Right now it feels like the cost of just about everything is rising, and if price tags and bill statements aren’t enough to remind us, society at large certainly won’t let us forget about it. A few months ago the media focus was on energy bills before shifting to the spike in inflation — which according to the Office for National Statistics currently stands at 10.1%. Nowadays we can’t turn on the TV, tune into the radio or scroll our social media timelines for more than a few minutes without somebody reminding us of the dreaded cost of living crisis.

For those of us looking for jobs this can undoubtedly present a dilemma, making what is already often an unpopular process — job hunting — even more unpleasant. This is especially the case when it seems that salary transparency is seriously lacking in job adverts. To give you an idea of the extent of the problem, an investigation by HR publication People Managing People carried out in 2022 found that 35% of UK job ads don’t include salaries.

There are a number of reasons why this is problematic. For a start it’s off-putting to have to consider devoting precious time and effort towards an application for a job which could be offering far less money than you’re seeking. This is probably why a study by job search site Talent.com found that 86% of people think employers should be required to disclose salary ranges in job descriptions.

And let’s not forget that if we don’t know what jobs are offering new candidates, how on earth are we supposed to gauge what salary we should be aiming for based on our experience? “Ultimately it’s really difficult to know what your skills are worth, if you’re being paid fairly or if you can expect to be paid more, unless you have that level of transparency,” says Ellie Austin-Williams, financial coach and founder of This Girl Talks Money.

She continues: “It’s particularly important for women as well, in a sense that women typically don’t tend to negotiate as hard and ask for as much as men. So if you don’t have salary transparency there’s a very high chance that women will end up being paid less than men for exactly the same jobs.”

For Mary Wells* it was inexperience which landed her in a position where she had to turn down a job offer because of the salary. “Earlier on in my career I’d apply for a job that was in line with my experience and interests but there’d be no salary advertised,” she tells The Frugality. “Back then I didn’t have the confidence to ask what the salary was throughout the recruitment process, I just went to the interview and waited to hear back from the company.

“One time I ended up getting offered a job, at which point the HR officer let me know what the salary was. It was really disappointing and much lower than I was hoping for so I had to turn down the offer. Luckily for me I’d had a lot of interviews around that time and I ended up getting a much better paid offer not long after. I’ve definitely learned from that experience and now I always make sure I ask what the salary is before I apply for anything.”

If you’ve ever looked for jobs online it’s likely you’ll have come across ads that conveniently forget to mention what you can expect to be compensated. You might find that instead of a salary they’ve written something vague like ‘Dependent on experience’ or ‘£ Competitive’. This makes things more difficult for prospective applicants and can also begin to breed mistrust, so it’s useful to know why companies and recruiters do this and what it might mean.

“A lot of the job ads that don’t contain salaries are fake recruiter ads and this is the biggest insider secret from a recruitment point of view,” explains career coach and former recruiter Pamela Langan. “[They do this because] recruiters need to keep their pipelines of candidates fresh as they’re constantly on the phone to employers trying to find jobs. And then when they find the job they need a candidate to send over for an interview.”

But what about cases where the job ads are genuine? “If they include a salary range they know they’re only going to get people within that range or maybe one or two that might try to push the boundaries a little bit,” Pamela tells The Frugality. “So they’ll see what they can get for the money. When a candidate comes through they’ll ask them ‘what salary are you on right now?’. What I tell my clients to do is, rather than telling them their salary — because actually they’ve got no right to know and there’s no legal requirement to tell them — instead say what their salary expectations for that role are. So even if that means a massive pay rise for my client, the job they’re applying for is what they should be getting paid for, not an amount based on their previous role.”

If you do ever find yourself in an awkward exchange with a hiring manager about a salary, it’s important to remember to remain firm instead of buckling and accepting an offer that you’re unhappy with. As a result, you may even find that the company you’re applying to has a change of heart. “One of the brands that I said no to actually came back and said they’d like to raise their offer, but I had already decided by that point that I was no longer interested,” says Tom Bourlet who’s now head of marketing at Fizzbox.

“Another actually seemed disappointed that I wasn’t interested in taking a pay cut to join them, as if that was ever an option. The role was a higher position, managing a team of six, yet the wage was significantly lower than my pay grade at the time and about half of what that role would be offering if you looked in the local area,” he says. “So I was blunt and explained this to them, but also that their job description was ridiculous in what it expected [for the money].”

If you take anything away from reading this, it should be that you should always, without exception, try to confirm a salary before applying for a job. While there’s no guarantee that recruiters will be forthcoming with the information it’s certainly worth enquiring. “There’s absolutely no reason not to ask. Ask the recruiter or ask the company before you go through the effort,” says Ellie. “Applying for a job is not easy and it takes a lot out of you going through that process. So if you’re doing that only to get to the end of it and realise that actually it’s not paying what you would like to be paid then you’ve put in a whole lot of time and energy into something which ultimately you could have saved yourself from.”

As I write this, the sun is shining. And this year, warm summer days are more welcome than ever, because as energy prices rise, we’re all having to think twice before turning up the thermostat. It’s not currently advised for us to switch energy provider at all; this used to be the best way of keeping your bills low but since there is no such thing as cheap energy right now, the most efficient and quickest way to save money is to simply use less energy.

While I don’t claim to be an energy expert, I have done a fair bit of research on how to use less of it, which I originally did in my quest to power my life more sustainably. That research is now coming in handy where my bills are concerned too; these are my top seven tips for using less energy and saving money.

