Welcome to the Money Mechanics podcast episode three. In this episode, we're going to be talking about how you can actually build your emergency fund if you're watching over on YouTube. Hello. Hello to you. If you're listening on audio only, hello to you. My name is Sarah Poynton, and I am an investor, business owner and money educator, and I believe I was put on this earth to simplify and demystify the conversations around money. So in the last episode, we talked about creating your emergency fund as the first step of the money momentum method. But I know a load of you, you commented, you messaged me, you talk to me and you said, I know I need to do it, but how the fuck do I do it? Because I've been trying for ages, and I just can't make it make sense. So in this episode, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about how I would approach this, how I did approach this back in 2015 when I started clearing my 60 grand of debt. So what we're talking about here is 10 pound a day every day for a year. I know for most people, their monthly living expenses between about 1003 1000 pound a month. For some people it's higher. It's up to that 5000 pound mark. And for some people, it is higher than that. But for most of the people listening to this, most of the clients that I work with, most of the people that have read my book and spoken to me about it, it's between that one to three to five grand a month is what we're trying to create in our emergency pot. Right? If you invest or if you save 10 pound a day every day for a year, you will end up with 3650 pounds in a pot. Now I've got some notes on this, because I wanted to make sure I gave you the exact numbers. But let me tell you how 10 pounds really does make a difference. Because for a lot of people, we think about a tenner, it doesn't really go that far, right? I know for me, when I go to Starbucks, actually, I never leave in having spent less than, like, seven, maybe nine quid for a coffee and something else, maybe an extra shot or something like that. You know, 10 pound in this day and age doesn't feel like it goes very far. But when you invest 10 pound a day, every day for a year, it actually does make quite a big impact. So what I'm going to talk to you a little bit about is got some assumptions attached to it. Now, I had a little Google this morning, and I looked at the current savings rates that exist on the market, right? So you've got first direct who currently have got an account, a savings account, that lets you put 300 pound a month into it, and they will give you 7% a year. That's a pretty good interest rate, right? There's Lloyds, who will let you put 450 pound a month into a bank account, into a savings account, and they'll pay 6.2% rate, which, again, is a pretty good rate. It will allow you to they those banks will allow you to put that money in for up to a year, and there's no charges and stuff either. But not all of you are going to have those interest rates yet. You can go and set up new accounts, but for some of you, you won't get those accounts. For some of you, you're getting 234, percent in your interest rates in your savings accounts at the moment. So for this episode of the podcast, I've made the assumption that you guys are going to earn 3% as your average return on your money, your average interest rate as you're starting to save this 10 pound a day every day for a year. Okay, so if you save 10 pound a day every day for a year, you will have 3650 pounds as your initial capital saved up, right? That's in your pot. At the end of year one, with your 3% you will have earned 55 pounds and 45 pence interest. So your balance is 3705 pounds and 45 pence. Right? Now you might be thinking, Sarah, 55 quid. What is the fucking point? Well, the point is that we allow it to compound over time. We're building our emergency pot. We're moving forward. We're trying to get to where we want to be. So we've got a pot of 3650 pound, which is great. That's a month for some of you, that'll be more than a month's worth of money, and it took you a year to get there, 10 pound a day. We're going to talk about how in this episode. So don't panic. I'm going to show you how you can do it. But if you put that as your discipline, and you're consistent, and you continue that year two, year three, at the end of year three, you've actually got 10,950 pounds of your own money saved, you'll have earned 508 pounds and 32 pence of interest on that money, giving you a balance of 11,458 pounds and 32 pence, you got over 11 grand, 10 pound a day every day for a year. 10 pound makes a difference. I hate it really does make a difference. Let's say again. You carried that on for five years. So you're putting 10 pound a day into a. Savings account every day. We're not investing it at this point. We're just putting it in a savings account in the bank, low risk. At the end of year five, you'll have put 18,250 pound in, and you'll have earned 1440 pounds interest and 58 pence, giving you a balance of 19,690 pound and 58 pence. Not bad pot, right? 