Budgeting Tips for 2026

 I have talked about money saving tips before on this blog here.

Today I wanted to talk about the basic budgeting techniques that I carry out every day in order to make the most of my money and make it work for me.  I have one budget for my personal money and another for the joint account for my partner and myself.

I have a monthly budget for every month for the next year.  Sounds excessive?  Probably, but it works for me.

The biggest things to factor in are the things that you don’t think about at first glance.  For example, some months of the year have five weeks in them.  There are four this year.  So what does that mean?  An extra weekly food shop at a minimum.  A five week month will typically require an extra £150 to my budget when you look at all the extras.

What I do to counter this is at the beginning of the year I look at the number of months with the extra week and work out the extra money needed.  So this year, an extra £600.00 was needed.  This equates to £50.00 per month.  Every month as part of the budget, I transfer £50.00 to our savings account, using when needed on the “extra months”.

Another thing to look at are subscriptions services like Amazon.  We have regular subscriptions set up for things like coffee, pet food etc which are all set to different frequencies.  Some can be every six weeks, every three months, etc.  So at the start of the year I check the dates (Amazon helpfully projects the dates for you) and I incorporate these figures into the appropriate month.

When it comes to food, make sure that you have the store clubcard.  With mine, I pay an £8.00 per month subscription, but this saves me 10% of two of my shopping bills.  On average, after taking the subscription payment into account, I usually save at least £20.00.  Over the year, that is a saving of £240.00.   Every little helps!

Other things to think about are things like home and car insurance.   It is usually cheaper to pay annually for these things, so I set aside an amount every month (based on the previous year’s figure with an increase of 10%) to go into a specific savings account to pay for them when the time arises.  This accrues interest and means that when the time comes, the money is ready and waiting to be paid.

I tend to use a cashback site when arranging the yearly insurance too, which can gain you around £100 if you shop around.  I use the cashback sites for many things, but the big earners are home insurance, car insurance and pet insurance.

I also incorporate a “slush” section into my monthly budget.  There are the inevitable things in the month that come up that you need (or want) to buy and having some extra money available helps.  I account an amount of money every month and anything we don’t spend is moved into a savings account.

Forward planning for the year ahead means that I am never surprised by the extra food shop in the month, or when the bulk orders from Amazon come out of the account.  It is there, ready.

This type of planning absolutely takes time and I am much more vigilant than I need to be.  I update the budget when bills come out, food is bought etc every few days so I always know where we are at any given point.

Here is an example of the accounts I use for our joint account in order to keep everything running perfectly.

 Current Account                      All bills are paid from here

Insurance Savings                    Money is transferred here by standing order each month

Regular Savings                       Any money left over from the “slush” money goes in here together with     the monthly “five week payment”.

 These are just a few of the ways that planning out your budget for a year can save you money.  I would estimate that doing everything the way that I do saves/earns me £400-500 a year.

What top tips do you have for your budget?

Creative Corner 4 - Wishes from a Genie

Story Prompt

You are given three wishes by a genie, but the twist is, you don't get to chose what you receive. The genie does.

Do you remember the day that the earth decided to stop hiding the magic in the world?  No one ever discovered the reason why.  It was as if Mother Earth had just decided that there was too much pain in the world and decided to give us the magic that we knew, or hoped, was under the surface.  Just outside of our vision.  But no longer.

What became interesting was what was folklores were true, what creatures were real and what we had in fact made up in our heads.  Fairies?  Real.  Trolls?  Real.  Dinosaurs?  A hoax, apparently perpetrated by pixies (also real) to mess with the human race.

Dragons were real, but had in fact become extinct.  The Loch Ness Monster, was real but also now extinct.  I was sad about that one.

Crime rates went down, though this was a technicality because it turned out that a lot of unsolved murders were actually committed by vampires and the occasional werewolf and no one was quite sure yet as to whether those beings could be charged with a crime.  You certainly couldn’t put them in prison.  They would eat the population.  

The Yeti and Big foot were real, but decided to stay in the shadows.  They were still not interested in interacting with humans.

Magic was real, although who was magical and who wasn’t was still not obvious.  A bit like Harry Potter with us being the muggles.  Magical people prefer to keep to themselves and have their own government.  Although it is called Nydrian.  Not the Ministry of Magic.

What brings me to my post today though is my experience with a magical being.  Not a witch, wizard or warlock, but an actual genie.  They are exceedingly rare so rumours still fly around as to their existence.  But yes, I met one.   Here is my story.

What you need to know about genies is that yes, they do grant three wishes, of a kind.  The difference however is that they choose for you.  They are a pure spirit and can see what it is that you actually need.  So what did the genie choose for me?  Three opportunities to speak to my soul, the essence of my being, at times of my choosing.

