10 things I cut out from my budget and don’t miss

For the last two months I haven’t tracked my expenses. I still budget but I don’t really need to spend time going through my transactions for the previous month anymore. I know what I spent on and I know that it was within my budget. So checking my bank statements stopped being a good use of my time. Now, don’t be fooled - it took me years to arrive at this stage of spending awareness. In the beginning of my financial freedom journey, I had NO IDEA where my money’d gone. With time, that has changed and so has my spending. Things I used to budget for, sometimes slowly and sometimes quite abruptly disappeared from my spending plan. And so today, I’ll take a look at the things I cut out from my budget and don’t miss anymore.  

Fantasy-self fashion

Do you have a person who is trapped in your own personal Disneyland? In case you’re not sure, let me ask you these questions. Do you have boxes of hardly used or completely unused shoes that you bought because you were convinced that one fine day there’d be AN OCCASION for you to attend? Or do you have clothes that looked so good on a model, a mannequin or even a rack that you were sure would make you feel great about yourself but they ended up feeding moths in your wardrobe? I plead guilty to both crimes. Once I bought a wedding dress because it was on sale, looked surprisingly good on me and, as a friend who shopped with me on that day said: “it was an item worth having in one’s wardrobe.” Yes, we’re still friends but no, we don’t go shopping together anymore. 

I had purple high heels I wore once because - guess what - I absolutely hate wearing high heels. Colourful dresses, geometric jewellery, bold patterns - I bought into a vision of me that was in fact a very poorly executed vision of an army of marketing teams. Not anymore. My today’s fantasy self wears what my real self does. Which happens to be most of the time black. And if there’s an occasion for which I need a special item of clothing - I either don’t attend, attend wearing what I already own or… borrow it. 

Weekends abroad

The other day I took a glance at my old notebook in which I recorded my trips. And there were so many city breaks abroad! This could be a very European thing - a weekend away in another country is extremely popular sort of hobby. To give you an example, here are some of the countries you can reach in less than 2 hours by plane from London: Switzerland, Germany, Czechia, Austria, Italy, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway. And each of these countries has a group of equally easy to get to cities… and each city holds an adventure, a unique experience or so we’re told. Well, that’s all fine but, with time, I saw how much money and energy I wasted on those short trips. I started travelling around the UK and it’s just so much easier. I know that travelling is not supposed to be easy - the journey is meant to be hard, a difficult but satisfying adventure… but you know what, I have a YouTube channel for that. My weekend can be less complicated. 

“We need to go out for dinner sometime” meetings

For some reason, former co-workers usually suggest that. I would go to those meetings, out of some sense of guilt or politeness, but I soon realised I’m not interested in small talk and when I feel that a conversation will be forever on a surface level - I’d rather grab a coffee instead. So that’s what I do now. Somebody wants to discuss a collaboration? Somebody else needs to tell me how much they still hate the company I left 5 years ago? Coffee it is. I reserve the luxury of having a meal out for my family and close friends. 

Branded essentials 

This will be a whole list: food, medication, cleaning products, household items and more. Let’s talk about just a few. Food - for a whole decade, I would have my groceries delivered to my front door but I noticed that the quality went down and the prices went up so I did a small experiment. I went for a grocery shop at Lidl and when I got home, I added the same or the cheapest similar product to my shopping basket. Then I compared the two receipts. The one from Lidl was about 25% smaller.  I used to aspire to shop at the high end supermarkets - they are much more pleasant to shop at but they’re often also filled up with a bunch of entitled assholes. So now I buy most of my groceries at Lidl and a local grocers, and couldn’t be happier. The same goes for branded medication - I just check the ingredients. If they’re the same, I’m not paying 4 times more. And finally, coffee… my ex-partner was obsessed with great quality coffee. He’d spend 45 pounds per month on coffee beans. I don’t remember many walks we’d take without stopping for a coffee. In hindsight, we were far overcaffeinated. Fast forward a few years and I’m with somebody who never had coffee and is generally not into hot drinks. I like the ritual of coffee making every morning but now buy a supermarket brand decaf blend. Cost? Not even 5 pounds per month.  