1. Deal with the obvious stuff first, like turning the lights off!

OK, some of these things may sound really obvious, but are you actually doing all of them? According to the Energy Saving Trust, it could save you a fair bit of money over the course of a year. For example, these are the average savings for a three bedroom house in the UK:

Turning appliances off rather than leaving on standby = £55 

Not using a tumble drier = £60

Not overfilling the kettle = £11

Another simple thing to do is switch to LED light bulbs, which use 75% less energy than traditional ones, and also last much longer. When every little bit counts, the small things are worth it.

2. Turn the thermostat down by just 1ºC

You’re probably not using the heating much right now, but come autumn keep an eye on your thermostat. Turning it down by just 1ºC can make a difference and save you money right away. According to a report by USwitch in 2020, 2.7 million households in the UK have their thermostats set to a positively balmy 25ºC (hotter than Tenerife!), but the recommended temperature is somewhere between 18ºC and 21ºC depending on the house and who lives in it (for example elderly people should opt for the warmer end of the scale). If in doubt, try turning it down by one degree at a time until you reach a temperature that everyone in the house – and your bank balance – is comfortable with. In our home, we’re cool with 18ºC and an optional blanket.

3. Wash your clothes less frequently

I am a big advocate of washing your clothes less often for many reasons, and one of them is that it saves loads of energy. When you do wash them, however, doing it more consciously could also save you some cash. For example, by doing one less wash a week and reducing the temperature to 30º, you could save £28 per year.

4. Get a smart meter

You can get a smart meter free from your energy provider (most are currently installing them but you’ll need to check your area) and it tells them exactly what energy you have used, so you won’t get stung by overestimated bills again. We’ve found that the meter really makes us keep track of how much we are using because it shows us the cost in real time. Ours is especially useful because we don’t have gas central heating and power the whole house on electricity, and it has allowed us to experiment with how we use our boiler; for example, we’ve found that heating the water tank for a short period overnight is the cheapest way of doing it.

5. Think about the spare room

Make sure you turn off the radiators in any rooms you’re not currently using. And then shut the door! You don’t want the heat from the rooms you are using to be wasted in there. We also close the bathroom door after we’ve used it in the morning for the same reason.

6. Buy part of a wind farm (yes, really!)

We’ve recently done a full renovation on our house. It wasn’t connected to gas and we didn’t want it to be, so we researched renewable energy solutions and I’ll be honest, it was a bit of a nightmare. Solar panels and heat pumps were too expensive for our budget, so I’m now exploring the idea of buying part of a wind farm instead through Ripple Energy. It might sound mad, but essentially, you pay as little as £25 for your share (but it makes better sense to buy more if you can afford it), and you get that allocated amount of energy at cost price, which at the moment is MUCH cheaper. Plus, unlike solar panels and heat pumps, if you move house your share of the wind farm just moves with you. Solar Together offers similar community solar projects in selected parts of the UK.

7. Use your kitchen better

Other than only boiling the amount of water you actually need in the kettle, there are lots of other ways to use your kitchen more efficiently. For example, we’ve taken to leaving the oven door open after cooking so that it heats up the room (we have an open plan kitchen diner so this is really efficient for us, and the oven isn’t at floor level, so not dangerous for the dog!). Boiling on the hob is twice as quick if you just add a lid, and opting for a hob ring that’s unnecessarily large will use more energy than you need. And it pains me to say this, because I do love an oven baked potato, but cooking it in the microwave instead uses a whopping 75% less energy.

Laura Whateley shares some tips {In partnership with Chip}

With the cost of living crisis looming, I’m dreading my new energy tariff which arrives any day soon, saving might not be at the forefront of your mind. 

Certainly I am guilty of thinking about putting money aside as a ‘make hay while the sun shines’ kind of activity. But every financial adviser and debt charity I have spoken to says it is when money is tight that you need to focus on creating more of a cushion for yourself.

The most common reason people get into unmanageable debt is an expense that they didn’t see coming and have no savings to cover, which means they have to borrow at short notice, and usually at great expense, to fund it. 

I also know I could probably save more than I think I can afford. Writing as an elderly millennial here, it’s amazing how quickly the years pass and a few extra pounds a week, plus compounding interest, adds up.

Here are a few tips on how to put more aside without noticing too much.

Pay yourself first

Don’t wait to see how much is left over at the end of the month before you decide how much you can afford to save.

Work backwards, how much do you want/ need to save each month? As soon as your salary lands, move that sum away to a separate account so you’re not tempted to touch it. If you need to get hold of it, it’s there, but adding a bit of friction always helps.

You can automate this with the app Chip’s new Payday Put Away feature, setting a custom amount that is moved into savings, from your current account, at the end of the month without you having to do anything. 

Research by Chip found that those who put money aside on payday save 114 per cent more, an average of £168.47, a month (about £2,000 a year), and are also likely to keep money in their savings account for longer. Out of sight out of mind.

Chip also uses AI to analyse your current account and work out how much you can afford to save, moving small amounts of money every few days into an easy-access savings account, automatically (and the account pays a decent interest rate compared to most banks).

The idea is you don’t really feel it day to day, but it’s enough to make a difference over time. The average user puts away £3,000 a year (and if you sign up via this link and use the code PAYDAY10 you get £10 added to your account!).

