We’ve recently moved house and lord let me tell you what an expensive process that is. All those little niggly bits and pieces add up but we have managed to offset the expenses by making choices at home to save money.
We used Enviroclothes very handy doorstep collection service to get rid of all our old clothes that we didn’t need any more and instead of paying the Council to come and collect furniture we didn’t need and couldn’t take to the tip, we listed them on Facebook Marketplace and sold it on to people who came to collect, both of which saved us time and expense of getting rid of things and made us some extra cash in the process.
Today, we have a few more tips on saving money at home…
Nobody likes to be caught out by unexpected expenses. From relatively low impact costs like your child joining a sports club to something more financially destabilising like a flooded utility room or a broken-down family vehicle, there are multiple unforeseen reasons that we could all use a little extra cash.
Setting up your money-saving goals doesn’t need to be a drawn-out task. Typically, people aim to spend 50% of their wages on bills, 30% of their wages on necessary purchases (such as food and clothes), and 20% on their savings. How doable are those percentages for the average person? Not very. But those numbers do give us a handy go-to savings guide to aim for, even if you do end up saving less than 10% of your income (check out investment ISA options for ways to save online).
Switch up Your Shopping Choices
Life would be so much cheaper if we could swap food for some sort of one-a-day supplement. You could buy blister packs of 30 food pills and feed yourself for a month. But that is not even close to being the case. Unfortunately, we live in households where one person prefers meatballs and another prefers pizza and you yourself might prefer something spicy with rice. The food bill is a never-ending drain on our bank balances.
But you could be missing a trick. Supermarkets place the more expensive food at eye level on the shelves. The sale of these brands makes more money for the seller, and it only takes a little bit of experimenting with cheaper brands from a lower shelf to find a suitable alternative (saving you money on your weekly food bill). We all love a bargain, and this is one way to save money on what is essentially necessary but forgettable – everybody likes to eat nice food, but can you honestly remember what you had to eat 17 meals ago?
Pay Off Debt the Fast Way
Credit card debt can hinder any hope of saving money. But the thing is, even a small amount of extra money paid towards those debts will help bring them down faster, which reduces the interest you pay in the long run. Divide one of your credit card payments up into 6 or 12. Now pay that much extra over 6 months or 12 months to add one whole extra payment to your efforts. That’s 7 payments in 6 months or 13 payments over a year. It may not seem like much now, but when those debts start to come down to less scary levels you will be grateful you made the extra effort.
Sell it. Sell it all.
Our houses are full of things we don’t want or need. From musical instruments and children’s toys to garden furniture and clothes we never wear. You can sell these items locally over social media (various selling platforms are freely available). It only takes a few minutes to create a listing. As you update the things in your home, be sure to sell as you go, recycling the money you once spent on the original item.
We are doing out best to save for future travel. Who knows when we can travel internationally again but we want to be prepared for that day. All our pennies are going in to a pot ready to be able to just hit book on an amazing holiday to New York or San Francisco – the places we are missing the most.