When it comes to saving money to pay for big dreams, big breweries, and big debts, our Wild Savers know how to knuckle down.
If you’ve got a big savings goal in mind, one of the best ways to get motivated is by taking inspiration from other people’s successes.
Meet the Wild Savers
We scoured the country to find three very different, but equally inspiring examples of people who worked hard and fully committed to achieving their savings goals.
These are real stories of ordinary people achieving extraordinary things.
Debt slayer
A family with a crippling $73,000 debt.
A mum and dad “sick and tired of being sick and tired”.
So, they decided to think differently about money.
They halved their grocery bill without sacrificing nutrition. They sold household stuff they didn’t use.
Now, debt free, their family is focussed on using their newfound savings habits to buy a new home – in cash!
We were sick and tired of being sick and tired. We'd found ourselves in $73,000 worth of debt. Things really needed to change for us. We wanted to get more bang for our buck so we could live the life that we want.
We started to think differently about our money, which made us behave differently with our money. And I think that's where the real secret lies. We did everything that we could to reduce our expenses and our outgoings every month. The other thing that we needed to do was bump up our income.
Groceries was actually one of our biggest budget saving areas. By implementing some really basic tips like planning, cheaper, healthier meals, we actually managed to bring our family budget back to $600 a week. We basically slashed it by half. If we weren't using it, we sold it. We actually made the decision to sell our second car, but that only paid off the last $6,000 of the $73,000 that was owing.
One of the things we realised early on was that when we tried to go cold turkey and just live by our budget, it didn't work. So what we decided to do was actually allocate some money to our budget that we could just go and blow. We call it splash cash.
My husband and I both get a small amount of splash cash each month, which we can just go and spend on whatever we want. But the great thing is it doesn't throw our budget off the rails because it's allocated for.
The moment we became debt free it was almost surreal, and it almost didn't feel like our lives. And then we set the goal to take our family on a little bit of a trip, which turned out to be a four month road trip around Australia. It was amazing. We got to take our kids to see this incredible land that we live in, and we were able to do that by saving.
We're not really doing anything tricky. We're not doing anything special. We are just doing the things that move the needle. Our next goal is to buy a house with cash.
Fabulously frugal
A young skateboarder putting her ambition ahead of her social life.
“Sacrifice for reward,” as she puts it. With the biggest ever international skateboarding competition her goal, it’s a choice she’s happy to make.
Working part-time as a high-rise window cleaner her hours are as variable as the weather she’s exposed to.
She uses savings buckets like the EasySaver account to save for the mundane (her rent and bills) and the mercurial (her competitions).
There's something in me that has always loved travelling, it's just one of those things that makes me really happy. I've been to America, Canada, Brazil, Chile, London, Paris, South Africa, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Every time I travel it's for a competition or something skateboard related. I'm an amateur skateboarder but I skate in pro contests. This year's going to be a big travel year, at least two months out of the year I'd be travelling. It's going to cost me about $15,000. But then of course you still have your rent and bills to pay year for the couple of weeks you're away, it definitely gets expensive. I pay for it through a few different avenues, I have some sponsors, I have some grant money from my scholarships, and then I work part-time as well.
I'm a high-rise window washer and I abseil all the buildings in the city and wash the windows, it's definitely hard work. My hours change drastically compared to weather and all that kind of stuff, so my paycheck can kind of differ quite a lot. We could be working and expecting to do a six hour, seven hour day, and then a wind picks up and you just have to call it. The way I set it up is I have three accounts. I do a budget each fortnight so I know what money needs to go into bills, my rent, and then anything that's left over just goes straight into my skateboarding savings account. The biggest thing is working out the things that you don't actually need. Not going out, I don't really party, I try to cook at home. Basically.It just comes down to sacrifice reward.
This whole year's goal is to get accepted to go to the Olympics for Tokyo 2020. It will be the first time it's ever been in the Olympics and it will probably be the biggest skateboarding competition that's ever been. To be able to go and represent my country and to be a part of that would be a dream come true.
Starve and stack
Two computer geeks-cum-craft beer brewers learning to “live lean” while growing their business.
Long hours and raising families on their partners’ wage alone are what’s required to keep the beer flowing.
It's the whole story of craft beer in general, really. You need to buy big gear with a lot of cash up front. You really just have to live as leanly as possible. It's really a tale of two nerds, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's amazing.
We used to be nerds on computer games
And like all game developers, we've developed a healthy appreciation of beer and working long hours.
We moved into being nerds in home brewing, and that led into a business from here on in.
What was the first thing we got?
I stole stuff. I stole a lot of stuff.
The first bit of gear we had was your home brew rig: three big pots hooked together with pumps and valves and stuff.
We ended up extracting some of the family savings and built up the brewery in the shed.
We're working full time. Every Sunday was brew day, and then out of hours around that to make all the rest happen.
Definitely burning the candle at both ends.
Yes.
I don't know how you do that though.
Flammable liquids. Once we launched, everything we had sold. And then the next batch that we were planning sold. It was when the casino asked us how many kegs we can do at one time and then said, "Okay, we'll take them;" we went, "Oh, this might work." It was all about, bring in as much profit as you physically can; sit on it until you've achieved that next milestone of saving to achieve that next level of production.
Did we ever tackle this from some sort of logic and intelligence?
We were very much following that starve and stack mentality. We were investing all our time into the business while each of our wives are working full time, and each of our families were living on that. So, now we're in our third brewery. It's comfy. It's nice to be in. And we've got far more production than we've ever had before. We've got room to grow again, which is just as well because we still can't meet demand. We can see that this model seems to work, strangely, coming from idiots like us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where to start
Persistence is one thing. Knowledge is another.
To discover ways to save you need to understand where you spend.
Take as long as you need. Check your statements. Keep a diary of your spending. The more detailed you can be the more you’ll find ways to save. Use our free online budget planner to help you.
Once you know how you can save, set smaller goals and remember to celebrate when you achieve them (not by blowing your savings, obviously).
The progress you make will motivate you to achieve bigger things.
Focus on what's important
There are dozens of different savings accounts out there.
Some have monthly fees while others don’t.
Some offer special introductory rates to draw you in, but drop substantially after a few months. Others offer higher rates but penalise you for making a withdrawal.
In today’s low interest environment, the reality is that if you’re starting your savings journey it won’t be a fraction of a percent which will get you to your goal. It will be you.
Concentrate on what you can control. Understand your finances and your spending habits. Open as many zero or low fee savings accounts as you need to put money aside for your mundane expenses and your mercurial goal.
Are you planning to save big?
If you have a big dream, you’re going to have to work hard for it.
At the end of the day, how successful you are will largely boil down to two things: a) how badly you want it, and b) whether you can do the hard stuff for long enough.
But as our Wild Savers have shown - when you really commit to your savings goal pretty much anything can be achieved.
Related Articles
-
Is it time you had a financial health check?
For many, 2020 was a hard realisation that we can go from financial stability to financial stress in a hurry... -
How to improve your financial wellbeing
The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the importance of financial wellbeing. So we are able to respond to unexpected events as they happen. What... -
Kids and money | How to develop better habits early on
Did you know that kids as young as three are able to grasp the core concepts of saving and spending?