Take on a savings challenge

On a constant quest to be a more organised person, I am a sucker for any productivity “hacks” and I love the book ‘Tiny Habits’ by the behavioural scientist BJ Fogg. The gist is: start tiny, make it as easy as possible for yourself, and before you know it, that thing you hate will be second nature. Then you can build it up.

E.g. if you want to not feel guilty at the dentist, start flossing just one tooth per evening.

In the same vein, if you want to save more money, begin with a few pennies every day.

Try the 365 day savings challenge: save £1 on a Monday, £2 on a Tuesday through to £7 on a Sunday. In 12 months you’ll have £1,500. Or the 1p challenge: 1p on day one, 2p on day 2 through to £3.65. It amounts to about £668 at the end of the year. 

Deal with your debts 

Interest rates on most loans and credit cards are many, many times higher than interest rates on savings.

So it makes sense that you’ll save more by using any spare cash on paying down your debts than you will squirrelling it in a cash account. There is some psychology involved here. If you have a lot of credit card debt that feels totally overwhelming to tackle, then having some savings, too, may help you sleep better.

 But if the main issue is you’ve just shoved some shopping on a card and have forgotten about it, clearing minimum payments only, make clearing debt your focus. Take advantage of 0% balance and purchase credit cards, too. 

Maximise all bonuses and tax-breaks on savings accounts

Interest rates on savings accounts might start creeping up from their abysmal lows, but it’ll take ages to earn anywhere near inflation.  It’s still worth thinking about where to keep your different savings pots. Dividing savings up between short, medium and long term, and different goals like emergency fund, holidays, new kitchen, can help keep you motivated.

Look at regular savings accounts, current accounts that pay interest, and accounts from challenger banks and apps like Chip, which are often more generous than cash Isas from your more traditional high street banks.

Look at regular savings accounts and current accounts that pay interest, which are often more generous than cash Isas and easy-access accounts.

Make the most of any “free” money. Open a lifetime Isa if you’re saving to get on the housing ladder, you get an additional government bonus of up to £1,000 a year, for every £4,000 you save, towards your deposit. You can also use this money instead of a pension. 

If you are employed you’ll probably have a pension with work. Tempting as it is to pause contributions or even come out of the scheme if you’re feeling the pinch, try to avoid it. You get really generous tax breaks and your employer pays in on top. Missing out on this is like turning down a pay rise.

Review all your bills 

Sounds obvious, but it’s always tempting to leave it to another day. Look at what you’re paying out and whether you can cut back. When did you last switch broadband or car insurance? You’ll almost certainly be charged a loyalty penalty if you haven’t “shopped around”. What about your mobile phone? (SIM only with a handset bought on a 0% credit card will be cheaper than most other options). 

If you have a mortgage, when does your deal end? Rates are rising and just 1 per cent increase adds about £70 a month onto a mortgage of £150,000. Don’t sit on your lender’s standard variable rate. I got super lucky with timing but managed to save £100 a month by switching when my fixed-rate deal ended this year. 

Go through all those subscriptions that you signed up for and have since forgotten about.

And while you’re doing it, be conscious of a lifestyle creep. Whether it’s a pay rise or a bit more cash from a cheaper phone deal, try not to spend your mini windfall. I’ve pledged to save that extra £100 a month before I start to miss it.

This post was in collaboration with Chip, an amazing savings app (already used by 400,000 people) and if you sign up between 25th March and 22nd April using code PAYDAY 10, Chip will add an extra £10 to your savings pot!

*This article is provided for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. You are advised to consult with an independent financial advisor for advice on your specific circumstances.*

Sorting out our pension can seem incredibly daunting, which is why it’s something we often push to the bottom of our to-do list. You might not have a pension at all, or perhaps you’ve stopped contributing or find yourself reluctant to add more to your pot. Whatever the case, don’t worry: it’s never too late to get started, and it’s not nearly as complicated as you might think. 

Saving into a pension is especially pertinent for women because, on average, we tend to live longer but retire with less than half the income of men. There are myriad elements that come into play to make this happen, including the gender pay gap, complex jargon, a lack of confidence and the motherhood penalty. If you took time off to have children, for example, it’s likely that you stopped contributing to your pension without even realising. Add the high cost of childcare and missed potential promotions to the picture, and you’ll find that your career and pensions are suffering because of the ‘motherhood penalty’. The best way to try to bridge this is to plan ahead with your employer, but also with your partner (if you have one). Together, you can look at your collective income and see if you could afford childcare to both stay in employment. If you’d prefer to take time off work, have a conversation about your partner potentially contributing to your pension on your behalf. 

Is the State Pension enough?

You might think that the government will support you in old age, but unfortunately, the State Pension alone might not be enough for you to comfortably live on. While you can qualify for the full State Pension if you have contributed to National Insurance for at least 35 years, the sum sits at just over £9,350 a year (you can check your state pension forecast here). Note that the state pension age is currently 66 but will start increasing over the coming years, so it’s important to think about additional pension savings or income to secure a stress-free retirement.

Claiming Child Benefit helps your pension

Don’t forget to claim Child Benefit if you are planning to or already have children. Child Benefit is an allowance, usually paid monthly (£21.15 a week for your first child and £14 per week for other children). While the sum isn’t huge, what’s important here is that the person who claims it will get National Insurance credits towards their state pension if they aren’t working. This means that even if you’re not qualified to get the allowance (eg. if either you or your partner earn over the £50,000 tax-free limit), you should still claim it so you don’t miss out on National Insurance contributions (NICs), as these could affect your eligibility to claim the state pension.

