Four Things We’ve Done To Reduce Our Everyday Expenses

It seems like life has suddenly got so much more expensive than it ever has been. Every single insurance or subscription up for renewal has gone up from our household insurance to Disney+. And everyday expenses like fuel and food is continuing to rise. We won’t even start on electricity and gas prices. I like to try and reduce our everyday expenses all the time. But it’s felt like much more of a need to do now that prices are going up.

Now I know I’m still in a very privileged position where I can afford to live, even if we have to move some things around or cut out luxuries. But we can all learn to reduce our everyday expenses to help loosen the pinch. Here are some of the things we have been doing.

Investing in solar power

Now, this may seem like a strange one to start with as it initially cost us quite a lot of money. But we decided to invest in solar power for a lot of different reasons (a post is coming on this). And with the prices of electricity going up so much it seemed like the best time to take the plunge and invest.

We were in debt with our suppliers due to the winter months so it may take a few months until we can reduce our monthly direct debit. But once that happens we will be able to reduce our everyday expenses.

I will be doing a few posts on our journey to get solar. Posts including how it all works such as feeding back to the grid etc. So keep your eyes out for those.

Reduce our everyday expenses by shopping around

I shop around for our policies and renewals all the time anyway, but it became even more important to ensure we had the best deals. We had some things such as income protection for Luke and life insurance which isn’t on a yearly renewal fee like other items. So I made it my mission to ensure we had the best deals out there.

We were paying £36 a month for Luke’s income protection. And after plenty of searching for like-for-like policies, I got one for £13. So almost a third of the price! And the few pounds a month all add up.

Meal planning

I’ve tried to meal plan for a long time. Making sure we don’t overbuy and spend more than we need to is even more important.

As I work for Ocado Group I do get a discount on shopping with Ocado, but even with the discount, it isn’t the cheapest shopping. But food is important to us so we’re happy to get slightly more expensive groceries. But we don’t want to end up with waste, and things that get thrown away.

By meal planning each week I can make sure I am only buying what we need. For example, if I buy a bag of carrots for a recipe I can put other meals on the plan to use up the rest of the carrots. It also means that I know in advance for around 3 weeks what we’re going to have, so if I find something on offer that will last until I need it I can pick it up.

Reduce our everyday expenses by going SIM-only

For the past year or so me and Luke have both moved over to SIM-only contracts as opposed to expense contracts including the phone. This means we’re only paying £20 each a month for our calls/ data as opposed to about £80 previously. I bought my latest iPhone directly from Apple which is almost paid off, and I can get a new one whenever I feel I need it as opposed to every 2 years when my contract ended.

And even paying the finance to Apple it works out to about £20 a month cheaper to do it this way.

What have you done to reduce your expenses?

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