Now let me admit something, I don’t yet make enough from making Jewellery and running this website to fund myself. If i’m totally honest at the moment it probably wouldn’t pay for the power used by this computer. But the goal for me is to change that.

To this end I have created a plan which should allow me to get out of my current job as a maths tutor in a school and work from home doing what I enjoy.

Now its not that I don’t enjoy being a maths tutor. I love teaching maths, getting to know my students personality traits and then adapting the learning to their needs. Its just as I have gotten older I have begun to have a distaste for dealing with behavior in a mainstream school.

The dream is to teach privately where the money is better but less stable and make Jewellery and work on this site. Surprisingly students with parents who pay by the hour who are not surrounded by their peers learn better! Who would have thought.

Anyway I aim to save up enough to have six months worth of basic expenses, food, rent and bills, as well as a small amount for me to live on. To do this i have had to be a little bit brutal with my bank account. Every single monthly bill I have has been cancelled with the exception of my phone, which I have got down to £7 a month.

Now when I say that I am talking about ‘luxury bills’. Subscriptions to audible, netflix, hellofresh, online games etc. These just cause an instant strain on the wages from the first of the month. Cut these back and be brutal. I loved audible and looked forward to it but then i looked at my library and saw i have 100s of hours of audio books. Do i need to keep paying out every month? NO.

The next key to this is organising your finances with regard to your food, rent/mortgage and utilities. The absolute essentials. My partner Steph and I have a well developed system which means we rarely if ever argue about money and don’t have too many problems.

We are both working full time at the moment and have found a figure that we both pay in to a joint bank account which should cover all of those essentials and then if you have anything left over it is kept in our own bank accounts to spend as we would wish.

Theres no ‘why are you spending our money on a new toy for your jewellery workshop?’ or ‘stop spending so much on toys for the kids’ because its yours to do with as you please.

Another key point is to take things by the day and by the month. By that I mean I get paid monthly, I watch all the things go out of the account that are essential on the first of the month and then it turns in to a day by day exercise to make a conscious effort to not spend any money. Prepare lunch from home so you don’t go to the bakers at lunch the next day. Walk past the coffeeshop and say to yourself you can wait until you get home. It’s all these little things that should make all the difference to the bottom line at the end of the month.

Pay Things off in Full When you Can

Another piece of advice that I would like to share, which is related to the first section, is to pay things off upfront. Don’t pay off your car insurance every month, pay off the years worth all in one go. This makes sure that you know what is going to happen at the start of each month with your account. When you start having more direct debits come out you start to lose track of where you are at, especially if you have payments coming out at different times of the month or you get paid every week or 4 weeks instead of at the start of the month.

Same goes for car payments. Don’t go for the expensive new car with that ‘affordable monthly payment’. It takes such a massive chunk out of your paycheck that it becomes a huge liability to you. Instead go for the old banger that runs but that you can pay off in one go. Cars should not be about the image they should be about the ability to get you places. Both the second hand car and the new land rover should be able to do that.

Doing this also has the bonus of being slightly cheaper. Car insurers and even the government on car tax give you a small discount if you pay in full. And it should be obvious that if you are buying a car on credit then they are going to want interest on that credit as well as the profit that is already being made on the brand new rapidly depreciating car.

The ‘Just go For it’ Urge

There is a strong argument that has been made to me the suggests I should just dive in, quit my job and that will create the urgency needed to meet my goals. Surely if I’m slightly stressed that i cant pay the mortgage at the end of the month then I will work later and try and sell one more piece of jewellery or write one more article etc.

There is some logic to this argument. If I am safe for 6 months then why should I work today? I could put it off until tomorrow.

This could work for some people, if you work best under pressure then why not put yourself under pressure. However for me personally I think this would add stress to my life that I don’t need.

The grand vision is to completely change my lifestyle and get away from the 9-5 travelling in to the city to work. When someone asks me what the date is I want to be able to say ‘summertime’ and that be as accurate as I need to be. I would like to choose my own working hours and follow my own projects. In other words I want a bit of freedom from the rat race. And if I start now when I am not comfortable then it would feel like I am simply trading one rat race for the next.

Another reason why this wouldn’t work for me is that I desperately don’t want to borrow money to run this business and so if I save money right now I buy time to get it right and not have to be fully dependent on this venture financially from the offset.

Maybe this isn’t the way to get rich quick and build a multi national business that will make millions but I think work life balance is extremely important and so this way I believe will work for me.