Over the past few months, my household has acclimatised itself to the words 'budget' and tried to stop being frivolous. After all, we're parents now with another on the way, and the bloody credit crunch making us nervous.I'm sure you know the feeling!
Here are six ways that we have quickly knocked a serious chunk off our expenses with....
Scrutinise your services and subscriptions
The boyf canceled his payment protection insurance, which in essence takes a percentage of an outstanding balance each month (loan, credit, store card etc) with the idea being that in the case of accident, sickness, or death, your minimum payments are supposed to be taken care of. We've spent enough time scrutinising the complicated terms of these things to realise that we were chucking money into a black hole. Savings in excess of £1200 per year.
I also got a better deal on our broadband, canceled the Which? subscription, and realised that an old mobile phone company was still taking insurance payments -another saving of £264.
Take your lunch into work
We cook enough dinner to ensure that there's enough leftover to be used for lunch on 3-4 days a week. We also buy snack stuff as part of our grocery shopping instead of having copious ad hoc jaunts to Pret and Costa, and throw in the fact that I work from home and last year we made a serious saving on lunch, breakfast, and snack bills for work. Saving: in excess of £4500 per year!
Cancel the gym membership or get a monthly or per use subscription
Unless you're a gym fanatic, the likelihood is that your gym membership is underused and is an unneccessary expense leaving your account each month. Trust me, I know from experience that you don't feel any healthier knowing that even if you don't go, the gym gets paid.
The easiest way to work out if you can justify the cost is to calculate your cost per use by dividing the average number of visits into the month. If it exceeds or is close to the cost of a one day pass or a class, you're paying way too much.
One year, my gym was taking £40 a month and I wasn't able to go - I swear it was for health reasons. Last year, I joined my local gym on a per month basis, and lo and behold, I went twice so I only lost one months fees. Saving £480 per year.
Buy less shoes and clothing
If there is one way to kill your clothing bill, it's getting knocked up...twice... I'm not even sure I brought a pair of shoes last year which coming from someone who owns close to 100 pairs of shoes (I cleared a load out so it used to be more) sends a shiver through me!
Of course we have baby expenditure but in the year that she arrived, we went to the US twice and I spent plenty of money on clothes I anticipated I'd wear but never quite got round to. So last year, I showed more restraint. Saving: Too scary to say but it's four figures...
Go to the supermarket in the evening
Now I'm sure that my local Waitrose has cottoned onto this because they now sometimes reduce during the day which makes things a tad unpredictable, but generally, if you go to the supermarket after 5/6pm, you can get some really good bargains. This works particularly well on pricey stuff like meat, and either cook it and freeze, or just put it straight in the freezer. As an example, I got £50 worth of high quality meat for just under £25 on one visit.
Cut back on the Waitrose/M&S obsession
We have a Waitrose within a three minute walk from our house and the place is killing us! We love it! It's a bit like when we got obsessed with stopping at the M&S at London Bridge or Victoria on the way home! There may be a credit crunch on but that hasn't killed our love of food.
However, we've realised that constant ad hoc visits and doing almost all the shopping at Waitrose just because we can't be arsed to walk another couple of minutes or so to Morrisons isn't practical for our finances. We've cut back on ad hoc visits by doing a large shopping session at Morrisons once a month, and Waitrose now gets less of our shopping budget. Saving: In excess of £600 per year.
Image via Solar Navigator