The Fruits of our Frugality
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People are frugal for lots of different reasons. For some frugality is borne out of necessity. For others it’s a kind of lifestyle choice – it can be for environmental reasons, to help save for later in life, to pay off a mortgage quicker, even to invest more money now so they can be comfortable later in life when it matters more.
Last year I wrote a post about what being frugal meant to me. I talked about how it had helped my husband and I save for a house, have a fabulous wedding without getting into debt and made sure we were financially stable as we changed careers.
It also allowed us to survive while I was on maternity leave and when I started to rebuild my business after taking six months off to look after our little one. This year, those frugal skills came into play again when both our incomes took a hit at the same time.
The Fruits of our Frugality
I don’t talk about our own, personal finances as often as I probably should on here. Of course, I talk about saving money, being frugal and all the ways we save money day to day to, but I don’t often get down to the real nitty-gritty how things are for us money-wise.
I’ll be honest, the last year hasn’t been the easiest for us financially. After finishing maternity leave in January 2019 it felt like it took me ages to get back in the loop with blogging and earning for money from my blog. Now I had a baby, the time I had to spend on it was much more limited and I felt like I’d lost momentum having taken so much time off.
As my husband is a self-employed bricklayer, we’re used his income being a bit up down – we budget and have emergency savings for this.
But there were several months last year where there was problem after problem at the place he was working.
Occasionally he’ll have to take days off due to bad weather – something which is understandable. But he had a string of other issues caused by the company he was working for – little things but all meant him having to take time off through no fault of his own.
He also had some tools stolen from a locked storage container during this time which was pretty heartbreaking when things were already a bit crap.
During this period of neither of us feeling like things were going particularly well, we took steps to make sure we could survive on what we were earning.
We cut our food shopping back further and avoided the takeaway more stringently than we had before. We cancelled SKY TV and Amazon Prime. We were extra careful with our non-essential spending.
Thankfully, my husband eventually found a job elsewhere. While it’s not all been plain sailing it’s definitely been better overall. And with lots of effort, eventually, the blogging work started to pick up again – I’m now at the point where I start most months with a few things lined up which feels like a great place to be. Plus, I’m always working hard behind the scenes on new projects that should mean my income will be steadier in the future.
Sometimes I think knowing how to be frugal and when to adjust your spending is a skill. It would have been so easy for us to carry on spending as we were and not worry about it. We could have put things on our credit card and not thought about until we were in a better place financially.
What happens with a lot of people is when their income increases, so do their lifestyle choices. With a bigger income, it’s easy to go for a bigger car, a bigger house, more expensive holidays. So when you do have an unexpected drop in income it can be difficult to readjust and cutback. An that’s when people end up using credit cards and getting into a vicious cycle of debt – something we could have so easily done.
Instead, on this occasion, we embraced frugality and were grateful for the things we did have. And it’s paid off. The last few months have been much better for us financially. The extra money has meant we’ve been able to top up our emergency fund rather than being stuck paying off credit cards for years to come. We’ve been able to afford a few extras like weekends away and gig ticket while still being able to pay bills.
We were thankful for past decisions such as saving up a big deposit and only taking on a very small mortgage. Buying an older car outright rather than having one on finance. What you do with your money when you’re income is good can really impact what happens if things should go wrong.
