The money diet

The beginning is generally the best place to start, so please bear with me if it seems like I'm stating the blindingly obvious in this post.
If you want to lose weight then you need to change your diet, do more physical activity or, if you want to achieve results as quickly as possible, combine the two.
Similarly if you want to improve your financial situation then you need to cut back on what you spend, generate more income or, if you want to achieve results as quickly as possible, combine the two.
Forgive me for stretching the analogy to breaking point here, but if you jog for an hour every day but then eat a takeaway and a family-sized sherry trifle you're more likely to gain inches than lose them.
Go on a spending spree on payday and you're effectively running around the block then tucking into a box of doughnuts.
For many of us, spending money has just as many emotional connotations as eating food. We treat ourselves with a purchase if we've done well and comfort ourselves with one if things haven't gone to plan. We spend money on our family and friends to show we love them and regularly spend our hard earned cash out of guilt, duty or habit.
There are so many ways to cut back on the money you spend, and just as many to generate extra household income.
But before we get started on that I think it's important to take a long, hard look at how you spend the money you currently have coming in, and what your life priorities are. Only by doing that will you be able to figure out what you can cut back on, and what you can perhaps lose altogether.
When I first started on my mortgage challenge I decided to cut every area of expenditure back to the bone, apart from the cost of socialising with friends and family (as I knew I'd still need plenty of fun and didn't want to lose people from my life).
At that time I was single and didn't have children, so I only had myself to feed and please. Nowadays my life priorities would be different, and no doubt they will differ for each and every person reading this.
It may be that it doesn't suit you to do this as radically as me, but as long as you're prepared to ditch a few doughnuts and go for a jog now and then I believe I can help your finances move in the right direction.
In my next post I'm going to explain how you can work out exactly where your pennies are disappearing to.