Make your money work hard

If you’re already saving – well done! Cash savings provide a vital safety net that you can fall back on should things go awry. Once you have emergency savings squirrelled away and repaid your expensive short-term debts, it’s time to think about investing for the long term. Since your investments compound over time, they make your money work harder for you and give your savings a boost. The earlier you start investing, the more you’ll benefit in the long-run — stock markets tend to perform better than cash over the long haul, so think 5-10 years +. 
Remember that pensions are invested in the stock market (in assets such as stocks and shares, bonds, cash and property), so if you have a pension you’re already an investor! You can consider investing in the stock market with a Stocks & Shares ISA or a Lifetime ISA, but that’s a subject for another day.

Are private pensions worth it?

In addition to your state pension, you can also save money into a private pension. When you put money into your pension, you get tax relief on your contributions, which means that some of your money that would have gone to the government as tax goes into your pension instead, and your pension grows largely tax free. You can access your private pension from age 55 (57 in 2028). There are 2 types of private pensions: 

• A workplace pension is a pension you’ll typically have if you are employed and is arranged by your employer. You are normally auto-enrolled to a workplace pension (defined contribution scheme), and at least 8% of your monthly earnings will automatically be invested into your pension each month (5% from you, and a minimum of 3% from your employer). It’s also important to check whether your employer is matching your contributions, as it will help your pot grow faster. 
• A personal pension is a pension you choose to open and pay into yourself. You’re allowed to have a personal pension as well as your workplace pension and state pension. The most common type of Personal Pension is a Self-Invested Personal Pension (SIPP). If you’re avoiding sorting out your pension as a self-employed person, you’re not alone. According to the IPSE, only 31% of self-employed people pay into a pension. The reasons for this vary, from having a variable income to worrying about running out of cash. But remember, it’s completely okay if contributing monthly doesn’t always work out! Progress isn’t linear. 

Connect with future you

Now, let’s talk about giving your pension a good ole’ boost! To start, you need to have a rough idea of how much you need to be putting away toward your retirement. Connect with future you, and really picture the lifestyle you’d want. Then, you can use a pension calculator to figure out how much money you will have in your pension pot at the end of your working life and what that means in terms of your retirement income.

Automate to accumulate

Try to automate your savings and investments. It sometimes feels like it’s never the right time to save or invest, so setting up a monthly direct debit the day you get paid, based on your budget and your goals, will help you save consistently and smooth out your returns. If you’re worried about not knowing how to invest your pension, take some time to learn about investing, consult a professional and leverage existing tools and platforms such as robo-advisers or use ready-made portfolios. A quick online search for “Robo-advisers UK” will yield plenty of helpful comparison websites that offer reviews, minimum deposits required, products on offer (ISA, pensions), as well as general pros and cons.

Consolidate old pensions

Find old pensions you may have from previous jobs. It can be useful to consolidate your pensions because it’ll help you see if you’re on track to meet your goals and requires less admin. However, make sure that consolidation makes sense for you, as you could potentially lose valuable benefits. In these instances, it’s always best to consult a financial adviser for a tailored approach.

Make the most of your allowance if you can. You can contribute the maximum of 100% of your earnings in a year or £40,000 a year (annual allowance). You should be mindful of the £1mn lifetime allowance (the limit on how much you can build up in pension benefits over your lifetime while still enjoying the full tax benefit).

Plan together

Remember to talk about pensions with your partner, and always plan together. You can pay into each other’s pensions – if your partner is not earning, you can pay up to £3,600 per annum into your partner’s pension if they are not working (£2,880 before tax relief) and you can also add to their pensions if they work.

Trying to get to grips with your pension can feel exhausting, but it’s well worth your time. If you think you need additional support, you may be able to get pension awareness and education sessions through your workplace, but there are plenty of free resources online (visit the government website MoneyHelper), too. To get individualised support and advice about your pension, always speak to a financial adviser. But regardless of the route you decide to take, remember that paying a little more attention to your pension today will make a big difference to your future, so why not start now? 

We have meal planned for over 10 years now and what started out of necessity (Chris and I were both earning very little when we first lived together) to keep our food bills low has turned into something that is second nature and dare I say: enjoyable!

Our food ethos revolves around limiting waste – we don’t throw away food, we find a use for it. If I see something in a cupboard that’s been there for a while or a half used pot of creme fraiche, I’ll either incorporate it into a weekly recipe, or find a new interesting dish (BBC Good Food is so good for this, or you can often google ‘what recipe can I use xx ingredients in’). 

We do our food shop weekly and we buy in store and mainly from lower priced supermarkets to make it more affordable. Before we do our weekly shop, I go through our fridge, freezer and store cupboards and write down everything we have on a scrap of paper (I don’t always include jars of mustard etc, unless it’s running out or I think we need to finish it). 

Then I look through cookbooks, recipe tears, or just discuss with Chris recipes that use up these items first and foremost. Personally, I don’t see the point in meal planning if you’re not using up what you have first. It’s only then that we plan the rest of the week’s meals.

The recipes we choose tend to be those we can make in bulk, eat the next day, save for the kids, or freeze extras. That way, I’m never aimlessly looking in the fridge when I’m hungry for lunch, as there’s always something ready to eat, and I can stay focused on work. We’re now very experienced in the recipes that are great for this, like tray bakes, soups, risottos and shakshuka (a surprise hit in our family!).