10 pound a day every day for a year. If you left that for 10 years, you've got you've obviously put 36,500 pound of your own money in your savings pot. You earn 6067 pounds and 63 pence of interest, leaving your balance of 42,567 pounds and 63 pence. I'm pretty sure they're the right numbers. I'm reading my own writing, and it's not actually that neat, but basically, 10 pound a day, every day for a year, continued, allowed to compound over time, leaves you with a decent pot of money. 10 pound makes a difference, but loads of you'll be thinking, Yeah, all right, Sarah, get it. I get it, but how? How do I make 10 pounds a day and how do I have it spare to put into a savings pot? Let me tell you, there's loads of different ideas, right? And I talked about this a lot in the book, and I've talked about this a lot of different clients, and lots of clients of mine have tried different things and reported back what works what doesn't work. So I've got a list here of things I'm going to tell you a little bit about. Little bit about them, because if I can inspire you to go and do some of these things, and you come back to me a year from now saying, Yep, I did the 10 pound a day thing. I took the challenge, I ran with it, and actually, now I've got my pot of money, and I'm starting to invest, and I've got my emergency fund, and I've cleared my debt, I will be a happy girl, right? So the first thing, I guess, is the side hustle culture. Starting a business is one thing you could do. However, not everybody wants to run a company, and that's okay. You don't have to run a company. You don't need to start a business to be able to do this. If you're someone who has a job, who loves their job, who doesn't want to leave their job and start a business, then these are things that you could do alongside that. If you're someone who wants to run a business, great, go for it. I encourage you. It's it's great, but if you're not, don't worry, you can still do these things. So this is a really fun one. It's so simple, it's so boring, but it will make you enough money to put 10 pounds a day away. So a friend of mine does online surveys. So when she's sitting watching Netflix in the evening, she grabs her laptop. And you guys can do this. You can google online surveys, online marketing research, feedback, those sorts of phrases, and you'll find websites that you can go on and you can do online surveys. So my friend does two of these a day. They take about 20 minutes each, and she just does it in the evening while she's watching the telly, and they pay you between seven and 20 pound each. You're sitting watching the telly, doing nothing really. You open your laptop, you boot up your computer, you spend 20 minutes doing an online survey, just answering questions about yourself or about products or about a website or an idea or whatever it might be, and they pay you seven quid. And then you do have one, and they pay you 10 quid. Well, what if you just did two of those a day, every day for a year, you've made more than 10 pound a day. You've not had to start a business. You've not even had to, you know, you could sit do it in your pants if you want. It really doesn't matter. You can just do it that exists, that's out there. Have you chosen to go and look maybe not back in sort of early 2000s ish, well, up till probably around 2013 I used to do a lot of photography, so I've done wedding photography, but my actual greatest love, from a photography perspective, is light Painting. So it's photography at night and using light, torches, glow sticks, these sorts of things to create imagery, right? And I loved it. I don't make as much time for it now as I'd like to, because I started businesses and, you know, I got old, so I don't have as much time to do that stuff. But one of the things I learned back then is businesses, people doing websites, people with social media accounts, need imagery, right? So if you're somebody who's got an iPhone and it's got a good eye for an image, actually, why not sell stock photography? It's a thing that exists. And actually, we've got a phone in our hand most of the time. Most of us are taking millions of photographs a day. You know, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. Lots of photographs every day, but we've got good images, because our iPhones are built for it. Why not set up an account and upload some of those images? Because people like me, who run businesses are always looking for stock images that we can use. Well, you can get paid for that, for taking the photographs of the beach that you're on for taking the photographs of you commuting to work, your car, whatever it might be, actually people pay money for that stuff. Have you gone out and looked for that opportunity? Maybe not. So the third thing is, what skills have you got that other people will pay for? I've spoken to a lot of people about this. And actually, most of us have got some sort of skill that we don't acknowledge, don't recognize, and don't think is good enough that other people would pay for. And actually, you're completely wrong. There are websites like Upwork people per hour, these sorts of