At the time I was disappointed.   Winning the lottery for example would have been nice.  But after much thought on the matter, and indeed after having my three wishes, I discovered that what I had been given was actually priceless.  I received inner peace.

Have you ever found actual true inner peace?  I did not think it was possible to be honest, or even if I thought about it, it was never something that I believed that I could ever attain.

The first time I spoke to my soul I was wary.  I was going to find out who I actually was.  I had been through a lot in my life and wasn’t sure I would like what I found.  So I started with “Hello.  Who am I?”

My soul, unnamed and female, told me to close my eyes and she took me back to the absolute baseline of myself.  The core of who I am.  For that time period, every moment of pain, every sadness, every bad moment of my life was lifted off my shoulders and set aside.  It was all still there.  But temporarily moved to the side.  So I could truly see, me, stripped bare.  I felt lighter, so much lighter. And so young. 

There is something wonderful, and quite relieving about realizing that you are the person that you thought you were.  The feeling that had plagued my life of not being good enough was frankly ridiculous.  It was such a pure feeling; and it has stayed with me since.

Even when it was over and all the pain that had been removed was put back, I knew, absolutely, that I was not only still a whole person, but that I was enough and that made so much difference.  That is when I began to realise what I had been given.

I chose not to take my second opportunity to speak with my soul for about six months.  I was settling into myself, the new feelings of confidence and I knew, somehow, that the actual work would begin with my second meeting.

I was right.  The second time was hard.  The hardest thing I have ever experienced.  There was anger in my body.  Rage. Indescribable fury.  There was something in me that needed to come out.  Immediately.  I won’t tell you the details, some things do have to remain private, but the words that erupted from my mouth had festered in me for decades. 

It was painful, but so very needed.

Anger isn't healthy. Pain isn't healthy. Burying them as deep as I had damages your soul. 

The fall out from that took me some time to heal from.  To accept.  To understand what that meant and how my life would be different as a result.   For a time the sadness that I have carried for so long was much worse, but I began to understand that the knowledge of it was no longer festering inside me.  I was free of it.

I waited a year for my final encounter with my soul.  I needed to heal.  

I did not know what to expect.  I was nervous.  Scared.  But what happened that day was the most beautiful, perfect time of my life.  I found my inner peace.

This time, my soul said hello back and although there was no corporeal being for me to see, it felt that she was pleased to see me.  She was welcoming me I realised.  She told me that I was free.  She invited me to step into what I guess you could describe as a mansion in my mind.  Some people call them memory palaces.

I realized that there were no more skeletons hiding there.  No locked boxes with chains wrapped round them, never to be touched.  No dangerous paths that I did not dare traverse.  I was finally free of all of it. 

It is hard to describe, but I felt that I was finally moving into myself.  There was so much of me to explore.  No dark corners.  I was there to be filled, to be explored.  The more I moved around in this place, the more sunlight streamed in.

There was scar tissue there. Previous pain. But healed. It no longer needed attention or notice.

I knew at that point with absolutely certainty that the future was mine now.  To do with what I wished.  That nothing could hold me back. All those dark places inside me were now filled with light and were ready to be filled again with whatever I wanted. With happiness.

I can truly say that I had never felt as happy.  Ever.  I experienced real, beautiful joy.

Knowing that nothing can hold you back now is powerful. I can truly see now what I have in this world. So much to be grateful for.  I can look back at my journey and feel proud that I made it out. In one piece. Whole.

The world is now is open to me.  I can truly enjoy my life. 

So if you happen to come across a genie, let them choose. They truly do know best. 

I'm off now to chat with the fairies, who really do live at the bottom of your garden. Turns out, they can make a mean mojito. 

The Internet - Why Our Lives Are Now Smaller

Do you remember a time before the internet?  I am old enough to.  I remember being taught how to use it the very first time.  The trainer asked us to search “how to cook a chicken”.  I did not know then how the internet would quickly form a major part of my life, my routine.  I did not realise how it would change my life, for the better and for the worse.

Anything that I could possibly want to buy is available online.   Books, music, clothes, the food I eat.

In some ways, the internet saves us a lot of time.  You don’t need to go into a clothing store anymore.  You can choose multiple options of whatever you want and get a courier to return what you don’t want.  You want to clean your sink drain, Amazon is here for you.  You can’t be bothered to cook tonight, Just Eat will sort you out. You forget an ingredient for the meal you are cooking tonight, Deliveroo has your back.   You want to go somewhere, you open Google Maps.

The internet has made it so you could reasonably never leave your home if you didn’t want to.  Especially if you work from home.

You can be permanently entertained, forever.  Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, Youtube.  You will never run out of things to watch.  Adverts can be a thing of the past, if you pay for the privilege.  You can connect to people from all over the world, without ever leaving your sofa.

