I’ve been a member of LoveFilm now for 7 months, and it has revolutionised my film watching. Each DVD has cost me just £0.89 to watch thus far, compared to the typical purchase price of £15. If I want to see something again later, I just pop it back in my list. I’d have to rent it nearly 17 times in that fashion to make purchasing it worthwhile!

ING Direct has an offer on at the moment for a 30 day free trial, and a £10 Homebase voucher to go with it. It’s worth taking out the trial just for the voucher. Cancel within your trial period, and pay nothing.

Click here for more details.

• 6 Mistakes That Doubled The Price of My Car
• The Long Term Cost
• Frugal Friday! Batch Cooking
• My Financial Meltdown: Part 3
• Catching A Perception Shift

As many of you will know, my journey to debt freedom began back in January 2009. I have been diligently working to pay off my debt  since then, and now that the end of the tunnel is in sight, surely it should be time for inward celebration? After all, in a maximum of two months time I will be entirely debt free.

In reality, I am more frustrated now than I have been at any point in the long, arduous road to a positive net worth. I sat down to try and work out just why that is.

In the beginning, it was fun finding places to make cuts in my budget. After 4 months I had pared down my outgoings to their absolute barest minimums. There is now not a realistic penny left to be shaved without going totally insane or malnourished along the way. I enjoyed seeing the balances come down. I enjoyed working overtime to make it happen faster. I enjoyed the mental challenge of not spending a single penny on myself unless it was absolutely necessary and budgeted for.

In my overtime quest, I have just spent 7 days away from home working 15 hour days and being accommodated at night for a few hours before getting up and doing it all over again and again and again. The days were long. I missed my family. I did nothing but work and sleep.

The money will be good when it comes in, but I am now completed exhausted, mentally and physically.

I have one day off before returning to my ‘normal’ work tomorrow.

I am frustrated because no matter how hard I work now,  I remain in debt until the numbers come together in one or two months time.  I am so close, yet so far away.

I find myself wishing for 2 months to just fly by so I can finally say “I am debt free!”.

In our lives we are constantly striving toward one or more goals. These vary from person to person and life-stage to life-stage. I strive to be debt free; others strive to buy their first home. You may be striving for some other target.

The one thing that remains the absolute same, regardless of what you are striving for, is that it is a future event. You require the passage of time for it to come to fruition. We are ultimately wishing our lives away to reach an arbitrary goal that constitutes only one portion of our ultimately very short lives.

I vow, here and now, to stop ‘striving to be debt free’.

I am striving for one target, and one target alone.

To live every day to the maximum it can be.

Enjoy the sunrise if you are fortunate enough to be awake. Help others in your day as you would like to be helped. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Make the most of time with friends and family. Appreciate the sunset each day.

Do not desire the passing of time to achieve your goals. By all means celebrate it when the event arrives, but not to the detriment of everything and everyone around you. I will be debt free. I will be a home-owner. You will achieve whatever it is you are striving to achieve in time.

Live your life by its journey, not its final destination.

Why should you wish away 2 months or 2 years or 2 decades of your life to reach a goal? When one goal is out of the way, you will replace it with another and then another. All events that will occur in the future, and each requiring your patience to achieve it.

Patience is a virtue, and it is the journey that matters.

Others will not judge you on what you achieve, but who you were whilst getting there.

• My Net Worth Update - Sep 2009
• The Importance of Redundancy Planning
• Dig Yourself Out of Debt: Psychology 101
• The SCRAM Plan
• Is Debt Shameful?

This week I’m focusing on short, sharp tips that could save you hundreds of pounds over the course of a year while food shopping.

Never Shop on an Empty Stomach

You know the drill. It’s early evening, you are tired from work, starving hungry and find no food in the house. By some miracle you resist the temptation to ring the local Indian delivery folks, and instead shuffle back in your car to visit your local supermarket. You have nothing in mind particularly beyond getting home again, and as a result end up massively overspending. Your hunger did your shopping, rather than any conscious plan you may have had.

Eat before you go shopping. If you are not hungry when you go, then tantalising offers that are not already on your shopping list will likely be easily ignored. Which neatly brings me to my next point…

Write a List

Going shopping without a list is a disaster waiting to happen. You buy loads of things you don’t need, forget half the stuff you do, and get loads of “extras” on the side.

To combat this, work out a meal plan for the week ahead and everything you’ll need to buy to make it happen. If you are going to do some batch cooking in the week, see what you already have in the store cupboards before adding them to the list.

If it isn’t on the list – don’t buy it!

And leave the pen at home… adding it to the list afterwards is cheating.

Calculate a Budget

Much like having a list is important for not over-spending, so is having an idea of where ‘overspending’ would be in the first place. Everyone will have their own idea for a budget, but £50 per person per month is not unreasonable to aim for if you have the time to batch cook. That is my own personal food budget, and mostly, I manage to achieve that these days.

Slow Down & Scan

The items on the shelves at eye-level are the most profitable products. You see a jar of pasta sauce the moment you walk into the aisle and grab it, throw it in your basket and zoom off to the next item in the list.

You just fell for the oldest marketing trick in the book. Next time slow down and study the prices. Scan the entire shelf from top to bottom and look at the cost per unit calculations most supermarkets provide in the super-small-print on the shelf labels. If you take a moment to compare prices you can save upwards of 100% on the purchase price of some items.

Try Downshifting

Downshifting isn’t about suffering a cheaper product, it is about finding a cheaper product where you cannot honestly tell the difference between it and a more expensive brand. If you have a habit of always buying “Finest” or “Taste The Difference” or some other premium product, try a brand name instead. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, try stores-own. You’ll often save pounds per product doing this and likely won’t notice a shred of difference when cooked.

Some premium brands and stores-own are even made in the same factory. The only difference is the packaging and the price.

Shop at Reduction Hour

My father makes a killing doing this. He very rarely goes shopping before 8pm, which is precisely when our local Tesco begins doing the final knock-downs on things that are going out of date the next day or so. It is not uncommon for him to come home with bagfuls of items at 10p here, 20p there where the original cost would have been pounds here and pounds there instead.

Anything that will not be eaten or turned into a batched meal gets frozen until it is needed and remains just as good and just as flavoursome as the full priced equivalent.

Never Turn Down ‘Free’

Quite regularly my mother will include me in meals she makes for herself, or my father will invite me out to lunch to catch up. Never turn down these opportunities, as it’s a great way to spend extra time with friends and family, and shave costs from your food bill as well.

Happy Friday, and Happy (Cheaper) Shopping!

• A Fundamental Question
• Frugal Friday! Batch Cooking
• Community Networking
• Frugal Friday! 8 Christmas Gift Ideas
• Frugal Friday! 20 Ways to Cut Your Annual Vehicle Costs