There isn’t a week that goes by where we don’t plan what we’re eating. It saves us so much money but also never feels like we’re scrimping (and I genuinely love the meals we make!). Lots of you ask me about it, so if you fancy trying it too, here’s how (it’s really simple, grab a pen)….

Write down:

WHAT YOU HAVE

Everything in the fridge, freezer and cupboards. I often leave every paste/jar unless I really want to finish it!

WHAT YOU NEED

Regular things like bread, and milk, or things that have run out like dishwasher tablets.

WHAT YOU WANT

Write down delicious meals that use up what you already have (but we also allow ourselves a few meals just because we fancy: like fajitas!). We love The Roasting Tin by Rukmini Iyer, One: Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones (the saffron cauliflower is heavenly and makes me look like I am an accomplished chef!) and Saucy by Nina Parker. For vegan food, Rachel Ama’s cook books are great (she has just brought out a one pot book too!) and I love Melissa Hemsley’s cooking style.

For instance, you have a tin of chickpeas you don’t know what to do with? Buy some tinned tomatoes, coconut milk and curry paste and serve with rice (add onions and ginger if you fancy!). Not sure what to do with that butternut squash? Try roasting with some mushrooms in a traybake with feta.

We also add the days that we are in/out onto the planner, and we tend to freestyle breakfast (generally, in our house as long as we have eggs, bread, Weetabix and yoghurt – we’re good!). We plan a shop like this for a week, but as plans change or we make a bit more than anticipated, especially freezing some meals, a food shop like this will generally last us around 8-10 days (with a bread and milk top up). We also get a medium Oddbox delivered twice a month on top of this, which is so great for helping prevent food waste as well (our Oddbox always makes us try new things and recipes too – it’s celeriac soup this week!).

For the grocery list, we use the Microsoft TO DO app which you can share with a partner/friend/housemate and you will both be able to see when items are ticked off/bought from the list! Very handy.

This might sound too simple for you, it might sound not healthy enough. You might snack more (I know my son will start to eat us out of house and home soon!). It suits us, and more importantly it is completely adaptable. The principles of making larger batches (we usually make stews or tray bakes for 4-8 so there is always something in the freezer ready to eat), so you can freeze and save leftovers, and using what you already have are the most important aspects of this, and make such a difference to how much the weekly shop costs and how much use you get out of your food.

The vital point here is that we enjoy these meals, we never feel like we’re scrimping, or not living our best life. I think there’s a common misconception that eating and feeding your family ‘frugally’ isn’t about having delicious food. That, in my opinion, is a complete falsehood – but obviously deliciousness and palate are subjective, so feel free to adapt this philosophy to something that works for you and your family.

You can also watch my Instagram REEL here.

Katie Dailey shares the reality of an Air BnB side hustle…

Last year, after toying with the idea for ages, we put our family home up on Airbnb. Not a spare home we happen to have, but the one we live in and make a mess of. We had a couple of trips planned which would otherwise leave the house empty, and plenty of ways we could imagine spending the cash.

As anyone who does this will tell you, hosting on Airbnb is both the best and worst thing in the world – nightmarish to prepare, joyous to get paid for. This isn’t so much a how-to – it’s easy enough to list your place on the site, although I’d recommend getting someone with a decent camera to take the pics –  but a how-to-make-it-a-bit-easier-to. Interested in having your hols paid for by strangers? Read on.

Settings are everything

Airbnb seems to be obsessed with signing everyone up to autobook – that means if your house is marked available on certain calendar dates, guests can book without checking with you first. Well, I turned that right off and I suggest you do the same – I like to check people out really carefully first (see next point) and then approve them if I trust them and their configuration works for me (i.e. I never want an adult sleeping in my kids’ bunk beds. I don’t know why but that’s my line in the sand). Remember to always keep your calendar updated. An annoying Airbnb setting means that everything is marked available until you mark it unavailable. So DO go through and block out all but your chosen dates, up to six months (or whenever you set the maximum booking window for). And set a minimum booking – mine is for seven days – who can be bothered to sort out the whole house for a one night rental?

Be picky about your guests – you’re allowed to be

This is probably obvious but think about the way your house will be used and approve bookings you’re comfortable with. I only take bookings from people with little kids. Being in one myself, I know that families with young children are likely to play with your toys, but they’re not likely to have thirty mates round and host a Boiler Room session. You may have pristine white carpets and choose to not rent to people with kids. I also only choose people with existing reviews, and I often cross check them with LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook – just to check that they look like good people and that they’re who they say they are. This sounds like a lot of work but I only have about three weeks of the year that are open to booking so really, it isn’t. Airbnb definitely prefers hosts who accept all bookings, and prioritises those listings, but I’d rather lose out on host of the year and have people in the house that I’m comfortable with.

It turns out you DO have time to fix the broken floorboard/clean the cutlery drawer/touch up the paintwork

Anyone who owns a house has got a little mental checklist of maintenance jobs on the go: deep cleaning the fridge, changing that lightbulb on the porch, fixing that floorboard. Writing the list is about as far as we normally get. But it’s amazing what the imminent arrival of someone who doesn’t know the quirks of the house does for your time management – we found ourselves painting floorboards after the kids had gone to bed, sorting out kitchen drawers while on an interminable phone call to BT. All of this is very annoying – no one wants to do those jobs. But an Airbnb booking forces you to. And then, well, they’re done! That’s a great thing to come home to.

