A frugal family say they have saved thousands of pounds over the years \u2013 thanks to YouTube tutorial videos.<\/p>\n
Natalie Smith, 35, from Dymchurch, says she and her husband Jason, also 35, began their penny-pinching ways when buying their first home together 12 years ago.<\/p>\n
Natalie Smith with husband Jason and kids Finn and Lola<\/p>\n
They began tackling tasks such as cutting hair, fixing their own dishwasher and re-decorating their kitchen – all through online DIY tutorials.<\/p>\n
More than a decade on, they think they may have saved as much as \u00a336,000 from their savvy savings, with kids 14-year-old Finn and 12-year-old Lola getting in on the action too.<\/p>\n
Natalie said: “It definitely saves us a few thousand every year.<\/p>\n
“We only ever pay for work we can’t do ourselves.<\/p>\n
“When we first bought the house we were completely skint so we had to fill it with second-hand bits and DIY everything.<\/p>\n
The Smith family’s DIY kitchen
Natalie Smith’s DIY pink painted cupboard, which she upcycled from Facebook Marketplace<\/p>\n
“It was the case of making it nice but spending as little as possible.”<\/p>\n
Whenever a new job needs doing, full-time blogger Natalie and Jason, a web developer, hop on Google and watch tutorials, refusing to pay a professional to do any job they can learn to do themselves.<\/p>\n
When it came to redecorating the kitchen, Natalie and Jason took on the challenge of DIY-ing it as much as possible.<\/p>\n
Rather than paying a kitchen fitter thousands to re-paint their kitchen cupboards, she used online how-to guides and YouTube tutorials to teach herself how to clean, sand, prime and paint them.<\/p>\n
Jason learned to fix their oven and dishwasher when the appliances broke down – when the family were faced with costly repair jobs.<\/p>\n
She said: “Before I painted the kitchen cupboards, I Googled about the prep – sugar soap clean, filling, sanding, and finding the right primer for the type of wood.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Even the patio in the garden was put together thanks to online videos<\/p>\n
“I looked at tutorial blogs and videos to work out which paints would be the most durable and what rollers and equipment I would need too.<\/p>\n
“Afterwards, it all looked brand new again.”<\/p>\n
Alongside that, the savvy-minded mum loves to snap up a second-hand bargain from Facebook Marketplace, which she can then upcycle herself, if needed, using her newly-developed DIY skills.<\/p>\n
She said: “The sideboard in our kitchen was free and I repainted it.<\/p>\n
“Our dining table is solid oak and was immaculate \u00a3150 from Facebook Marketplace.<\/p>\n
“When our things look tired I sand and revarnish or repaint them.” Natalie said Jason tackled some of the most daunting tasks – such as replacing the heating element in the oven by watching a step-by-step YouTube tutorial.<\/p>\n
Natalie Smith, from Dymchurch, takes pride in her frugal ways
The Smith family, from Dymchurch, say they have saved thousands over the years by doing their own jobs<\/p>\n
Another included fixing the dishwasher by following another tutorial – and ordering the correct new parts based on advice from the videos rather than paying a specialist to come to the home.<\/strong><\/p>\n Natalie says they free up money to go into a travel fund so they can take trips away as a family.<\/strong><\/p>\n She added: “I just think it’s all about making small changes. Obviously, money is extremely tight for a lot of people. We’ve been there so we know.<\/strong><\/p>\n “But I do think just trying to save where you can – it can make life more affordable.<\/strong><\/p>\n “We definitely save thousands a year – doing monthly haircuts and cleaning our own windows saves \u00a3720 a year alone.”<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A frugal family say they have saved thousands of pounds over the years \u2013 thanks to YouTube tutorial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3093],"tags":[51,474,609,495,2499,2419,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-210547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-human-interest","11":"tag-kent","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-romney-marsh","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114738734665199118","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}