The first is to be thinking about it all the time, worrying you don't have enough, constantly moving it hither to thither trying to maintain a balance in the right account at the right time for bills to come out. Sound a pain? It is. I've been here, it's made worse by not knowing where you are, not knowing what your outgoings are, even worse if you don't know what your incomings are!
The other is the holistic approach, simplified accounts that you can leave to do there own work, and hopefully work for you. You don't have to think about it, so you can spend more time making money!
How do you get from one to the other. Well let's look into what makes the second option work.
Do your research:
This comes in several things - you need to know what's coming in and when! You need to know what's going out and when too! This is called cashflow. Positive cashflow and everything's gravy, negative and you'll be stealing from Peter to pay Paul. Theres various ways to get to this, sift through your old bank statements, keep a spending diary (including Direct debits!), have a wall chart with different colours, try them all and whichever works for you carry on, this is one of the key steps to getting anywhere with money. A spreadsheet like this can help.
Research the accounts you can have, high interest (I don't think so!), savings, ISA, etc. I say can have for two reasons, you want to simplify as much as possible. try and have at most 3 current accounts, then savings, then ISAs (the savings and ISA accounts can be unlimited as you will need to switch to get rates, however closing an ISA is a bit more complicated due to losing out on tax free money so try not to do that). Then if your really down at the moment your credit score may be affected, which may limit which accounts you can open anyway.
So you have your money ins and outs plan, you have the right accounts for you. So you now know that everything's going to be cool right? Wrong.
There's one last things you need,
To stick to the plan, easier said than done - any cash plan is just that a plan, it can only go smoothly if you don't have unexpected expenses - I don't mean things outside of your control you should try and build an emergency fund to smooth those ripples - I mean don't go out on payday and spend all your money, I know it seems like the easiest thing to not do. But it isn't you need to be the responsible adult that you are and start letting those pennies sit idly by. Bored? Go to the library - free, do not go to the pub - if it's not in your plan.
