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Let your next career move come to you.

Your relationship with money

I hate it so much.

My mum just called. I cover most of her and dad's direct debits for utilities, car and gym and sky.

She's happy cos she spent about 1 hour on the phone to sky and got her payments down by 10 quid a month or something. 

I would never do this. I don't have a flashy life at all but money for me is there so I don't have to waste my time doing this life admin crap. 

I never update insurance policies and stuff like that and know I'm getting ripped off but in all honesty I'd pay someone 200 quid so I'd never have to think about insurance policies.

I hated so much as a kid seeing my mum and dad having  no money or time for fun yet still having to drag us round loads of different shops to make sure they bought the cheapest of everything. It makes me sick to think of that and doing that myself.

My missus on the other hand who grew up rich hates how wasteful I am on this stuff. It also annoys me that my mum and dad still look for the best deals. Just have fun ffs

We had fook all when I was a kid.  Similar experiences of my mother scrimping and saving.  It came quite late to me (mid-30s) that I didn't need to buy sale clothes only any more.

I still ruthlessly save cash on insurance and utilities tho - mainly out of hatred of the companies having any more from me than necessary tho

Use an insurance broker.  Insurer pays them and they may have access to deals you can't get and they certainly do all the leg work for you.  Only insurance I do myself is my car as my broker doesn't do much car insurance and so only has access to the same deals I can get myself and even then it's usually just a ten minute annual call after five minutes on a comparison web site pointing out that another insurance company will do it for much less.

The strutter finances are a finely tuned machine with all outgoings carefully monitored and diary entries set for forthcoming bill renewals in order that the best deal can be obtained.

All purchases are haggled where possible and all deals and discounts ruthlessly pursued.

Saves us thousands a year and frankly I enjoy it.

My missus for example always rolls her eyes when I've bought cleaning products on the weekly Ocado shop rather than from the pound shop on the high street or on the monthly Tesco delivery 

Like fook am I doing that 

RE the insurance thing I'm with Pinko - it's the hatred of being ripped off that makes me always switch insurance, utilities, etc and that is despite searching for car insurance being far and away my most hated task of the year (and I include anything and everything I do at work in that)

I stay with same car insurer as they are always able to magically match the lowest quote you've had if you call them.  To be fair you probably don't even need to do the research and just phone up and say insurance company X can do it for 20% less.

I vary on the utilities and only switch from time to time.  Keep getting offered cheaper deals at the moment but don't want to sing up to a two year deal when I'm likely to be moving in a couple of months.  Similarly haven't had a fight with BT about the cost of my broadband for a while as I know they'll sign me up to a deal that I'll have to take with me.

There was never much money when I was growing up and I am much better off than my parents. I leave the insurance stuff and moving money to accounts with better rates of interest to the OH. He seems to enjoy that sort of thing whereas I find it boring and tbh I've got more important things to worry about with Young Gwenners.

For various reasons, I've become a convert to the church of strutter on this.  I had historically been a david cameronite "how much does a pint of milk cost" type.

If you start noticing this shyt you realise that you can be dropping £1.50 by going for a tin of tomatos with the posher sticker on rather than Tesco's own brand.  Don't know about you but I honestly couldn't tell the difference in my spag bol on the basis of the provenance of the tinned toms.

I'm gearing up for a lunchtime battle with Microsoft as someone seems to have ordered two X Box Live subscriptions on my account although I don't have an X Box.  It's £80 but I just object to someone out there benefiting from my money so it's worth the doing battle with a call centre.

I don’t really spend a lot these days and I’ve got nothing much better to do with my time so I do keep a fairly tight rein on things.

Also because I don’t really have all that much money coming in, comparatively speaking, I am a little more careful than I used to be.

I like a few little luxuries from time to time, like a new video game or something, but I do try to get things on sales or deals wherever possible.  I’m not exactly religious about it but it does help to pay attention to some of the smaller details, it al adds up!

One thing I would say is make sure you are claiming every benefit and deal that your circumstances permit, quite a few aren’t even means tested.

I get a free bus pass, £60 a week towards taxis, £85 a week towards a cleaner, exempt from council tax, £250 a year off my electricity bill, 25% discount on water, loads of other random stuff as well.  Well worth checking out  every possibility.

I am spectacularly lazy with money, I don’t mind paying for convinence and time saving. I  probably get too many Uber’s, so convinent. The insurance broker sort out all insurances. They get better deals and if there is a claim which maybe repudiated they can apply pressure on the insurer to pay .

my bank upgrades account with additional benefits if I threaten to leave, and when things go wrong they are keen to pay £ 100 quid in to my account by way of apology immediately.

the only thing I do fuss about is food from the supermarket. I hate throwing food away and will often ask if they have any meat or fish outback with a longer sell by date.

