10 Things We Stopped Buying To Make Money For Financial Freedom

and we think about designer clothes exactly around the money I put them in the market like Wolfram supermarket [Laughter] hey hey guys in today's video we're going to be sharing with you 10 top things that we decided to stop buying in order to make more money now these changes have had a huge impact on our finances and on our well-being because we were able to maximize our savings and direct those savings towards Investments that helped us towards becoming financially independent at the age of 34. and today we want to share those top 10 things with you yeah in addition to that I wanted to say that the mindset for today's video is pretty simple Adele we're going to be talking about big and small ideas the key thing to remember is that these Savings in isolation might look quite small but the right mind says think of them cumulatively in a compounding effects that they have not just today but in the future if you're really enjoying today's video I would really appreciate it if you hit that subscribe button share some love for the work that we're putting into our Channel really appreciate every single one of you who has actually subscribed to our Channel all right this is going to be super casual so we're just gonna just have a bit of a laugh after talk about them but the very first one very first thing we stopped buying slightly odd one but it's doing house upgrades this is one that I think a lot of people kind of sleep into because you could be someone who's maybe living in a flat and you're like you know what I want my own house and that's fine it could be like I live in a too bad and I want a three bed in fact I can think of a couple who have got a three bed and have one child but then they're moving into a five bed it's quite natural to want to move up because other people are moving up but that moving up comes at a real cost not just in you borrowing more money but also moving costs like some Gucci stamp Duty properly but also the knock-on effect that that has you know that the opportunity cost of that money in the future what we've done personally is actually bought a house and stuck with it we've lived in this house now for 12 years it's it's yeah it's been that long and it's gonna be like there for a while random saved us not only a lot of money but we've not felt the need to want to upgrade instead we've turned our house into a home yeah what's our next one so the next one is we stopped paying for premium TV subscriptions I thinking back to when we first got married we had the expensive Sky you know package but we're not hardcore sports fans you know I'm a happy family because come on blood I want this league blood I would do anything for this flea blood yeah and at the time we didn't really have time to watch much movies so we just cut it all down the time that we saved which we would have been sitting down on a sofa watching TV yeah a couch potato we instead directed all of that extra time to work on our side hustle which was great for us because we both had corporate jobs and working long hours so yeah that definitely helped us but now fast forward to today we have introduced a few subscriptions but it's smaller way cheaper and also we get to decide what we want to watch when we want to watch it at a budget that we're happy with without like breaking a bank correction one subscription yeah I think that's important singular and plural quite a big difference and obviously there's this obviously YouTube and things like that exactly you've got YouTube You've Got podcasts if I can say the word free resources yeah that you can get without actually having to spend so much money on a monthly subscription the third one is pay monthly for expensive cars now I know this is a touch of subjects and I'm gonna be real when it comes to achieving Financial Freedom I believe very strongly that Financial Freedom is never given to you you have to go and take it and if you want to become financially free you have to do what most people are not doing and most people are paying for cars monthly look at data around debt in the personal debt in the UK there's a ballooning amount of debt when it comes to car financing I personally hate the idea of paying for car financing I give you a really good way of thinking about car financing or money you spend on stuff like this more generally every pound that you put towards your car finance every single month could have been worth two pounds in 10 years assuming a seven percent average return yeah so if you're spending 400 pounds a month on a car right now which a lot of people are standardly that could have been worth 800 pounds a month in the future yeah just just process that for a minute I know people for some people they're joyful things that they actually have a nice car you know but for me it was all about status and I made this mistake I've I've done that and I absolutely hate it became a bank bank statement and seeing that amount leave the bank and I knew it was status driven I just wanted to have a nice scar I wanted to get the girls actually do you know what this is before we met you know so actually we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna come to a really controversial point at the end you know points is a bonus Point eleven which you don't want to miss I might want to talk about that but yeah pay monthly for a car is one thing that we've stopped and earning our car outright has been the best thing really and we yeah we're happy with that so the next one is fall in for regular phone updates there are some people today right now who are going to get a phone call saying hello hi there is this so-and-so hi you're due for a phone upgrade and those people don't actually know that the phone upgrade is actually optional it's not a requirement so some people are signing up to phone upgrades even though their phone is in a great condition yeah so with us we've said look as long as our phone is still in a great working condition we're going to keep it until it's on its last leg Yeah we're not falling into the Trap of getting the next upgrade every single day shiny thing and they usually try to entice you with this like new feature but there isn't a significant difference between this new model and the previous model what's a guide do you think for people in terms of how long your big decent to kind of own a phone a phone for before upgrading I think it really depends I mean I personally say at least three years like if you can own your phone for at least three years typically contracts last for two years then you would obviously own it for longer than that you can even have it for longer way longer on your phone for seven years if you if you