People don’t expect a hotel (if they did, they’d book one)

At Christmas, I didn’t have the time/energy/heart to do the great clean up when I had a million other things on the go. So I turned down any enquiries on Airbnb and got ready for Christmas instead. We left the house clean and tidy – but not hotel tidy. There were some bits in the washing basket, our clothes were in the wardrobes, our spaghetti and tinned tomatoes were in the food cupboard. On Christmas Eve, in the countryside and getting ready for Christmas, I had a message from a family whose accommodation in London had fallen through. They seemed really trustworthy and nice, and promised they wouldn’t open our wardrobes or touch our stuff. I believed them, and we got a week’s rental income having done NO preparation. They loved the house, gave us a great review and when we came back our pants were still where we left them, in the laundry basket.

Leave instructions

The more info you leave out, the less likely you are to get called on the beach. I’ve now got a big info sheet on my desktop that I print out when we Airbnb. It has a section on appliances, bins (people always ask about the bins), local transport and good-to-know stuff like restaurants and parks. Because I always rent to families, I include things like local soft play and recommended kids’ museums.

Organise your drawers so you can easily lift and store the contents

The major Airbnb workload is clearing and finding somewhere to put your stuff. We don’t have a loft, a shed or any little lockable study to stuff things in – that would make it miles easier. Instead, I clear the top drawers and one wardrobe in every room. Our stuff remains in the rest. Since I started Airbnb, all of my kids’ drawers are separated with these from Ikea. When prepping for Airbnb I lift them all straight into one of these (make sure you get one in a compatible size), and then put them on top of the wardrobes. That takes five minutes. Any drawers that I don’t empty I cover with a plain pillow case and tuck them in, just as a sign that they’re out of bounds. It’s nothing a curious person couldn’t undo in a second, but in my experience people don’t come to nose through your stuff, they come to explore your city. And if they do want to look at some babygrows, well, I’ll never know. In my room, I somehow manage to squeeze all my stuff into my husband’s wardrobe, leaving one free, and do the same thing with the drawers – clear the top two drawers into a storage box and stick it on top of a wardrobe. These zip up containers are great too – they can be hidden under a bed, then folded down to nothing when you don’t need them.  

Invest in a spare set of cheapo bedsheets

Most people I know that host have a box of Airbnb towels and sheets. It just means there are always bright white, mystery splodge-free towels to leave out, and that guests are never using the same bed sheets as us. Plain white ones from H&M or Ikea cost little and it’s nice just to have them in a drawer ready to go.

Smart devices come into their own with Airbnb

We have NEST installed which means I can put the heating on remotely if someone’s arrival time changes, and the house needs to be warmed up for them. It also means no one can turn the heating up to 30 and then just go out for the day – NEST is pretty good at sensing when there’s no one in the house and clocking off. We had it anyway – I wouldn’t bother installing just for Airbnb as we do it rarely – but if you have a Smart system then it’s a real Airbnb plus.

It’s a risk but it also removes some risk

We live in east London, and there’s a lot of burglary around. While the way I do things on Airbnb (keeping our stuff in the house and often in view) leaves us vulnerable in some ways, I actually feel a lot better leaving our home in the hands of a really nice seeming young family than obviously empty.

7 grand don’t come for free

Unless you do this seriously or frequently, you won’t reach the £7500 threshold for being taxed on income from the home you live in – but you might still have to declare the income. Have a look at the information on the government’s website – I haven’t got to the end of the relevant tax year yet so can’t speak for how complicated it is to do. But basically if you earn above £7500 as your annual income, you’ll have to fill out a tax return for your airbnb income. If you share the income with a partner, that allowance is split between you (i.e. you can’t make £7500 on Airbnb and then have your partner declare £7500 on theirs).

Don’t think about it

The number one reason people seem to have for not renting out their home to others is the idea of another family sitting in your chairs, eating your porridge and sleeping in your beds. There’s no getting around it – that’s going to happen. But it’s surprisingly easy not to think about it – as soon as you’re on your way to whatever it is that’s taking you out of the house (with us, it’s always a holiday), you don’t give your houseguests much more than a thought. Until you get a lovely paycheck notification from PayPal. That Brazilian family who requested use of a highchair just paid for your trip to Spain!

I started this blog back in 2012, I launched on January 1st as I knew that this time of year is always good to think more mindfully about a few things. And for me, it was financially. Doing a little spring clean and re prioritising my goals and how I viewed my money and finances was integral to getting to the place I am now in life.

As our building work is calming down, last year we managed to pay off our credit card accumulated from the kitchen building work and we have just managed to pay back a loan we took out for our kitchen. All of these actions mean we have over £100 each extra a month and we can finally start thinking about saving and planning a bit more for the future.

It hasn’t been easy and in a world where talking finances and being careful with money isn’t exactly ‘cool’ it has been hard to stick to budgeting, but the satisfaction that comes with being debt-free and understanding my money is definitely worth it.

So, they’re not exactly ‘sexy’ but here are my new commitments to feeling a bit more financially empowered this year!

CANCEL UNUSED SUBSCRIPTIONS/DIRECT DEBITS

January is often when subscriptions start renewing so it’s always a good idea to check off some that might be gathering dust. This year we sadly cancelled our Tate membership, as much as we loved it we just haven’t been enough times to warrant the cost and plan to renew once the kids are older. It’s worth looking into whether you’d be financially better off paying some subscriptions up front instead of direct debit (if you can afford to). Try calling around and switching things like insurance or gas and electricity, you can often get a better deal simply by calling and asking.

