With inflation continuing to rise, including the cost of essentials like food and fuel, many of us are finding spending and saving challenging this year. In the run-up to Christmas, it’s important to take some time and find ways to minimise your expenses, so you can start the new year feeling confident about your financial position.
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Smart Ways to Save on Big Family Expenses This Year
Re-evaluate Your Transport Costs
How you get around eats into your family budget more than you realise. Between vehicle maintenance, insurance, fuel costs, and public transport charges, you can easily spend hundreds a month.
If you drive, consider whether it’s possible to share a vehicle with your partner or another family member.
If you’re after a second car or a nice upgrade, look at used cars as good-value alternatives. Choosing electric or hybrid vehicles can further minimise expenses as you often pay less for fuel and servicing.
If you have public transportation on the doorstep, try and take advantage of it. Not only is it good for the environment, but children under the age of five generally travel for free, or at a discounted rate (with a fare-paying adult).
Minimise Monthly Bills
While this may appear impossible, it can actually be done if you look closely at your outgoings! Reviewing your finances regularly is best practice for smart budgeting, can help you identify fixed payments you no longer need, and highlight opportunities for saving.
Check your subscriptions and cancel anything unused. Consider what other family members pay for and see if you can combine the remaining subscriptions into some sort of package. Also, look at other providers. When it comes to things like insurance and internet, providers typically offer the best deals to new customers, while costs can creep up for older customers.
Choose Affordable Entertainment
It can be challenging keeping the kids occupied, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. There are plenty of options that are completely free, and others that can easily be budgeted into your weekly spending.
When the weather is fine, encourage your children to get outdoors. Not only is this good for their mental health, but it will help keep them physically fit and give them an appreciation of nature.
At the weekend, look for museums with child-friendly exhibits and other cultural attractions where kids go free. You could also help share the burden by teaming up with other local parents to put on activity sessions at home, such as crafting, baking, and garden games.
Plan for Big Expenses
Some big payments are nasty surprises, but most are expected. This includes things like children’s education, house renovation, and holidays. Planning ahead for these kinds of things and saving small amounts over a longer period feels more manageable than having to part with a significant sum without preparation.
Set yourself clear goals with accurate estimates of how much they will cost and follow budgeting advice such as the 50/30/20 method to help you stay on track with saving towards them. Think carefully about where you put your savings too. Fixed-term accounts give you less flexibility with using your money but often have the best interest rates, maintaining the value of your hard-earned cash.
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Make Savings at Christmas
Christmas can be a joyful yet expensive time of year. With some planning and creativity, it’s possible to celebrate without overspending. Start by setting a realistic budget early and sticking to it. List all your expected expenses; gifts, food, decorations, and travel and allocate specific amounts to each.
Avoid impulse purchases by tracking what you spend and comparing prices before buying. Consider thoughtful, low-cost gifts such as homemade items, baked goods, or personalized crafts. Secret Santa gift exchanges can also reduce the number of presents you need to buy while keeping the fun of giving.
Shopping early or taking advantage of sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday can help you find better deals. For decorations, reuse what you already have or make your own from natural or recycled materials.
When it comes to festive meals, plan ahead to avoid food waste. Ask guests to contribute a dish like my Air Fryer Camembert, Bacon and Cranberry Pinwheels. My Turkey and Chorizo Empanadas are a great way to use up any left over turkey.
Finally, remember that the best parts of Christmas are often free, spending time with loved ones, sharing laughter, and creating memories. By focusing on these moments rather than material things, you can enjoy a meaningful and affordable holiday season.
Are you actively trying to make savings? Or, is this something you are hoping to start doing?
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With 3 children entertainment has to be affordable. Where possible I do try to get them outside as otherwise they want to be on screens all the time. They like to help me with the gardening which helps.
It’s great that you are developing a love of the outdoors in them. This will benefit them as they get older.
This is such a helpful post. We are looking to renovate as cost effectively as possible. We have been saving for a while now and are doing one room at a time so it is more affordable. I agree planning ahead is super important and something I like to do to avoid costly shocks.
It’s important to have the money in place and extra just in case you run into additional costs.
I’m trying to make savings this Christmas by only buying essential gifts. I found myself over the years buying for more and more people unnecessarily so will be putting an end to that this year,
That’s great to hear. I did the same a few years back and have saved a lot each Christmas as a result.
Budgeting is so important. I keep on top of my finances as much as I can. I haven’t checked my subscriptions though, that’s a good idea. I am sure there are a few that I can stop or renegotiate payment amounts.
That can be good to do every so often. You never know what savings you might make!
We’ve been going over our finances and looking for ways to save. We’ve started with finding more affordable alternatives to our services like streaming and internet. There are a lot of options out there that we haven’t taken the time to explore before.
It’s good that you are doing that. You’d be amazed how much you can save x
I have had to budget a lot more this year than previously, car maintenance has been the major thing with it having problems again. I think all my subscriptions are sorted now
Cars can be quite costly unfortunately. Glad you sorted the subscriptions x
Love these ideas! I am definitely going to be shopping more intentionally this year and skipping on those impulse purchases, like you said. I have a list that I am carefully curating to ensure that everyone has a thoughtful gift, rather than just something grabbed off the shelf hastily. Thanks for the tips!
I’m so glad to hear that. Have fun with your Christmas shopping!!!
Everything is more expensive this year and we’ve had to tighten our budget. This article gives me great ideas.
I’m glad that it has helped Jen x
Glad that you have these kind of reminders and things to think to save financial capabilities for your own family. This is a great tips for others like me.
Thanks Nikki, I am glad that you find my posts helpful x
I am somappreciating this post as any way that I can think of to save money right now is good by me. We are minimizing expenses any way that we can and many of these tips will be super helpful! Thank you so much for sharing!
I am so glad that you found them useful. It helps to find areas to make savings as you never know when a big expense might arise.
Everything is going up in price, because of this we all need to tighten our belts. Thank you fot your very useful info.
That’s true, the price of everything these days has grown over the years. We can’t always afford luxuries like before.