My name is Jessie and I’m a reformed overspender. As I wrote last week, I’ve been put on a money diet by my boss — and after seven days on my new regime I am almost £60 richer.
This was achieved by buying two-for-one cinema tickets to see the (never-ending) Batman film through a scheme called Perks for Work (£12.50 saved), by cancelling two subscriptions (£69 a year saved — or £1.33 a week), by bringing in lunch two days a week (£14), by getting money from Quidco after a friend referred me and I then referred a friend (£30), then using Quidco to buy a birthday party present on eBay, a site I haven’t used since the noughties, which offered the best cashback. I bought Pokémon cards and an album for £15 (1 per cent cashback, so 15 pence), then got very excited at checkout as I realised I could use a promo code for eBay too, giving me 10 per cent off — now you’re talking. (Total saving £1.65)
The £30 from Quidco was probably the easiest cash I’ve ever made. Next easiest was the subscriptions, which is a perfect lesson in why you shouldn’t put things off. It took ten minutes, max, to cancel two and I came away feeling lighter. So goodbye The New York Times Spelling Bee game (I loved you for two months, but now I’ve moved on) and then a magazine called 110% Gaming that I took out for a son’s birthday two years ago and have been meaning to cancel pretty much ever since as a protest against its maths.
Then there are my packed lunches. Every morning I flourish my Tupperware box to my colleagues, wanting them to ooh and aah at me for being all sensible.
That moment when I’m rushing to make the lunches and get a kid to school on time, though, are when I most want to give in. I find myself throwing random salad and leftovers into the Tupperware and then spending most of the morning dreading lunchtime.
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A generous person would suggest that I was being inventive with my lunch choices, an honest one would just tell me to go out and buy something nice from Leon.
On one day I forgot my lunch altogether and ended up eating cereal (while praying that someone would take pity on me and offer a chocolate biscuit). I have to confess to one Pret breakfast lapse, when I found myself in the queue worrying that a reader might spot me paying £2.10 for a pain au raisin. On the upside I managed to ignore that small voice in my head telling me to buy a tea as well. Hurrah!
One episode that felt like a win that I realised wasn’t was when the Tesco delivery man called me at noon on Monday to say that he was outside my old address and no one was answering the bell. Having apologised for not updating my new temporary address on my account, he told me that I had to cancel the order there and then.
I pleaded with him to redeliver by explaining that among the items was the cake for my husband’s birthday, which was that day. However, rules is rules and he couldn’t.
So instead I logged on to Amazon and discovered that a cake from Morrisons could amazingly be delivered in four hours’ time. I then used my Amazon credit card that I’ve resurrected this week so that I could get £1 off my next shop.
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This felt good until I realised that the Morrisons shop was more expensive than Tesco, so probably cancelled it out. Oh well, you can’t win ’em all.
I read all your suggestions, thank you. One was to download the Money Wizz app — which I deleted when I realised I had to pay the website to allow it to save me money, which I wasn’t convinced by — to shop at Aldi, which I will do next week.
One reader argued the case for Amazon, that spending over the odds for convenience makes sense as long as you have optimised your spend on the big things: mortgage, pension, savings, car.
Knowing I have to report back to you all has been the most effective way of keeping me from spending. When I have considered buying anything not strictly necessary I know that I’m going to have to tell you sensible lot about it and this makes me re-evaluate.
If we were at Alcoholics Anonymous, you would be my sponsors, keeping me on the straight and narrow. Hello, my name is Jessie. It has been seven days since I last had a financial blowout . . .