have to but they don't make these things to last that long anymore we for example need our phones for the work we do so we're always creating shooting videos that kind of stuff on the go even with this phone I've got I've had it for two years and I'm planning to hold it for even longer yeah so you know the benefits of that is that your monthly payments will not increase but instead it will reduce because you would have paid off for your phone and then all you're paying for is for like the data and so on the next one is designer clothes now this is actually a big topic because as making this video like think back to when we're back at like maybe 15 20 25 years even like where was most of our money going the one thing you said was designer clothes I mean think about designer clothes I was exactly the same I didn't have like anyway I put them in the market like [Laughter] digression but very important point and I was thinking about why we actually did that and it made me realize that a lot of people buy designer clothes because it's a status symbol and it makes them feel successful and it makes them feel successful in the eyes of others and I was thinking about what made me buy it mine wasn't just that I wanted to look successful it was also because it was a survival mechanism I wanted to fit in I think if you're currently someone who is buying designer clothes and there's no judgment whatsoever it's actually quite important to ask yourself why are you doing that and I think acknowledging what you're doing is actually a pretty important Point I've personally found that wearing stuff like this yeah which is you know you know it's a decent nice white T-shirt right you know it's gone through the washing machine it's not his thing I'm not panicking as much if this t-shirt doesn't make you through the washing machine but I'm not gonna like lose sleep yeah yeah because I've got other white t-shirts so I personally found that having plain clothing without all the designer badges all over it and stuff has certainly given me a lot of peace and it's made me much more self-aware and I don't feel like I'm trying to like impress anybody like if I left the house without a watch like who cares like even if I wore my watch I probably got it on to count my steps rather than before I wanted to kind of like have you seen my watch yeah have you seen what I'm wearing you know you know it was all of that I wanted people to see how supposedly successful I would but also my I think you don't feel the pressure of having to buy the latest trending that's the other thing isn't it you know because when you find something else designer so expensive only for you to realize no this is like last season so number six is daily take out lunches now those daily takeout lunches were draining my funds when I started my graduate job and I think that lasted for like a few months and then I said enough of this I'm going to start meal prepping yeah so from when I was you know at home with my parents whatever I had the night before I would take that into work the next day and then when we got married I encourage you to do the same and you know we made so much of a saving like if you think about how much you spend on a daily basis if you buy food when you go to work it could cost between Pizza as little as three pounds to 15 pounds or more and if you just average that to like five pounds a day that's 25 pounds a week or 100 pounds a month a hundred pounds that could be going towards your Investments your stocks and shares Isa I mean we made a big savings now don't get me wrong it doesn't mean that you should be anti-social and not go to any like work lunches like with your colleagues obviously or drinks still do that but it's all about balance and budgets for it have a budget for those social events yeah gonna add about his Pat lunches man there are times when I I just got bored of the meal deal like I just wanted you know like a nice it was a really nice sandwich just so I could be like wow actually I feel like I've treated myself but get exactly what you made it it all comes back to the same thing it all adds up and you can't have everything at the same time really but there needs to be some trade-off yeah to get what we want out of life but the benefits of that also is that you actually know what you're eating you can control how healthy kind of the food is and so yeah it's better for your health and for your pockets next one is buying things on credit now I think buying things on credit is actually pretty interesting because I think it's a default for a lot of people it's like I want to buy something I don't think about it I don't even think have I got the money I just think I can buy it right now payment plans I can like buy now pay later I almost think of it as buying down think later you know and I must think obviously the most obvious thing is reveals is is that one is likely not living within their means yeah and this comes back to Super foundational stuff it's actually pretty important because the more you can train yourself into someone who who does not rely on credit when they buy stuff the more likely you are to be that person who not only lives within their means but actually build up a bit of a buffer that can then go into other areas like maybe investing in stocks or maybe starting your own small business or whatever but it actually Begins by actually putting some controls in place and I think a lot of people have zero controls in place when it comes to credit and the easy access to Credit in fact there's no there's no friction at all easy access to credit has actually made made debt to become normalized yeah so much so that you want something right now you can get it right now and you can pay later for it without actually thinking and that is the wrong culture to cultivate big trap okay so now number eight is dining out frequently now whilst we still treat ourselves every now and again we've definitely cut down on maybe going to the really expensive Michelin it's not every day Michelin five stars sometimes you just want to go to a really nice restaurant that's not going to cost an arm and a leg where we actually feel like we're full up after leaving the restaurant but we've also enjoyed our food and we can also get good quality food for a fraction of the price yeah but also it's helped that I do a lot of meal prepping now so and buy meal prep in I do a lot of cooking in bulk and so days where we might want to eat out or get a takeaway we might just instead eat in for the food that we already have at home it's healthy we know how what's cooked we know what ingredients when it's gone into it and I'm actually happy I feel joyful eating our own food as opposed to always eating out yeah