It is all, as they say, no rocket science by any means.
But it there’s a couple of things that make it work very well for me:
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A considerable part of my income each month will be invested fully automatically.
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I actually don’t think much about my day-to-day spending. Personally though, while I enjoy good lunch and some chocolate at times, I’m not prone to spend on alcohol, soft or energy drinks or expensive coffee - or make impulse purchases for small-ticket items (other than food, sometimes).
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It is not rare that my day-to-day current account will be empty at the end of a month, just due to the bills I have paid. And I really want to avoid digging into my savings. That makes me feel like living "from paycheck to paycheck". Some months it’s not hard, others it really is a bit of a challenge to stay within my budget before the next pay day, if an unexpected bill hits. So keeps me being frugal.
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I am getting monthly “feedback” on my expenses by seeing how much is left after having paid that credit card bill.
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If I then still manage to save just a few, maybe two or three hundreds on and until pay day (or manage to squeeze that yearly SERAFE bill into my monthly budget), it feels innately rewarding.
…whereas my yearly spending and bills are otherwise pretty much fixed or predictable. Paying them annually reduces the wiggle room on my monthly “accounting”, thus lets me focus more on my monthly spending habits. That’s why I prefer annually payments.
I think the tax office used to pay interest on early pre-payments of around is 1% (until the payment deadline) up to a few years ago. That was quite good but they have drastically reduced it in recent years.
Since the interest rates are basically zero everywhere anyways, I just use my Cler ZAK account. They regularly offer “Zak Deals” on payments credited to the account, that let you buy discounted vouchers for online stores.