platforms. If you Google those, you'll find out what they are. There are people advertising their skills, for taking photographs, for writing copy, for building websites, for, you know, posting on social media. For companies, there's so many different things that a lot of us are doing every day that companies will pay 10 pounds a day every day for a year, more than that, probably for you to just sell the skills that you've already got. And I'm not talking here about setting up like agency businesses, and, you know, becoming, you know, a freelancer and running a business alongside your jobs. What I'm talking about is the odd 30 minute piece of work for a client that actually they'll pay you 10 pound for. We're looking to achieve 70 pound a week. That's it. I'm not asking you to go out and build 1000s of pounds. I'm not asking you to build a business with massive turnover and huge profitability and all the complexities that come with that. All I need you to do is get 70 pounds a week together by thinking about what it is you do already, or you know, or what skills you've got, and letting other people pay you for those skills, right? You could do something like pet sitting, right? I know that in my village there's a girl who does pet sitting and pet walking services. And because I'm in a village we're away from, like the main city center, our options are quite limited. So there's a girl in our visit village. If I was away for a full day working, or I was going to an event to speak, or something like that. I've got a dog and I've got two cats. Actually, putting them into a kennels doesn't really work for me. It's not something i i want to do actually having someone local pop in for half an hour to hang out with the puppy and play a bit, feed them, give them a bit of a walk. Well, she doesn't work. At the moment, she's working from home. She's doing pet sitting, and she's earning enough money to be able to do this task. She's actually earning way more than 10 pounds a day. Actually, if you're somebody who's not working at the minute, or you're somebody who does shift patterns, or you're somebody who's working part time, maybe then could you do pet sitting? Could you do dog walking? Could you feed people's cats? There are loads of people that need that service. And actually, it doesn't exist everywhere, and it's quite expensive. A lot of the time. You're not trying to create a big business. You're trying to create 70 pounds a week. So could you undercut? Could you provide a really good service for low low rates? Don't worry about that hourly rate thing. I hear lots of people say, Well, I'm not working for less than minimum wage. I'm not working for less than 20 pounds an hour. I'm not doing that. But those same people complaining that they've not got enough money, they haven't got an emergency fund, they can't invest and they can't clear their debt. I'm not getting out of bed for x pounds. Well, I can assure you, I've got our bed for less than zero. You know, I've volunteered in jobs to earn my stripes, to make myself a like, irreplaceable member of a team. I've worked for hours and hours and hours for very minimal money to prove that I'm a person that they should have in their business, or I'm a person that they should work with. Don't be too proud to volunteer to prove your worth. Don't be too proud to work for five pounds an hour, 10 pounds an hour, when the task here is to get 70 pounds a week on top of what you're already doing, to put into a pot, to get yourself in a financial place that's completely different to where you are today. The next thing on my list is kind of linked to the skills, but again, an example, like a real life example. I live in a village, and there's a lot of older people. There's a lot of lawns, right? It's a it's a village, there's a lot of grass. And there's a guy, there's a young lad that, I think he's probably about 1617, and he will wash cars, and he'll cut grass for the older people in the village, and he charges a fixed rate for a lawn. I think it's 12 quid. And he does, like, a couple of lawns after school, and he does the lawns at the weekend. And he's not trying to build a giant business. He's just trying to earn a little bit of, like, pocket money. Really, he's a young lad. There's nothing stopping you from doing that. There's nothing stopping you knocking on some doors and saying, Actually, your grass is a bit long. Can I? Can I cut that for you? It'll be a tenner. And again, a lot of people say, Well, I'm not cutting a lawn for 10 pound. I'm not working for no money. Okay? But the task here is to put 10 pound a day away every day for a year to build your emergency fund. The task here is not to earn a living. It's just a bit extra. What could you do with the time that you've got? Right? You have to get out of that headspace of, I'm worth 20 pounds an hour, or I'm worth this or that. What could you be doing differently? Right, renting out your parking space? So this, I love this, by the way. So I use an app called just park when I go into London, when I go into city centers, when I'm driving places, because