Now we have two little people to care for and nurture (well, hopefully by the time you read this anyway!) Sam and I have been thinking about ways we can ensure a happy and hopefully prosperous future for our children. Although our income isn’t as high as it was when I was working full time as a hotel manager pre babies, I plan to return to full time employment at some point once they’re both in school to ensure that we’re earning as much as we can!
We’re also living a fairly frugal lifestyle, although we currently rent our home rather than pay into a mortgage. Sometimes I feel a bit daft for spending a lot of money of frivolous things in my twenties instead of investing in a property, however living in Brighton meant that realistically all I’d have been able to afford is a beach hut! Sam and I would like to make sure that by the time our lovely children reach their thirties that we’re in a position to help them out with a deposit for a home, although of course before then we may have contributed towards their higher education anyway, if that’s the route they choose.
Of course in the meantime we’d like to be able to buy a family home ourselves, as we currently rent, but until I’m working again that probably won’t be likely to happen for a while! The news is full of budget talk, and new home owners being ‘given’ three thousand pounds to help with their first home purchase, all the while house prices are climbing! We’ve been looking at ways to begin to save money and thought I’d highlight them in case anyone else is in the same boat.
- Using a cash back site, there are a lot to choose from and if I’m honest I don’t really get how they work. But friends have said they’ve made great savings with them just from clicking on retailers via the site first and using their credit/debit cards in shops. Anything we make would be an extra so would go straight into a savings account.
- Invest our savings in something like an ISA (or an ‘Individual Savings Account’ – I had to look it up!) to ensure that we make as much profit on our savings as possible within the governments set tax free allowance
- As a slightly more involved (and not without some risk) process we could invest in our own portfolio. Again we have friends who have made a fair amount of money by doing this, and of course there is the risk that you could lose but for a small percentage you can use a company like Nutmeg to help create a personalised investment portfolio starting with as little as a thousand pounds. I read their ‘New to Investing’ page (here if you want to take a look) and it actually makes a lot more sense to me than I thought it would, and could actually be pretty fun watching what your investment is doing at any given moment!
- Stop buying tubs of Ben n Jerrys, even when they’re on offer and save the money!
Okay, so that last one should be a given, and will be soon because I’ll have a freezer full of proper dinners rather than space for Ice cream, sadly!
Which methods of saving (and making your money ‘make money’) would you suggest? Any magic solutions for me?
This is a collaborative post, all words and opinions my own. Image courtesy of Moomsabuy via freedigitalimages.net