Reducing the costs at home

I’m sure I am not alone when I admit that Christmas takes its toll on the bank balance, especially being self-employed. Companies close down for the festive period but it doesn’t stop my bills from coming in which can, of course, be tricky when my sole source of income is writing this blog.

The kids want entertaining but the bank balance seems to drain even faster when they are off of school, and of course, they eat me out of house and home while off from school too.

The holidays are expensive – I do try really hard to make free fun days, such as fishing trips, heading off to the local park, arts and crafts at home and jumping on our bikes or scooters to get some exercise and fresh air.

One of the ways I am trying to recoup some money is by reducing our household bills – I’ve been looking into comparison websites and recently changed our Gas and Electricity supplier from British Gas to Bulb – This is saving me almost £320 a year now and was certainly worth the half an hour searching around. I actually didn’t have to do anything to change over, just provided Bulb with my figures when they asked, set up my direct debit and they sorted out the change for me. I really should have done this a long time ago.

I currently pay out for everything using direct debit which does help to take the stress out of things, especially as my memory is shot sadly however because it’s paid automatically means I think about them less than I should, but because of this, I forget to search for cheaper deals.

I try to package some utilities and necessities together with package deals as it generally saves money but I then forget to go back and check other deals, later on, to see if I’m still getting a good deal – my TV, phone and broadband, for instance, are packaged together and I now feel it’s time to search around to find cheap broadband deals, and hopefully, I can shave some money off my package deal. I have also cancelled our Sky TV package altogether as we never watch it, now we have Netflix only which suits us far better as well as saving so much money each month. Looking at some of the deals I can already see how much it is possible to save – We currently pay £45 a month for our broadband with Vodafone but SSE have a similar broadband speed for just £22 a month, or there is The Post Office (I never realised they did broadband etc) which is coming out at £20.90 a month with 6 months free calls. It certainly could save us some money

My next plan is to further reduce our bills by another £50 a month, I’m sure that’s actually a very realistic goal, it’s now just a case of actually finding the time to sit down and work out what I actually pay out and searching around for better deals – then it’s the food shopping and meal planning which are next on the cards – I want to reduce that by at least £75 a month if I can.

Do you switch between providers regularly?

What’s the most you have saved?