CHECK MY BANKING DAILY

As someone who used to keep my head in the sand about my finances, this is the most important thing I do. I know where every penny goes, which direct debits come out (both personally and our joint account) and can see immediately if I’ve been overcharged or there is an anomaly. It sounds so simple but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t do this.

USE AN AUTOMATED SAVINGS APP

I started using the award-winning Chip app a few years ago and it has helped us save towards holidays and home renovations but it has also made me realise that saving any amount helps. Using its clever algorithm, you can link your bank account and the app withdraws small amounts that you can ‘afford’ without missing it (don’t worry, it analyses millions of transactions to work this out!). The idea to save ‘smarter, not harder’ (plus its savings accounts are FSCS eligible).

Chip is free, you can pause autosaves and withdraw your money at any time and you can set a minimum amount you wish to leave in your bank account (mine is always set to £100). You are totally in control and set the savings rating for you – from 1 (Take Your Time) to the highest at 5 (Serious Stuff) – and as it’s January, mine is currently set to 2!

There are also extra functions such as Payday Put Away (an automatic weekly or monthly amount), you can allocate a percentage of savings towards goals (ours is Japan!). Chip has over 400,000 users already saving with them and says that their AI and Savings goals mean that Chip savers save on average £3,000 more a year. I love that it isn’t all about a huge end goal, it’s the little saves that count. You can download the app to start saving here (and if you use the code FRUGALI22 and save £1, Chip will add £20 to your account to help you start!).

FOCUS ON MY PENSION

We only started our pension two years ago, so we’ve got a bit of catching up to do – but better late than never! We started small but this year we will review it and look to increase our payments. There is a huge Freelancer pension gap (as well as a female one!) so it is so important to try and start one if you feel able. I still don’t know a lot about how they work but Laura Whateley’s book on ‘Money: A user’s guide’ is a great place to start.

PLAN OUR MEALS

This is something we consistently do in our household (albeit a few more takeaways last year with our newborn!) but this year I will be sharing more of our meal planning journey. I have always been a bit scared of sharing too much food content as it has never looked very ‘Instagrammable’ but this year I will be doing away with preconceived ideas of how meals ‘should’ look and posting and sharing more about how we budget and plan our meals without waste. If it helps spur anyone on and continues to help us in the process, that’s always a good thing.

This post was in partnership with Chip, the app that has finally helped us save! Code FRUGALI22 gets you £20 free when you sign up (valid 7th – 31st January 2022 Terms and Conditions here).

I can’t remember the exact moment I gave up fighting the good fight, but at some point during the last 12 months I finally accepted that I had to let it go. By ‘it’ I’m referring of course to the idea of work-life balance – a concept so elusive, so seemingly unattainable that at this point I’m convinced we’re knowingly being trolled by a society that’s long been telling us we can indeed ‘have it all’. 

The solution, we’re told, is simple. All you need to do is make a few adjustments, learn how to better manage your time, and voila! You’ll be able to maintain your work-life balance with ease, all the while juggling your many responsibilities as your household affairs calmly tick over in the background. Sadly, the reality for many of us conflicts with the idyllic scenarios we have a habit of conjuring in our minds. And there’s one glaring factor that precludes 75% of the UK work force from this blissful utopia purely because you cannot achieve true work-life balance if you work full-time. I repeat: YOU CANNOT ACHIEVE TRUE WORK-LIFE BALANCE IF YOU WORK FULL-TIME.

It’s factually impossible to evenly divide your time and attention between family and/or leisure activities when you work five out of seven days of the week

So let’s unpack this. Using the Oxford Languages definition as our reference point, work-life balance is described as ‘the division of one’s time and focus between working and family or leisure activities’. But it’s factually impossible to evenly divide your time and attention between family and/or leisure activities when you work five out of seven days of the week. I’m not saying anything that we don’t already know, but I’m damn sure going to labour the point (no pun intended). 

As somebody who was once on what felt like a never-ending quest to conquer work-life balance, it genuinely felt like a relief to assess my reality with brutal honestly and concede that this was one battle I wasn’t going to win. Committing myself to a goal so far out of reach, in addition to working a demanding full-time job, parenting two young children, ensuring my home was in some semblance of order and regularly working into the wee hours to meet freelance writing deadlines, took a huge toll.

After being blighted with my second emotional breakdown in nearly as many months earlier this year, I knew I had to shed some of the layers that were adding to my angst and fuelling my rocketing stress levels. That meant opening the door to a more realistic set of expectations for what my life looks like right now. I may not be able to achieve work-life balance in 2021 but it’s something I’m working towards for the future, and I often wonder how many other women, particularly working mums, are experiencing these same pressures.

Committing myself to a goal so far out of reach, in addition to working a demanding full-time job, parenting two young children, ensuring my home was in some semblance of order and regularly working into the wee hours to meet freelance writing deadlines, took a huge toll

For many of us, the switch to remote working brings with it more positives than negatives. Despite this, the blurring of the divide that separates our personal and professional lives, which was already faltering pre-Covid, has now all but vanished. It’s the price we pay for a more convenient and, depending on your WFH setup, comfortable working arrangement. Yet despite this drawback, a recent RADA Business survey found that nearly half of British workers were either very or extremely interested in remote working permanently going forward. And on the flip side of the argument, ONS research found that working adults named work-life balance as the biggest positive of homeworking. 

