A mum-of-two who managed to save an impressive £25,000 in a single year has revealed how she did it with a video of her five most important tips.
Lara Joanna Jarvis, who vlogs about beauty, fashion, parenting, and budgeting on her YouTube channel, says it’s important to overhaul your attitude to spending money.
The busy mum, who is also on Instagram, fully committed to a “no-buy” year in 2019, which saw herself and husband Stuart save an extra £25,000 towards buying their first home together.
If you manage to adapt your lifestyle to be less wasteful and banish impulse buys, you will quickly see your bank balance climbing.
Taking selfies
Lara’s first tip is about combatting that feeling you have “nothing to wear” when you know full well your wardrobe is fit-to-bursting with clothes you’ve forgotten about or are unsure how to style.
She says: “Take a photo when you are wearing something when you are feeling that you look good and you like what you are wearing.”
Lara says you can tag the pictures and save them as “outfit inspiration” for when you’re not sure what to wear and are tempted to buy something new.
This will help you feel confident and wear the outfits you love over and over again, she promises.
Make a wish list
Lara says to train yourself to stop buying things on a whim, you need to create a wishlist.
If you still really want the item after a period of time, such as 30 days, you can then let yourself buy it.
She tells viewers: “It stops that impulse spending.
“Often we’re not thinking things through.
“And I found that I never actually wanted to buy that thing at the end of that time.”
Meal planning
Lara’s third tip is to stop wasting food by using a method of backwards meal-planning, which involves looking at what you’ve already got at home and then cooking meals with those ingredients.
This makes sure you use up perishable foods like fresh meat and vegetables and opened jars of sauces lurking at the back of the fridge.
Lara says: “Meal planning not only alleviates the stress of trying to find something to eat, it saves you time, it saves you money, it makes you more organised.
“I do it backwards, so I will look at what I’ve already got and I will then think of the recipe that will work for those ingredients.”
Using banknotes rather than a card
Lara says using physical banknotes helps her automatically become more frugal.
“Handing over a crisp note from the bank is so much more effective than just tapping your card, or even worse, tapping the app on your phone,” she explains.
She adds: “It just devalues money so much, cash just makes it a bigger deal.”
Remember why you are saving
Lara says it’s so difficult to miss out on nights out with friends and pass over a cute outfit you really want to buy, which is why it’s important to visualise your end goal.
Explaining how she overcame this, she says: “We started this journey as a deposit saving journey and it was a reason to keep going when things were hard and you have to say no to going out with your friends or buying something.
“Know your why, write it down and always keep a look at it and congratulate yourself.
“Celebrate the little wins along the way and just keep your why in your vision because otherwise, you’ll lose your way a little bit.”
This comes after Lara revealed how she managed to slash her food budget in half and feed her family of four on just a £40 budget using Aldi swaps.