The internet even provides some with a job now.  You can use it to purchase things and then review them.  You can game and have people watch you play.  You can spout your opinions online and have people listen to you.

The internet has given me much.  The platform I write to you on now.  Twitter, I refuse to use X, that helped me to find some like minded people and opened up my voice.

But with the good, comes the bad.

We are losing social skills.  We are losing human interactions.  We are losing our time to things that do not matter and do not affect our lives.  We lose hours doom scrolling, playing games, always searching for the next dopamine hit.  The next really interesting thing that is surely just a scroll away.

I remember my old morning routine.  I got up in the morning, had a shower, made a fresh coffee, put my makeup on and sat down on the sofa, munching on a slice of toast before I was out of the door.  Quick, easy.  Up and out of the house within 45 minutes.

Now, I sit on the sofa and check to see what is going on in the world before I start my day.  I check Facebook, Twitter, a news website.  What I guess I would consider “the necessary”.  The absolute basics.  Then I “quickly” check Reddit and suddenly thirty more minutes have disappeared, reading stories about other people’s lives.  Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.  So it begins.

I drag myself out of the house and catch the bus.  Instead of just quietly sitting there, maybe reading my book if I have remembered it; it is more doom scrolling, maybe playing a game on an app or for a longer journey, watching an episode of one of my shows on Netflix.  I must be entertained.

Sitting quietly, or chatting with someone is a thing of the past.  We can no longer just sit.  We check our emails, check the socials. Shop.  All while the people next to us do the same thing.  Interacting with our phones instead of each other.  We converse with the people in our phones instead of the person right in front of us.

Children’s birthday parties used to be full of games and playing and pin the tail on the donkey.  Listening to music together and dancing.  Now each child sits there, immersed in their own world on their phones.  Your “cool” status rides on how many likes you have, how many followers you have.

I remember having problems in school when I was a child.  Bullying was involved.  But back then, I could go home.  To my safe haven.  Those children were not there.  I was with my family.  There was an escape from it.

Now, there is no escape.  Those same children are now online, talking about you.  Posting about you.  The bullying actually becomes worse because people says things online that they would never to your face.  They can start a rumour about you that spreads in minutes, true or not.  There is no escape.

You can also not just be “you” anymore.  You have to have a label.  As many labels as possible.  The more you can put on your social media profiles, the better.  You are not tidy, you have OCD.  You are not a moody teenager.  You have depression, bipolar, anxiety disorder.  You have an argument with your parents.  Oh, you must have PTSD.  You are struggling with your growing body and hormones.  Maybe you aren’t a girl after all.  Maybe you are a boy.  Maybe you are both. 

Decide.  DECIDE!  Tell the world.  Tell the internet.  And once you decide, you are not allowed to go back.  You cannot change your mind.  Who you are.  Thoughts that you tweeted ten years ago which do not represent you anymore are enough to hang you.  You are not allowed to change.  The internet lasts forever.

The internet can also be used as a weapon in a different form.   That cheeky snap that you send your partner can end up being shared to everyone you know.  That video you made together, can end up on Pornhub.

Men and women have been pitted against each other like never before.  All men are this, all women are that.  How do you know?  Well I saw a video on Youtube.  I read a thread on Reddit.  Not actual interaction.

People tell you, as I have told you above, that our world has increased and been made easier by the internet.

But in fact, when you look, when you really look, our world has gotten so much smaller.  Our lives have become more insular.  We shout at the world telling them to listen to us, read our stories, watch us; but the people next to us no longer exist.

We can never go back.  Our lives are too intertwined. But there are changes we can make.    These are the promises I make to myself:

·       -  When I am with someone, my phone is away.

·       - When I am on the bus, I will read a book, not a Reddit story.

·       - When I want to go somewhere, I will take recommendations from word of mouth, not a Yelp reviewer.

·       -  I will start writing more again.  It gives me peace and enjoyment.  The numbers of who reads and who   doesn’t no longer concerns me.

·       -  If I cannot find something to watch, I will read, I will talk.  I will no longer doom scroll for an hour to     find something.

There is a hard one.  Reddit.  Of all the doom scrolling, this is the one for me.  There is no purpose to Reddit.  You read about other people’s lives and not your own.  You comment on those lives with your opinion, which is right for some but not for others.  You are barely even allowed to have an opinion on Reddit these days as it is, so why am I still there?

I no longer want to engage in things that do not bring anything into my life.   Do not add to my life and in fact, take time away from actually living my life.  I can use the internet for the good it still holds to.  I can educate myself, I can learn about new things.  There is so much out there I do not know and that information is at my fingertips.  But instead, I scroll.

This is the promise we need to make to ourselves. 

Stop. Scrolling. 

It is ok not to be entertained