therefore having an extra pot of cash to cover these sometimes expensive and extensive costs can be deemed as imperative by the average household.

It is however incredibly important to ensure that there is a steady stream of disposable income to ensure that when there are special occasions, there is enough money to be able to cover the costs. Although there are many online quick loans services across the United Kingdom which can provide access to short-term credit, this may not be the ideal solution when looking for ways to access money, particularly if the money is to be used for gifts, presents or special occasions. Whilst quick loans are useful and indeed have their place, here it Tyne Gateway financial it would not necessarily be the first port of call when considering accessing a small sum of money, particularly when we are considering financing presents and special occasions et cetera. The key thing is to have disposable income, and whereas this is quite a simple statement, the reality of having disposable income within your bank account each and every month to cover costs for celebrations, birthdays and other special events can be quite a difficult target to achieve particularly if there is a limited income or there are many other outgoings which automatically negate the opportunity to accrue additional finances.

Advice for Saving

One piece of advice which is not often adhere to around birthdays and Christmases is for people not to spend as much money as they should on purchasing items which may not actually be as well received as the provider initially thinks. Birthdays and Christmas times are certainly special occasions and should be celebrated accordingly. But does the person that you are buying at present for actually need the thing you are buying? You'll often find that material items which often cost lots of money and can incur debt for the person providing the gift is often not as wanted as the person providing the gift would often be led to believe. In situations like this it might be experiences that the birthday girl or boy may prefer over material items. Savings can therefore be had when carefully considering what a person may or may not need for a birthday or Christmas.

Setting up a savings plan

Simple solution to ensure that you have enough disposable income to cover the costs of special occasions could be to set up direct debits into a separate bank account. A simple example of this could be transferring £30 into a separate account at the end of each month, or around payday. You may initially be thinking that £30 is not a lot of money and clearly isn't if you got lots of people to buy presents and gifts for. However a few times this by 12, with the self implemented savings plan commencing at the start of the year, at the end of the year by simply saving £30 a month you will have almost £400 saved. It is therefore really important to think about how much disposable income you can afford to transfer into a separate part that will enable you to cover the costs of birthdays, Christmases or any other special occasions which you may not have the deposed disposable income for at the time.

Check your outgoings

Another way to try and save money would be to look at any outgoings that you have from your bank account and to really strip down on any direct debits and standing orders that you may have in place the things that you do naturally use or need. Checking one's finances on a regular basis should be implemented as part of any household financial housekeeping strategy. Many years ago this would have been quite difficult because you have had to wait for a bank statement arrive in the post and then go through it with a highlighter pen. Although this system works and indeed many people still use paper bank statements to dissect their finances, it is really important to take advantage of online banking in order to analyse your outgoings and income and determine if you do have any standing orders or direct debits which you really do not need. A simple cancellation of two or three standing orders or direct debits which you may not need can culminate in significant savings which could be used towards birthdays, Christmases or other special occasions throughout the year.

It is clearly incredibly important to recognise and acknowledge special occasions and let's be honest, we all like giving gifts to people and the pleasure it clearly brings them. There are many different ways to be able to drill down on your finances and try to free up disposable income to cover many of the expensive costs which are associated with special occasions. Clearly having a good overview of your financial situation and trying to identify where money can be saved or indeed transferred to a separate account is the best course of action in terms of trying to save money to cover these events. Always remember though, that many people may not automatically want to have expensive gifts and presents bought for them in the most important for people is for them to have time spent with them with loved ones, or experiences which may not cost anything.

Budgeting for Rainy Days

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The most important financial tips anybody can implement when looking at saving money is to ensure that you have a budget in place, to try to save money. It goes without saying that without having a budget it is almost impossible to be able to keep track of your daily spend and therefore, quite often in these situations, where budgets are not in place, spending can get out of control. Now the word budget can seem a tad tedious and for lots of people who are in the process of trying to save money, trying to stick to, or implement a budget is possibly the last thing that they want to do. Budgets can be interesting though and, believe it or not, they are quite simple to put into place and over the longer term, will ultimately allow you to save money.

Working out finances

There is a simple way to work out a monthly household budget - list down all the outgoings. There needs to be no stone unturned, when looking at all the outgoings you have leaving your bank account. Take time to look at paper versions or online versions of your accounts and note down every single outgoing that you have. You may be shocked and surprised when taking an analytical view of your accounts that you have direct debits and standing orders going out of your account that you did not even know about. It is actually really easy to set up monthly subscriptions for purchases and forget about them, particularly when the monetary value is quite low. It is so easy to click on a monthly subscription off your phone and then, two months later, you forget you had it in the first place. It is therefore vitally important to ensure that you check each outgoing the have leaving your bank account to ensure that you are aware of every single penny that leaves your account.

Once you have noted down each of the outgoings that you have from your bank account, the next thing to do is to record all your income. Obviously, the biggest income into your bank account will be your salary and this should go in on a set time, every month. As well as income from salary there may be other income that you can put into this column, and this would include things such as child tax benefits the value of which increase in correlation with the amount of children that you have. You may also have pensions going into your bank account or other income from other sources all of which need to be added up put into the total income column.

Correlating Spending Figures

Now that you have an income and outgoings column, what you need to do next is to correlate the two figures and work out how much disposable income you have, once all of your income has been collated, and your outgoings have been balanced against this figure. The amount that you have left can be classed as disposable income and is the sum in which you have free to spend each month. Although we have said ‘free to spend’, this does not mean that although you have a lump sum of disposable income each month, this money can then be used to go out and purchase anything. A percentage of the disposable income should be used to funnel into a separate account which will enable you to accrue a small sum of savings each month. It can be surprising that by saving just a small amount say around £25 a month over a 10 months, this would accrue £250; although £25 does not seem quite a lot, £250 does, and this small sum of monthly savings taken out of disposable income can come in handy for a rainy day, at a later stage in the year when money may be tight.
It is always handy to have an emergency pot of money available to cover life's unexpected events. Say for example your car breaks down, your boiler needs servicing, or your dishwasher breaks down. Relying on credit to cover these unfortunate events can prove costly and having a small emergency pot of money, which has been drawn off small outgoings each month can become incredibly helpful.

Look at your accounts!

Tyne Gateway Financial understand that it is not always easy to build a savings pot utilising disposable income each month. Most people use all their money each month and therefore live on a month by month basis. We do however believe that by accurately detailing your income and outgoings using a budget will enable you to have an overview of the household spend and may move you marginally towards having a small part of disposable income that you can use for emergency situations. Tyne Gateway Financial also strongly recommend taking a close look at your bank accounts and drilling down on what outgoings you have, because time and time again we have seen that there can be money to be saved, by taking a detailed analytical approach of your finances, particularly when considering standing orders and direct debits some of which you may not even need.