I have saved more than $15,000 since starting this project in January. This is mind-boggling for somebody who has never saved a cent in her life. Of that, $5000 is squirrelled away in KiwiSaver, so it’s not going to be much use towards the deposit on a rental property, but it’s still there. The rest of it is building up in a managed fund that I have always contributed regularly to, but always ended up raiding for bills like car rego, WOF, car repairs, or – my favourite – the unexpected major appliance meltdown.<\/p>\n
My next challenge will be to keep out of these savings. If you are not a dairy farmer, you may not be aware that Fonterra has, in its wisdom, prudently decided to protect its balance sheet by withholding major amounts of income from suppliers. As a result of this, I am without an income until August, with all the normal bills still rolling in. Am I worried? Not really. Thanks to the budgeting skills I have developed over the past six months, I’m confident we can easily survive. We have become so accustomed to a disciplined approach to daily living that, as the kids say, “We don’t even notice the $100 thing anymore.”<\/p>\n
Someone asked me if I were going to write a book, supposedly so others could learn some of the great wisdom that comes from this experience. All I can say is that it would be a bloody short book – a one-pager. To save piles of cash out of money not spent on groceries, apply the following: Set a goal (ie, I want to save $12,000 in one year). Limit your grocery spend (ie, $100 a week). Stick to this limit. If you accidentally overspend, adjust your next week’s limit accordingly (eg, Oops, I’ve spent $120. No worries – your next week’s spend will be $80).<\/p>\n
That’s all you need to do.<\/p>\n
Next week: How to save $100 off a typical grocery bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have saved more than $15,000 since starting this project in January. This is mind-boggling for somebody who has never saved a cent in her life. Of that, $5000 is squirrelled away in KiwiSaver, so it’s not going to be much use towards the deposit on a rental property, but it’s still there. The rest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[8,24,29,31,37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}