EVERY little penny counts, according to one savvy mum-of-twins who has managed to slash her spending to save £1k per month.
Kristen Ashcroft, 33, has managed to get herself on track with her savings, so much so she is overpaying her mortgage and is set to pay it off in just ten years rather than her agreed 30.
Kristen, who lives in Essex with her husband Technical Services Manager Darren, 40, and their twin sons, four, decided to make paying off their mortgage in the next five years a personal goal.
The couple became inspired after they watched Sarah Beeny's series, 'How to Live Mortgage Free'.
Kristen's savvy budgeting methods mean that they can make an over-payment of £1,000 on their mortgage each month.
And she’s managed to achieve this by slashing any fixed expenses such as childcare and car payments, and reducing how they spend money.
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So far the couple have paid off £41,000 and have done so in just two years, 9 months and on one salary, leaving £184,000 remaining.
They took to Instagram to share their budgeting journey on their page 'Project Frugal,' which has garnered them 5.5K Instagram followers.
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She said: “When we stumbled upon the TV series, it was a light bulb moment.
"We realised that if we worked diligently to pay off our mortgage fast, got smarter with money, and learned to live with less in general, we wouldn't need to earn so much to live comfortably.
"It was our ticket out of the rat race.
"Since then, we set out on a mission to live frugally so that we can overpay your mortgage dramatically and clear it quickly.
"For a long time, we never generated any additional income, we purely started budgeting better, cut back on spending and focused on living as frugally as we could.
"The keyword here is 'frugally,' not necessarily cheaply, meaning that we decided what was truly of value to us and spent money mindfully on those things, cutting back aggressively on everything else.
"I think it's important to note that we are still getting less money than we used to when we both worked full-time London-based jobs.
"And yet, we are in a far better financial position.
"The biggest difference is our spending habits 'we live well below our means."
By making changes to her everyday life, Kristen now saves an additional £13K per year. The breakdown per year is as follows:
Cutting out TV Licence and Sky Package – £517.50
Cancelling Spotify Premium x 2 – £239.76
Meal planning & swapping supermarkets – £2,880 – £3600 per year.
Not buying lunches out – £3,680 per year
Not buying coffees out – £3,206 per year
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Switching to SIM-only phone deals – £888 per year.
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