actually where I live. A million miles from any train station. Sometimes it's easier for me to just drive. Well, when I get into the areas that I'm approaching, I will book a parking space. I mean, I always know I've got to go. I know I've always going to get a parking space. I haven't got a faff around. I can just park. If I had a parking space and I was out at work every day, I can log on to just park. I can log my parking spot on the app, and people can book it pay me to park their car on my driveway while I'm out of work. Anyway. Have you got a driveway? Could you put it up on just park? Have you thought about what you could be doing differently, or you just sat there not renting out your parking space? And you could be earning 10 pounds a day every day for a year or more. Maybe car boots is another one I've done. I love a car boot. We've all got junk cluttering up our houses. You will have as well. I know I have everyone in my team absolutely has. There'll be stuff, and actually it'll be stuff that you probably could sell. Now, if you went and did a car boot each weekend of just the stuff, or even just once a month to get rid of clutter, could you make that 70 pound a week? Quite possibly, my friend and I did a car boot just a couple of weeks ago, and she made 120 pounds. Well, that's great, straight into emergency fund. Or it could go straight to clearing your dairy. Could go straight into an investment pot, but it's spare money of stuff that probably would have just gone into a junk box or in the bin eventually. I know for me, I've got a big I've got a draw of loads of mugs I've had. For some reason I seem to collect mugs. A lot of them have made their way into the office now, actually, but there's always loads and loads of mugs. Well, if you if you've got a drawer of mugs or a drawer of things that are just Carter in up the place, books, DVDs, all of this sort of stuff. Do a car boot, go and earn that 70 pound that week, put it into your emergency fund. You've then got things like selling stuff on Vinted. Yeah, I, I actually bought a dress on Vinted this very morning, um, for two pound 10 p, amazing. Well, that other person has made two pound 10 p for stuff that they probably were going to throw away anyway. What are you doing differently? What are you thinking about? What could you be doing to make that 70 pound a week, that 10 pound a day, so you can put it into that savings pot and build your emergency fund and no, it means that you've got to make a bit of effort. But what could you be doing? You've also got the option to and this is not a comfortable one, but it's something that I did. I had a spare room in my house, and it was a room that we used as an office, but it was spare space. And actually, we sat down, my husband and I back in 2016 it was, and we decided to get a lodger. How many of you have got spare space in your house that okay? I didn't want to get a lodger. I didn't enjoy sharing my space with another human being. I definitely didn't. It was, you know, it wasn't, wasn't horrendous, but no one wants to share their home with stranger, right? He I didn't, but that stranger always also paid 500 pound a month to live in our house, which is way more than 70 pound a week. Do you have a spare room? Maybe, maybe you could rent it out for a short period of time? You know, it's a discomfort. It's an uncomfortable period for 369, 12 months. You said, You know what? I'm just going to do it. I'm going to suck it up and I'm going to do it. And you've got your pot, your investments started, your debts gone. You've got your emergency fund. What could you be doing differently? So this episode is all about helping you to just think, what could I be doing? And maybe you've got ideas that I've not spoken about, and please share them in the comments, because we'd love to hear them. And like spread the word and inspire people to go and just do something slightly differently. You don't have to have 1000s and 1000s of pounds to make a difference. 10 pound a day every day for a year, you will start to feel like you are in a different financial place. And listen a lot of these things that I've talked to you about will actually earn you more than 10 pounds a day. Then you've got the choice, do I start to clear my debt with it? Do we have a bigger pot? Do we spend it? Do we enjoy it as long as you're meeting that minimum threshold? So emergency fund is the first step. How we do it. Now we've talked about it. I'd love to hear from you, if you're starting to do this, moving it forwards, getting some results, tell me how you're getting on because I'd love to understand how it's working for you. I've been Sarah Poynton Ryan, this is the Money Mechanics podcast. Thanks very much for listening. If you're on YouTube, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Give us a little like so we can spread the word. And if you're on audio and you're listening in, then make sure you follow this podcast and you add us to your playlist. So again, we can spread the word. My name is Sarah Poynton, Ryan, business owner and money mechanic. You.