{"id":13,"date":"2024-11-04T00:52:46","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T00:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/?p=13"},"modified":"2025-09-18T21:54:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T21:54:36","slug":"3264-leak-plugged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/04\/3264-leak-plugged\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a33312 leak plugged!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2mUZHfPU5A4\">Listen to the full article on my YouTube channel!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Finally, after a year and a half of struggles and uncertainty, we did it!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It all started after the pandemic, when government spending drove inflation up. Until then, with just one income, our family of four could more or less make ends meet. We could afford at least one holiday a year and, on top of that, a trip back to Poland to visit family (we live in the UK).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But things quickly started to change for the worse. Energy prices, council tax, groceries\u2014everything began to rise sharply. Month by month, we had less and less left over, to the point where we started dipping into our savings. And after buying a house, those savings weren\u2019t exactly extensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I felt cornered, exhausted after nine-hour workdays, with no real opportunity to earn extra money. I knew I needed to come up with something. As a father, I wanted to be an active part of family life, not just \u201cthe guy called Dad\u201d who occasionally showed up at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019d often heard that it\u2019s wise to \u201cshop around\u201d for things like insurance. When it came to car insurance, though, I was convinced we were already paying as little as possible, and I was afraid that making any changes might mess up our no-claims discount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I pushed myself to look at our expenses and realised that our budget was leaking. Badly. Money was pouring out like water from a broken pipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Looking back, I now know that my lack of action was mainly due to fear of the unknown\u2014a fear that I\u2019d ruin something that was at least sort of working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, the situation was becoming uncomfortable enough to demand action. So I started by taking stock of our expenses and making a list of areas we could optimise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here are a few things I managed to tighten up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Phone bills down by \u00a3312\/year<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Car insurance down by \u00a3292.47\/year<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Spotify down by \u00a360\/year<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Home insurance down by \u00a387.7\/year<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Closed unused debit cards, saving \u00a348\/year<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That adds up to over \u00a3800 in yearly savings\u2014or over \u00a366 a month. But there was one more item on the list, one that had been my Achilles\u2019 heel for years. We have a flat in Poland that has stood empty for over 13 years. I know\u2014scandalous. I\u2019d always been too afraid to let it out due to tax concerns. Besides, the costs were initially symbolic, around \u00a350 a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But year after year, those costs crept up until they finally hit a \u201cmagic\u201d \u00a3100 a month, and by the end, we were paying \u00a3110.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, in summary, we were leaking around \u00a3176 a month, plus the hypothetical rental income we could have been getting from that flat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don\u2019t even want to think about how much money slipped through our fingers because of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the longest time, I swept this issue under the carpet out of fear of dealing with tax offices in both Poland and the UK. But eventually, something inside me snapped. I told myself it was time to stop being immature. After reading a few books and scouring the internet, the fear started to fade. The biggest \u201cgame changer,\u201d though, was simply calling the tax office to learn how everything actually worked. My fear dissolved. Everything was suddenly clear and straightforward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My (our) luck turned when I got a message from my nephew saying his friend was looking for a rental. Perfect!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It took a bit of effort since the flat hadn\u2019t been fully cleaned up after a renovation that finished about a year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First, I arranged a specific date with the potential tenant. We scheduled it two weeks out so I could buy the cheapest plane tickets. It worked out\u2014the return flight cost me just \u00a354. I made enough overtime at work to take two days off since I didn\u2019t want to dip into my already scarce 20 days of holiday time and I was ready to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I flew to Poland on a Monday evening around 8:00 PM. By Tuesday morning, I was deep into cleaning and fixing minor issues in the flat. There was a lot to clear out, too. By the end of the day, I was totally knackered. I was absolutely shattered. That evening, the future tenant came by and said the place looked fantastic. We signed the tenancy agreement. I handed over the keys, and just like that, it was done! An extra \u00a3100 (after taxes) started flowing into our budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It took some effort, but we\u2019re now bringing in an additional \u00a3276 per month. That\u2019s a yearly increase of \u00a33312. For that kind of money, we can definitely plan a nice holiday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to the full article on my YouTube channel! Finally, after a year and a half of struggles and uncertainty, we did it! It all started after the pandemic, when government spending drove inflation up. Until then, with just one income, our family of four could more or less make ends meet. We could afford [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4,5,3],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-budgeting","tag-budgeting","tag-financialfreedom","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daystofi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}