A woman who has taken budgeting to the next level by doing a 'no buy year' has revealed where her pay cheque goes each month.
PhD student Mia Westrap (@miawestrap) is three quarter's of the way through a 12-month period where she's not spending money on anything that's 'not an absolute necessity', including rent, bills and the food shop.
Mia, who lives in the UK, said the idea was brought on after struggling to make ends meet with her current wage.
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But after implementing a strict buying strategy, she is now enjoying the benefits.
Showcasing her journey on TikTok, Mia said: "So without further ado, I got paid £2,142.98 this month and £1,233.59 are immediately taken out of my account because they are my outgoing, so again rent, bills, electric, internet, phone bill, things like that.
"That leaves me with £909.39 this month to play with, put into savings, invest and spend on groceries.
"So this month l've put £30 into the S&P 500 on Trading 212 and I'm going to do more videos about why l invest so little."
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She explained: "It's baby steps for me, I'm still not wholly confident on the idea and prefer the kind of ancient bank where I keep my money but I am working on it so now we've got over £411 invested this year which is amazing.
"In my savings this month I had £11.71 paid to me in interest so to round it up to a nice number I put £488.29 into my savings account this month which brings us to £5,500 in savings.
"And if you don't know already, I originally embarked on this no-buy year with the
hopes that I'd be able to save £4,000 so we've well exceeded that goal and now my new goal for this year is £7,000."
In total, Mia already has £5,500 in savings plus £400 in investments.
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"Technically, I've almost saved £6,000 and I've got £391 and something to spend on groceries, emergencies travel things like that," she continued.
"And then as always anything left over at the end of the month will also go into savings.
"And I am also due to be paid around £330 from TikTok's creative fund as long as I stay in there good books this month on the 30th.
"So yeah, we're doing really well.
"The bank account's looking healthy, much healthier than I was at the beginning of January."
Topics: Money
Anish Vij