How To Save £12,000 A Year

I wrote a post at the beginning of the year about my goals for 2017. One of them was to save £12,000 in a year. Ideally, we should be hitting £1,000 a month in savings consistently in order to achieve our long term aims. However, saying I’m going to save £12,000 a year is very daunting, so it needs a plan!

 

Here are some things I am going to do to help us save £12,000 this year:

• Keep our food spends down. By using meal planning, reduced foods and places like Approved Food. Food shopping can be an area that can provide huge savings, so long as you do some organising before hand. By writing weekly menus means I can minimise food waste. I then can write a shopping list so that I buy just the things we need. It is so easy to get distracted by bargains in the supermarket!   I use my filofax to plan my menu and write my shopping list. Saving £30 a week on our food shopping means saving more than £1,500 a year.
• Continue to take my lunch to work. Whether that’s having leftovers from the night before, or something made quickly in the morning, this can make huge savings over the year. If you buy your lunch at £5 a day, and you work an average of 48 weeks a year, that adds up to £1,200 spent just on lunch! Factor in a hot drink and it’s more like £8, which is then £1,920 a year! That’s a massive saving 🙂
• Use cashback sites whenever I do online shopping. By either using Topcashback or Quidco to earn cashback on online purchases, I can build up some more money to put into savings. Even little bits over the year can up to over £100, on things that were going to be bought anyway! All of these earnings can go straight into savings.
• Continue to account tidy every day. I have written an entire post about why this simple trick is so effective, but it is true! This simple habit saves us well over £200 each month so over the year that adds up to over £2,400. Just by doing something so simple!
• Sell things we no longer need as we continue to declutter. I talk a lot on this blog about decluttering and living with less, and it’s still a work in progress. By selling things we no longer need, whether that’s on eBay or on local Facebook groups, it’s all money in that can go into savings. It’s a win win situation really, because we’re getting rid of things we no longer use, gaining space in our house in the process, and earn some money!
• Pay myself first. Again, another topic I have covered in its own blog post, but it works well. I get paid at the end of the month. When I receive my pay, I am going to transfer at least £500 straight over to savings. That way, I cannot spend it! When I transfer money to our Ultimate Dream Fund, unless a disaster occurs, it is not coming back out. So, paying myself first is a good way of ensuring lots of savings over the year.
• Check we are getting the best deals for utilities/car insurance/tv+broadband. Using price comparison sites to do this can result in huge savings. We’ve just managed to score a great deal for our tv and broadband, after we threatened to leave for a better deal. All it took was a phone call! Definitely make sure you are on the best tariff often.
• Using our car less/walk more. By using the car the less and walking more, it’s a bonus for two reasons. We will use less petrol firstly, and we will be outside and exercising as a second! It is so easy just to jump in the car to pop to the shops, or to go to the park. But, we can walk to those places with a bit more effort, and save petrol at the same time.

 

All of these things will ensure that we can put lots of money into savings this year. £12,000 is the target, which can seem quite daunting. Even when broken down into months, £1,000 each month is a lot. However, by doing all of these things, we will get closer and closer to our target.

 

In fact, one of the best things I have done recently to help our budget, which has kept me more on track than anything else previously, is writing down everything we spend using my simple budget planner. I have now got this available to download, so that you can get saving even more money. Have a look here!

 

 

What is your savings target for this year? What are you doing to help you meet it?

 

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