A challenge to spend less on, well, crap...

A couple of weeks back I got contacted by a lovely lady from Voucher Codes to see if I'd be up for trying to save some money on treats and so on and document my findings. From filling out the details apparently I could save £490 a year.

I am a touch infamous in my family for my ability to spend money. I go to the shop for milk and come back with flowers, posh biscuits and something totally random that I was convinced would enhance our lives at the time. If there was a job spending money, I'd excel at it.

But since we're living off one income now Josie kind of has to kick this habit to the curb so this little challenge is perfect timing.

As a stay at home mama my money probably doesn't quite go on the same things as working people. I don't tend to buy lunch out often for instance and things like the paper I read online. That doesn't however mean I don't waste money because I do. Oh yes.

Some expenditure is essential so we don't go mad. If I didn't spend any money we would literally never leave the house. Which isn't good for any mama's sanity.

Things I definitely waste money on however:

- Trashy magazines. Buying a decent mag, fine but those trashy ones, you know which ones I mean. Not good. These have got to go.

- Wine. We like our wine in this household. I'm not going to cut down on our little trips to the pub because they're essential for us getting out of the house in the evening. But we probably don't need to have a glass of wine with every meal. That would help save us a bit.

- Snacks and treats. Oh how I am a sucker for cakes and cookies freshly baked at the supermarket. They just go so well well coffee and clearly have to be purchased. Thing is they often go stale because Antonio's on a diet and trying not to eat sweet things so it's just me. And since one of my fantasies about becoming a mother was all the baking I was going to do, I decided to replace the sweet things I bought for ones I made.

Two weeks later do you want to know how I did?

- Well I'm not going to lie the cutting down on wine didn't really work. Although I was much more careful about deals in the shop rather than buying ones that had nice labels (and often not so nice price tags),

- Antonio's still on a diet so I didn't buy ANY posh biscuits etc except for a couple of chocolate puddings for me so we definitely saved there.

- And as for trashy magazines, I bought none! Although I did find myself browsing people.com and celebritybabyscoop.com (I know, I'm SUCH a loser). Much better goss that actual magazines so happy to cut that out for good. What's funny is that I'm writing this in the pub, and there is a woman reading some gossip magazine which she'll no doubt discard and then I can read without paying. Bonus!

So how did we do overall? Well Antonio and I take out a set amount of money each week for our weekly expenditure and most if not all weeks I have to dip into my savings for 'extras'. The past couple of weeks I'm happy to say we actually had some over. Not a lot, just some coins but thinking about how I waste money on little things made me more thoughtful in general. I made an effort to buy fruit and veg at the grocers instead of the supermarket for instance and what a difference that made!

Now the challenge is to keep it up and not reward myself with a little clothes shopping ;)

*In association with Vouchercodes.co.uk*