3 Ways To Save Yourself Thousands This Summer

Three ways to save yourself real money, and I know these work because the studio owners I’ve helped implement them have saved thousands doing exactly this.

1. Change Your Phone and Broadband Provider

This one won’t save you thousands. The other two will. But it will save you money this summer, and it costs nothing to do.

I’ll be honest, I’ve been sitting on this myself. My broadband and my phone contract have both been out of contract for a while, and I know I’m overpaying on both. But you know how it is. You go online, start the search, get bombarded with emails from every provider under the sun, then end up spending four hours on the phone trying to sort it all out. It’s a nightmare, so it sits on the to-do list, untouched, for months.

Realistically, I could be saving myself around £30 a month between the two. That’s £360 a year sitting there unclaimed. £360 is a weekend away.

So take a proper look at where you’re losing money on contracts you’ve long since stopped paying attention to. It won’t take long, and the saving is real.

2. Stop Paying For Wasted Space

This is the one that genuinely stings when you do the maths.

I used to rent a second office purely to store costumes, at roughly £150 a month. I thought, right, this is ridiculous, and moved everything into a storage unit instead at £45 a month. I told myself I’d sort through it properly within six months.

Three years later, it was still sitting there.

Let’s do that maths together. £45 a month, times 36 months, comes to £1,620. That’s not a saving, that’s a holiday I never took, sitting in a storage unit I barely visited.

So ask yourself honestly, are you paying for a storage unit or extra space you don’t actually need? If you’re paying £130 a month for storage, that’s £1,560 a year. I know we all need somewhere to keep costumes. But are you holding onto costumes you don’t need?

When I finally got rid of that storage unit, I brought everything back into my own space, a converted garage that’s now my office. I went through every box and made real decisions. Anything I hadn’t used in years and was genuinely unlikely to use again, gone. I ended up with 12 large storage boxes that fit into one cupboard, instead of an entire unit costing me monthly.

Fashions change too, and that’s worth remembering when you’re deciding what to keep. I opened my dance school in 1999, right in the era of Christina Aguilera style butterfly tops and diamond backless halter necks. I had thirty of them, bought cheap from New Look. By the time I got round to sorting through my storage, they were so out of fashion I struggled to even sell them, and most ended up going to a charity shop. All those years, taking up paid for space, for nothing.

Take a proper, honest look at what you’re storing and what it’s actually costing you to keep it.

3. Use What You Already Have

This one has saved some of my members genuinely thousands of pounds, and it’s simple, use what you already own before buying anything new.

I’m thinking particularly of costumes here. One of my members told me how much she typically spends on costumes for a show, and I challenged her, for this next production, no new costume purchases. She came back having bought two, both from Vinted, both filling gaps in sizes she needed to complete an existing set. I allowed that one, because it was smart, not wasteful.

She usually spends between £5,000 and £6,000 a year on costumes. By thinking differently and reusing what she already had, she saved that entire amount in a single year.

So ask yourself what you already have sitting there, and what you could reuse. It doesn’t have to be costumes either. Think about repertoire too. You don’t have to create something entirely new every time. Go back to a piece you choreographed ten years ago and bring it back. If you still have the costumes for it, even better.

The same logic applies to everything else in your studio. I’ve got boxes of notebooks and a full drawer of pens I’ve collected over the years from exhibitions and events. I’ve set myself a challenge, no new stationery until I’ve genuinely used what I already have.

Use what you have before you buy. It’s better for the environment, and it’s better for your bank balance.

So, can you save yourself real money this summer? Have a proper look. The savings are usually hiding in plain sight.

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