Woman who saved £10,000 in lockdown shares how you can do the same

Unlike so many of us, Amy De-Keyzer is actually pretty pleased that we’re going back into a national lockdown.

Why? Because she reckons she can save even more money, after stashing away £10,000 last year in the course of two lockdowns.

Amy, 32, from Horsham, West Sussex, set herself the challenge of saving more money when the first lockdown hit in March 2020.

She cut back her spending and was able to save £5,000 in the first lockdown alone.

When lockdown two came into play, Amy managed to put away a further £5,000, meaning she saved £10,000 just last year.

Amy cut back on her weekly spending habits by freezing her cinema membership card, switching energy providers to find a better deal, using supermarket coupons, and reducing the amount of money she’d spend on fuel as she started working from home.

The DIY lover also began upcycling old furniture around the house and selling it on Facebook marketplace which brought in extra cash.

Amy and her husband are saving up to complete a big renovation project on a new house they have bought.

With the country plunged into another lockdown, they think they will be able to save even more.

Amy said: ‘Another lockdown is a blow but I’m trying to see the positive side and look at it as another opportunity to save!

‘I’m hoping to save around £1,000 in the next six weeks.

‘Lockdown has meant spending less on stuff that you enjoy; it’s just a product of the situation we find ourselves in.

‘So, I have saved a lot of money in fuel for my car, going out for dinner, my cinema membership card and just all the stuff that we haven’t been able to do.’

In terms of tricks and tips, Amy didn’t do anything too out-there.

She simply looked at her outgoings, worked out where she could cut back, and made saving a priority.

‘I’ve been moving money into my savings account every month because it seemed a sensible thing to do,’ Amy explained.

‘I’ve got into selling things that we don’t use anymore; Facebook marketplace is so good. There’s stuff you wouldn’t believe people would want.

‘We did a garden project over the summer and because we had a lot of time on our hands, we repurposed things and did a lot of the stuff ourselves rather than paying someone else to do it.

‘At the beginning of the month when I get paid, I will always move a set amount into my savings and then anything extra I have left at the end of the month, I tend to move over as well.

‘I see my savings account as completely separate from my current account and hate taking money out of there; it’s good to have a target in mind.’

Amy also encourages people to shop around different energy providers to see how much you could save.

She added: ‘Normally, we can’t be bothered to shop around energy providers because it seems like quite a boring task but we managed to make a huge saving by doing so.

‘Look at your bills and see if you could save – we checked our car insurance, energy providers, WIFI and it doesn’t take long at all but most people put it off.’

She encourages other people to use lockdown as an opportunity to bank away some cash.

She said: ‘When you’re in the office, you’ll quickly pop to the shop for snacks or go and get a coffee.

‘You’ll go for drinks after work or go out with colleagues for lunch and it’s cutting back on things like that that have really helped.

‘I’ve always been quite good at saving but this whole situation has really helped me save more.’

For more money-saving advice as well as chat about cash and alerts on deals and discounts, join Metro.co.uk’s Facebook group, Money Pot.

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