Email newsletter furniture

With the newsletters, the rule is simple - the more you love their stuff, the less you probably should be on their mailing list. I have a soft spot for furniture so companies like Nest, Aria, twentytwentyone and Dezeen would send me emails with their best deals or just best designs. You know how it is. You don’t need that brand new whatever it is but you see it often enough that you end up wanting it. Expensive, designer furniture was on my To-Save lists for a long while. Don’t get me wrong -  I still love it but now only buy what I truly need and for as much as I truly can afford.  Marta from a few years back would say to her vinyl collecting boyfriend: hey, have you seen this amazing vinyl storage from Tylko? It’s customisable, it’s modern, it’s beautiful, let’s save up for it and make your studio look fantastic! Marta from today says: you know what, that Tylko is pretty but I don’t feel that we can justify spending over 5 grand on plywood. Get that functional Kallax for your studio instead. 

And speaking of IKEA… if you really need to visit the store, arrive without a shopping list and the exact amount of cash you need to pay for your items. 

Fancy hairdressers

I used to believe that the more expensive hairdresser, the better the hairstyle. Luckily, I pretty quickly noticed there was absolutely no correlation between how happy I was with my hair and how much it cost me to have it done. I tried expensive chains, I tried academies where top hairdressers were building hairstyle portfolios by experimenting with the hair of people like me, I tried local businesses. And here’s what I discovered:  what really matters is to find a hairdresser who will stay in the same salon long-term and who has a similar experience of your looks as you do. This way you get a haircut you’re happy with and don’t need to look for a new hairdresser every few months. Remove the blow dry and fancy parts that will last for 10 hours tops and you end up with the best value for your money.

“Necessary” impulse buys 

Sometimes my needs and wants overlap - when I need a reading lamp, I’m excited because I love reading and pretty lamps! The thing is - it’s easy to talk yourself into buying something on an impulse when these two - need and want - cross paths. What I do now is I have what I call my Feeling Rich Fund - it’s a list of things that I probably should buy and definitely want to have because that would genuinely made me feel that I can afford anything. It’s an Add Now, Buy Later scheme - I keep things on there for at least 30 days to make sure I truly do need and want them. Once an item jumps through this hoop, I buy it or save up for it, depending on the price tag. Here’s what my list looks like today.

Dinner drinks 

Alright, most people find it weird and my boyfriend still teases me about it after 4 years of being together - when I eat out, I have tap water as my drink. I just see no point in buying drinks just for the sake of it. I wouldn’t have a Diet Coke with my dinner at home so why would I get one in a restaurant? It doesn’t add to my eating out experience and usually costs at least twice as much as you’d pay for it in a supermarket. The only exception is coffee with breakfast out. I know, I’m no saint.  

Cheap shoes

My feet are Yeti feet and for a long time, to compensate for my deprived of cool shoes childhood, I’d buy low-quality shoes. Not hundreds of pairs but enough to run out of space in my… shoe-designated area. Meaning - the shoe cupboard under the stairs, not a walk in wardrobe. The obvious thing with cheap shoes is that they don’t last long - sometimes even the expensive ones don’t so maybe the correct way of calling these is not cheap but badly-made. Anyway, last pair of boots I really liked had to be re-soled twice within a month and since then my resolution has been one - buy nice or buy twice. 

Must-have skincare products 

My fellow students in secondary school would sell Avon cosmetics and I loved flicking through those glossy catalogs and waiting for my orders. This trend of buying skincare pretty much in bulk continued for many years until I gradually came to terms with the fact that a good diet, good amount of sleep and exercise and staying hydrated combined with not smoking and not drinking alcohol do much more for my skin than any type of must-have product. So I changed and now I only buy the simplest stuff with ideally a small list of ingredients and a high sunscreen factor. It seems to work! And it makes my life, again, much simpler. 

So these are my things that I cut out from my budget and honestly don’t miss for a second. It looks like a long list but I could go on for a bit longer hahah. Budgeting, spending, saving money… it all starts with awareness and I always ask my coaching clients to complete a few exercises that make them much more intentional about their spending later. If you live paycheck to paycheck or don’t know where your money is going and feel ready to tackle your spending in a constructive, but also non-judgmental way, check out my coaching programmes.  I’ll be happy to help.