With summer in full swing, it‘s pretty hard to stick to our budgets accordingly. I don’t know about you, but I find summer to be super expensive! But, that shouldn’t stop us from getting our budgets back on track in time for September.

Having a budget in place is crucial if you’re looking to better manage your finances on a daily basis, or if you have a savings goal you’re aiming towards.

With September fast approaching, we all know this is a time for going back to school, university or work, and before we know it, Christmas will be here!

While you may think it’s too early for the ‘C’ word, it’s important to get our budgets in place now, so we can achieve our savings goals in time for the end of the year!

When it comes to establishing a budget and achieving your goals, here are some of my top tips:

  1. Create a realistic savings goal: whether you’re planning to save for your first home, or you just want to have a healthy pot of savings for your future Christmas shop, it’s important to establish how much you’re planning to save. According to Finder.com, last year, the average person spent £602 on Christmas presents! Whilst you may not plan to spend *this* much on Christmas this year, try and make your goal realistic and achievable as doing so will enable you to stay motivated throughout your money saving journey!
  2. Create a budget: Once you have established how much you are going to save, next up is creating a budget to help you achieve it. Having a budget in place will enable you to work out how much you can and should save on a weekly, or monthly basis in order to reach your goal. Struggle to create a realistic budget? Well, there are plenty of budgeting apps on the market to help you create one, so no more excuses! Two of my personal favourites include Moneyhub, and Emma. Both apps allow you to view all of your bank accounts in one place from your current account, and savings account, to your investments! Not only can you view all of your accounts on these apps, but they both can help you track your spending and as well as help you budget accordingly.
  3. Track your spending: Now you’ve created a budget, it’s important to track your spending to ensure you’re actually on course to reach your goal. There’s no point creating a budget, and not actually sticking to it! So, download a trusty budgeting app to help hold you to account!
  4. Reduce any unnecessary expenses: As we’re now hopefully tracking our spending on a weekly, or monthly basis, you may come across some expenses or regular spending habits you want to try and cut out. By reducing these unnecessary expenses from your budget, you may end up reaching your savings goal a lot quicker! For example I used to have Disney Plus, Amazon Prime, AND Netflix, which is pretty excessive if you ask me… So, I am now only paying for Netflix in a solid effort to reduce some of my outgoings to help me reach my savings goal for the year!
  5. Automate your savings: Let’s face it, having to manually transfer your savings from one account to another can often be a boring chore. To make your money saving journey a lot easier, you could consider automating your savings instead! I always recommend setting up a standing order on the day you get paid so your savings automatically moves out of your current account and into your savings account (that way you can’t ‘accidentally’ spend the money meant for you savings too!) Obviously this isn’t always possible, with some of our fixed accounts for example. As an alternative, set a monthly reminder to move money to an alternative account before depositing to the savings account of your choice.

For me, having a budget is essential if you have a savings goal you want to achieve. With four months left to go till end of the year, hopefully these tips come in handy!