How We As A Family Are Dealing With Cost Of Living

It has definitely been a very tough few years for all of us globally. We were initially hit with a pandemic that put restrictions on our lives. The likes of which none of us have ever experienced.

One of the biggest impacts the covid pandemic had on our lives was financially. Many businesses closed due to restrictions and this meant many of us were unable to earn. This had a particular impact upon myself because I’m self-employed so I was not allowed to work which was difficult. Thankfully we had some savings and along with cutting back we were able to survive until I was able to work again.

We finally got over the covid pandemic and very quickly we entered a cost of living nightmare mostly caused by the Ukraine war. This was of course caused by Russia being one of the biggest suppliers of energy and consequently raised the price of energy supplies. Inflation is constantly rising and interest rates are starting to rise too. This all means that what we earn is no longer going as far as it used to because everything from food to energy is costing more.

As a family we decided we needed to make changes so that we can afford to live and our children didn’t go without. Here are a few changes we made. If you’re looking for help to manage your money and savings this Savings Calculator is excellent, especially if you are looking to make big purchases such as a car. It will work out monthly payments and the interest on any loan you take out.

1. Food Shopping

To save money initially we decided to have a close look at our weekly groceries bill. We quickly discovered that changing our supermarket that we had shopped at for years would save us up to a third of our weekly shopping bill

2. Energy costs

As I have already mentioned the cost of energy has skyrocketed recently and this impacted us as a family, as it has many millions of other people. With rising energy costs you need to find ways to reduce these costs. We have now started only doing 2 weekly laundry washes and not using the tumble dryer. If we are not using an electric device, it is not left on stand-by. We also make sure lights are turned off in rooms that aren’t being used. The most important one was to reduce the amount of time the heating is on during the day. Making these small changes have reduce our energy costs quite dramatically.

3. Cooking & Take-aways

There is no doubt that a very large cost in our home was take-aways. We were definitely spending too much on fast-food. So a decision was made as a family to cut out all take-aways and have a weekly meal plan and cook all our meals from scratch. The saving by again making small changes is incredible.

Now we are keeping a closer eye on our spending it means we have some extra money in our pockets, but instead of spending this extra money we have decided to save the money for things such as Christmas or birthdays or help us out during this cost of living crisis.

How are you coping with the cost of living crisis? What ways are you cutting back on? I would love to hear in the comments below.