At the end of a year, it’s always worthwhile to reflect on the things you’ve done throughout the year and what your successes have been. This includes even small things on your financial journey.
Budgeting has been super important for us for years to spot areas where we spend a lot and think about ways to reduce these expenses. This year, we’ve found 5 ways to reduce our spending or bills by monitoring our expenditures and finding ways to be creative or challenging ourselves whether we really need to buy something or how we could save more.
5 Ways We Saved Money This Year
Buying second hand
We started buying second-hand on Vinted or Facebook marketplace and thrift stores – this includes clothes and shoes for us and our daughter who outgrows everything super quickly; appliances or small furniture for our home and especially toys. Many of these items are actually new but people have not used them so it’s all a win-win: we get the item cheaper and we jointly take care of the environment instead of throwing things away.
DIY and handmade
We love DIY and making things at home. We always try to be creative in terms of how we can make it ourselves instead of buying it or paying for a service. For example, we painted our own walls or we make soap ourselves.
More socials at home
We noticed we were paying a lot for going out to eat out or have drinks and especially the parking and in our case, this includes a babysitter as well. So we started having friends over more often at home which has made it even more enjoyable as with a babysitter we need to be watching the clock all the time. This way we’ve saved on parking, food, drinks etc. as buying at the supermarket to cook dinner together is obviously cheaper but also more fun.
Investment in solar panels
We invested in solar panels in January for our house (we’re homeowners). You may not think of this as saving but we’ve done this very consciously and we’re reaping the benefits of it already, especially considering the energy crisis going on right now and the prices jumping up like crazy. Last year, we received our end-of-year invoice where your electricity company compared how much you’ve been paying monthly to your actual consumption and if you’ve consumed more, they send you an invoice to pay within a month. So our invoice was a shocker… This year with the solar panels we already produced so much of our own energy that the electricity company paid us money back. I could not have imagined our invoice for the end of the year with the increased prices…
No car petrol
With prices for fuel going crazy this year due to the energy crisis, we have not had to pay for fuel as we chose to drive electric cars which we charge at home now that we have solar panels.
How have you saved money this year?
Money Mastering 