In an effort to allow employees to better ‘balance their work and home life’ and ‘modernise the way we work’, the government has just announced its plans to make requesting flexible working a day one right. That means every employee in the country will be able to ask for flexible working options, regardless of their time served at a company. It can’t be denied that this is a step in the right direction, but seriously? How is this just now happening? 

Flexible working undoubtedly offers some wiggle room on either side of the 9-5 for things like health and wellbeing practices, meeting up with friends, and actually having some free time in the evenings to squander at your will. We know about the psychological, emotional and physical benefits that can result from agile and flexible working, yet it took a global pandemic to essentially force those in positions of power to consider a people-friendly policy which frankly should have been introduced years ago. 

The further I progress in my career, the more my vision of my dream job changes. I no longer aspire to be busy, always ‘on’, enthusiastically tapping away at my phone and sending urgent emails while dashing to and from meetings. Instead I now value a commodity that’s often overlooked and criminally underrated: time. The older I get the more I appreciate just how much of a luxury time is. Having more autonomy over our time and how we choose to spend it is ultimately what work-life balance is all about. So here’s to having more time to enjoy whichever of life’s simple pleasures bring you the most joy.

Hi Everyone!

It has been awhile, which has been the loveliest thing to say! You see I didn’t take much time off with my daughter, and although this year has been far harder financially, I didn’t want to regret not taking longer with this little boy. So 6 months on, I am slowly coming back to work. We still have no childcare in place but things are getting easier and I’ve missed the blog! So we will be doing posts here and mini posts via the newsletter (you can sign up here).

The night before I gave birth, England went into its second lockdown and only really lifted restrictions in April, so the last 6 months have been testing, to say the least. At first we really enjoyed the slow pace of getting to know our wonderful boy, cosying up on the sofa and leaning into it. However, lack of family contact has been difficult and those things you plan your day around as a new parent: coffees with friends, playgroups and family bringing round cake or helping do some washing up, have been sorely missed. Ironically, I found the constant stream of visitors so hard with Peggy, yet this time I longed for someone to take the baby off me just for an hour or so. But things are slowly getting easier and suddenly time is passing even quicker (as is my diary!) and I can already feel the ‘busyness’ anxiety creeping back.

Being freelance on maternity leave is one of the few drawbacks of working for yourself. As a freelancer there are so many perks – you are in charge of your own hours, you don’t always have someone to answer to regarding working hours, productivity, workload etc, but Maternity Allowance is not huge (especially if you work with your partner as the allowance has to be shared). To take 3 months, we just had to save three months company takings which, as you can imagine, in a lockdown world was hard. Hence why we did our keep in touch days and met a few select commercial deadlines. The thing is, when you work for yourself, there is no one designated to take over your role, so you can’t relax and enjoy your maternity leave in the same way that an employed person (potentially) could. I know this doesn’t always work this way (I’m pretty sure in my magazine days, I probably wouldn’t have had any cover and my workload would’ve been spread out amongst the team to save budget) and job security is (still!) an issue amongst those on maternity leave but there is far more structure in place to allow for time work-free with your child within a larger company. I’m not very good at delegating or switching off, so without maternity cover the buck (and bills), unfortunately, stop with me.

But that’s not to say we don’t feel extremely lucky to be able to take any time off at all, we were both at home and could take turns doing admin. I extended my leave on @thefrugality Instagram account as although technically back to work, I couldn’t give enough to all platforms without childcare. And the fact we managed to save enough to take any time off at all in time of such uncertainty has been hugely welcomed. So thank you, everyone who reads and engages with this site and our social platforms everyday, as that has made it possible. You may often think a ‘click’ or a ‘like’ doesn’t count in the big scheme of things but it can really make an impact.

Looking forward to getting my teeth into things again.

What a year 2020 has been. When we found out we were expecting, it was pre pandemic and the year ahead looked very different. ‘The Frugality Talks’ were about to begin, I was making plans to launch The Frugality Shop and set to have the busiest year work-wise.

A lot of those plans changed, but not necessarily in a bad way. For us, we learnt to slow down, address what was important and make a lot of decisions for the better. On Friday we handed in the keys to our office and moved everything back home, there would have been a time when I would’ve seen this as a failure but now I know it’s the right decision – we weren’t even allowed access to the building March – June and with my maternity leave starting in November, we knew it didn’t make sense to be spending money on an office in these tricky times with work being so up in the air. With a working kitchen now, things have become remarkably easier to be at home full-time and I am actually looking forward to some time off from work to be able to relax with our newborn.

I learnt a lot of lessons last time with my maternity leave and I am trying to make a conscious effort not to make the same mistakes. Being freelance and going on maternity leave is tricky enough in that it’s almost impossible to switch off, you get very little financial support and have a constant guilt about work/life balance (but let’s face it, who doesn’t have that?!), but here are a few rules I will be implementing (typing these out is probably more for me than you!):

I will be easy on myself, not try and do ‘everything’ and accept my limitations. And if that is just watching a Channel 5 Christmas movie holding a baby, that’s fine.

I will be on social media when it feels right for me and try not to be there because I feel I have to.

I will not look at work emails, set an out of office, stick to it and delete them when I decide to come back to work (I remember Lily Pebbles doing this and was so impressed as I kept dipping in an out last time).

I will work on my boundaries on what I want to share vs what I feel I ‘should’ be sharing online.

Saying all that, 2020 has been good to us – everyone’s support on our kitchen renovations, our pregnancy post baby loss and matchbox launch has been really overwhelming and it has really cemented for me that I have the most amazing, loyal readers. So thank you, and see you soon.