Last Monday, whilst in Manchester and some 200+ miles away from Tony, we received some news. News that has pretty much turned our lives upside down (no, there are no babies involved!) and it means we have a massive financial goal to achieve in just 3 months. We will be sharing the goal with you when we feel ready, but right now it feels too big and too scary to talk about.

It means that I have been looking to save every penny that we can, as well as side hustling as much extra money as possible. For the next 3 weeks, a work/life balance doesn't exist. Here are some of the things that we have done to save money this past week, and beyond.

Cancelled our gym membership

Whilst I love swimming, we haven't been making use of our gym membership lately. With the office move and trying to raise more money, we just haven't had the time. Instead we will be going on daily walks, and look to reinstate this when we can.

Monthly saving: £48

Cancelled our TV license

This was something we had been debating for some time – we probably haven't watched live TV or BBC iPlayer this entire year. We use Netflix, Amazon Prime or the catch up apps. This isn't a massive saving, and we almost decided not to bother, but every penny counts.

Monthly saving: £12.56

Cancelled our charity donation

I don't feel happy with this one, and it will be immediately reinstated when we have reached our goal.

Years ago, when both Tony and I found ourselves unemployed just after getting two cats, the Cats Protection League stepped in to help us pay for neutering and micro chipping the cats. As soon as we were on our feet again, we started a monthly donation to the charity.

Monthly saving: £25

Taking less personal money

Every month, our wages from our limited company go into the joint account, and Tony and I take the same amount of personal ‘fun' money out. The joint account covers pretty much everything including fuel, eating out, etc so this is money purely for us.

We have decided that in order to reach our savings goals, we will both take £100 less per month.

Monthly saving: £200

Groceries and eating out

Our spending on both of these has gone absolutely crazy lately.

There are a few reasons for this.

We go sourcing for selling on Amazon every few days in supermarkets, and we always end up buying something that we don't necessarily need.

We have also been eating out a lot – a few times a week at least. Usually because we are out sourcing for eBay/Amazon and need to eat.

Both of these need to stop, and whilst I'm not really looking forward to taking my own packed lunch when we go sourcing, this is somewhere that we can see massive savings! We have also agreed to go shopping every 10 days, not once a week, to encourage us to get creative with what we have and save money.

We also have a food stock pile of cat food and cat litter, thanks to Tesco and Sainsbury's sending those ‘£10 off when you spend £70' coupons.

Check out these supermarket reduction times. 

Estimated savings: at least £50 PER WEEK

Earning more

We have also been working hard to make extra money, both in the business and from personal side hustles. This really deserves a blog post of its own. I'm really proud of how we have both stepped up over the past few days to really push ourselves to earn more – and I have TONS of ideas to share with you about how we have been doing this.

The hardest thing is going to be keeping up the momentum when we don't feel like continuing, or when things are quiet.

WHY TAKE PART?

THE RULES

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