all right next one is overpriced gym memberships now I know this is something that is already on a lot of people's Radars but I don't think it's something that a lot of us actually think almost intentionally about what could the Alternatives be and to what extent should I make that alternative my reality so for example we've always wanted to have a space at home where we could actually do something to our own workouts we started at home started in our living room so we would move this so far we tend a living room into a workout space using just a mat and watching YouTube videos and would work out and that doesn't cost anything and more recently we spent a bit of money to use a bit of space we have at home and create a bit of a home gym but with again equipment that doesn't really need a great deal of servicing so you know some good quality dumbbells and you know got a mat you've got like a bench and it's just the resistance stuff yeah stuff like that that doesn't really need a lot of Maintenance work the point here is is ask ask yourself what is it I truly want for my finances and to what extent are the things I'm spending money on helping me to get there or not so if you feel that your gym membership and that's a recurring paper that's actually not getting you to where you want to get in your finances and there's an alternative way to achieve the fitness outcomes you have then you may want to seriously consider not paying for it I've never looked back since not paying for a gym but of course you know if you if the gym is your thing it's the thing that brings you Joy then you know please go ahead and keep using your trip well said number 10 is brand loyalty blindness now loyalty to Brands can cost you sometimes generic brands and store bought brands are just the same if not better than the Branded Alternatives just holding up this kind of baked beans it tastes exactly the same as the more popular branded baked beans that you can get from all the major supermarkets but this costs a fraction of the price when you do buy some store branded products just be careful that you're actually getting the same value in terms of the nutritional benefits and there's a great app that you can use called your car is like my favorite app I scan everything now and then it tells you whether the item that you're buying is high in sugar content or all of the artificial flavors and stuff so you know whether the things that you're buying even though it's cheaper whether it's still good for you nutritionally we don't own any shares in that app and we've not been paid to mention them but yeah we're just talking about it because we use that anyway the bonus point you want to make this might be a bit controversial but I want to see you guys in the comments yeah is we stopped I said we we stopped spending too much money on useless dates yes how'd you live it's a useless day useless that's right let's look at this I'll talk about this so I spoke at this event and I finished I was walking to the station this young guy walks through it with me he's like hey love what you're doing let's chat and walking talking it turned out speaking to him that most of his money like in hundreds in that month alone had gone to dates the We're not gonna go anywhere like they would just call them acquaintances or people you meet on dating apps essentially he's trying to you know do the dating thing the early stages get into you know but it's very very expensive so I want to know from you guys right I'm not dating I'm not obviously I'm married it's my beautiful beautiful wife I'm you know I've not been in that dating world for more than a decade so I don't know let us know in the comments how much are you spending per week or per month on your dating right about now because I think about it some of the most money I I wasted think about like back two years years years ago well on dates they just didn't go anywhere I think to myself like what was the whole point and a lot of it you cannot know it's not gonna go anywhere anyway but you just kind of feel like you know what I kind of feel like I need to date so if somebody's if a guy or a woman is taking someone out on their first date what would you say is like a reasonable amount of money to spend on do you know what I do I don't I don't even know what's reasonable it depends on what you're doing keep it simple take them to Nando's I don't know keep it simple you know keep it simple is what I'd say but I think the bigger point is only going to a date if it's someone you are serious about now again obviously people going through dates for different reasons some people just want you know a bit of action you know that's what some people want but I just think that's an area that I'm glad I'm not wasting money on obviously in the way that I did in the past so I would probably say in order to keep costs low maybe keep it conversations on the phone just get to know each other a bit more and then you can kind of like determine if this is somebody you actually want to invest in obviously when you meet each other face to face it might be a bit different friends keep the phone calls for as long as possible maybe even Zoom calls make excuses to why you can't meet up well I'm not saying lie but keep it on the phone for as long as possible what do you guys think that's your job in the comments this points about dating is actually one I like I like I like the controversial bit it's what makes it interesting right can you relate to the point on dating do you feel like your monies that you put into your date have been a good should I say investment has it been worth your while as I say useless dates anyway government if you know that this person could be potential lifetime partner then do investing do it yes do your guys thank you so much for watching today's video If you really enjoyed it appreciate you hitting the Subscribe button show some love for the work we put into our Channel and please do you share this video with somebody if you think they'll find it useful like share and subscribe all the good stuff and as always guys in all things be thankful and seek Joy take care bye

Channel: The Humble Penny

Views: 14,315

Keywords: things i stopped buying, things we stopped buying, financial freedom, things i stopped buying to make more money, 10 things we stopped buying, 10 things i stopped buying, financial minimalism, minimalist living, simple living, how to save money, the humble penny, humble penny, financial independence, how to retire early, retire early, how to make money, things I stopped buying uk, 9 things i stopped buying to make more money, things i dont buy anymore, money, save money

Id: MkA0YpjVeSU

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2023