 I can’t be asked moving utilities although Sky are always keen to offer discounts of their rate card 

Strutter your attitude to money arouses me so much that I would be willing to give up prawn cocktail crisps for you.

 

I have a spreadsheet where I record every transaction I make (I have tried various apps but none allowed me to minipulate the data how I wanted), each month the budget is split up in to different sections eg £90 to spend on food at home, £40 food a work etc, and then various other tabs that help me set my finances for my five year plan

What Lady P said essentially. It's much less hassle to spend your time on earning more money than on spending less.

The only things I will do is haggle on big stuff (cars, builders works etc) and try to chase down deals on holidays and flights. We spend a fvcking fortune on holidays and it annoys me.

I hate all this stuff.  But I hate big companies more.  

So I'm quite willing to splash out for a holiday or a nice restaurant from time to time, but I am ultra-strict with utilities, insurance, subscriptions etc.  The people who run those things are bastards and they won't get a single penny extra from me.  

I'm very undisciplined about money. The only reason I'm not broke is because I don't have expensive tastes (some might say I don't have any taste) to begin with.

I have just set up a new savings account for the world class MBA I want to do, so had to rejig all my proposed budgets for the next three years, to ensure I could fund it as I go.

 

It was one of the most erotic evenings I have ever had

Yes, technically, though this is the year it all ends I suspect.

Not seen her in so long it wouldn't need count anyway and honestly I'm happier on my own nowadays.

This is rof and I reserve my inalienable rights to talk hardcore financial discipline with whomsoever I wish.

I believe that it may even be in the terms and conditions somewhere.

I'm with Bam. Dealing with companies is like a battling machine that just grinds you down until you don't care anymore. 

Last year spent 2 hours arguing with Thames water over a £700.00 bill they sent for one quarter. Was told it was incorrect. A week later received a bill for £800.00. spent another 30 mins getting that one sorted. Then received a late payment threat. So another 30 mins. 

Changed energy supplier as they were ripping me off. And now the new one is also ripping me off. 

Landlord didn't mention that heating costs (outside of utility costs) were in addition to rent so received a bill for that. So they're ripping me off. 

Got super fast broadband from a company who'd wired the building for it and it was very slow. Called them and they told me it was the sonos system causing the problem. Turns out they had fooked up the connection so 6 months paying for something i didn't receive. 

Bank charges me for an account. I could change but that would take me forever and they'd almost certainly cock it up somehow. They have also been charging me for the wrong insurance for several years. So they've been ripping me off. 

Lewisham council failed to renew my direct debit for council tax and the first I knew about it was a letter before action.

Every website requires that I confirm cookie settings. Most websites have absurd popups so you're constantly being redirected as they pop up just at the moment you're about to click on something. Most companies send spam even though I tick the box to opt out. I'm constantly being asked for feedback from them .

My email got hacked. So did my Netflix (twice) and Spotify. 

Every single company seems to either be fooking up or ripping me off or both somehow and when that's added to the pressures of life in general, entitled London twottery, constantly being advertised to, constantly hearing people's opinions and about Twitter outrage and all the rest of the bullshit in life then, yeah, I've decided it's easier just to pay to make some of it go away than having to deal with the khunts any more.

Otherwise I think I'd just end it all. 

 

I’m more in bam’scamp on this one. Life’s too fvcking short, m8s. 

That said I don’t buy brands for the sake of it nor do we have expensive tastes. But couldn’t gaf if I’m overpaying a utility. Mr tc on the other hand spends what seems to me an inordinate amount of time messing about with these things. 

My mum gets about 10x a month what I get.  Maybe more actually. That’s not embarrassing , it just mean she gets annoying because she has virtually unlimited funds with which to indulge whatever mad scheme she’s up to this time.

Tecco m7 u r really gonna have to work on your back stories when you return to the secret service.  Zippy of rainbow could pick the current one apart.

I hate fannying about with anything administrative so much that I’ve never once bothered changing utility/mortgage/insurance  etc providers. Luckily my other half froths on saving on those types of things - so I leave that with him. I save us money by being fairly restrained when buying things like furniture, clothing etc. I pretty much won’t buy anything unless it’s at least 30% off and I only buy things that we need (although that’s mostly because I don’t want to live in a house filled with pointless crap). 

I'm the same, I only buy stuff I really need and I do look for good deals, but if I don't find one, tough

I don't save on furniture, bed, sofa, table are all top notch

clothng on the other hand, I buy relatively cheap - if I buy anything at all. my carbon footprint regarding clothing is world-class, almost non existent

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