A mum-of-two has shared her top tips for saving thousands of pounds, which she says helped her pay off her mortgage. Gemma Bird, known as the Money Mum, paid off a £225,000 mortgage by the age of 37, thanks to her savvy mindset and determination to save.
Before becoming a successful influencer, Gemma was at one point bringing home £1,000 a month – and saving £800 of it. Within four years, she and her then-partner had saved a £30,000 deposit to buy their first home. Three years later, she and her dad went halves on two buy-to-let properties.
She now lives with her husband and their two children in a palatial Georgian-style mansion in Essex. On her Instagram page, where she has an impressive 510,000 followers, the Essex-based influencer regularly shares tips and hacks on how to save money.
Three habits to save thousands
Speaking exclusively to The Mirror, she shared three habits that could help people save thousands over time. Starting with coffee, many commuters spend an average of £20 a week on the hot drink as they head to work. Ditching the daily habit could save approximately £1,040 a year.
Gemma says people should also look at their monthly direct debits and subscriptions to work out which ones they actually need. For example, she suggests ditching costly gym memberships in favour of online workouts instead.
She told us: "If you're there for your mental health and you need to be in it [then that's understandable]. But if you can't afford the gym, can you do home workouts? You know like with YouTube now, you've got so much access to doing online workouts, going for walks, step counts."
Check subscriptions monthly
She added: "Subscriptions, I always say to people go on your phone, check your subscriptions. The amount of people that message me, and don't just do this once a year, I think people do this as a yearly thing, you need to do it every single solitary month.
"I remember my friend doing it the other day and she saved £56 and she didn't know it was coming out, because things auto-renew and they pop up, so always check that monthly."
Gemma also champions buying second-hand clothes on sites such as Vinted, as well as like-new items on Amazon's Second Chance page, which includes gadgets such as laptops and headphones, as well as home and garden furniture.
Equating time to money
Reflecting on saving for her first mortgage, she said: "When I was trying to do that, I didn't buy loads of new clothes, like I just had a staple black blazer, a staple pair of jeans and a top and just sort of dressed it up with different sort of fashion jewellery, because I just don't feel you need to spend.
"Like I think a lot of people waste money on clothes and beauty products. And like using up what you've got is I just think absolutely massive, so for example, I used to buy like a good foundation and then just buy like a cheap blusher to go over the top of it. It's all these little bits that really, really like add up."
She added: "I always say like unless you value a £10 note, you're not going to get good at saving. So before you spend money, think about work out how much you earn an hour, what you actually take home after tax, national insurance, what you actually physically take home.
"If you only take home £10 and I said you go into the supermarket and spend an extra hour on your shopping, but you could save £30, £40, you'd have to work four hours to earn that money. So it's about equating time to money, and I've always really been like that, like I've taken my time shopping with all things like that."
