I work part time (20 hours a week) and DH works full time, we have a 1.5 year old DD. I've been back at work since she was 9 months old. DH and I are trying to save money and literally every month we find ourselves thinking, where on earth has our money gone?
My annual salary is about £12k and DH's is £25.5k. Neither of us are frivolous with money. We don't go out drinking, we haven't had a date night in months, we would maybe get a takeaway once a month (and then wish we hadn't). We haven't been on holiday for 2 years. When we look at our bank statements it is all bills, petrol, and food shopping, or bits and bobs like picking up stuff from the corner shop, Boots, and so on. DH foots the majority of the bills and for DD's nursery, I pay for the car, we split food shopping and petrol. On the rare occasion that we manage to put a bit of money away it never seems to last or has to be spent on emergencies (tyre punctures, broken boilers, to name a couple of recent examples).
I feel we never have any money comfortably left over. We try so hard to be sensible, but I have sleepless nights worrying about money. I think a lot of it is due to the rising cost of living and neither of us having particularly well paid jobs, and me only working part time, but I don't want to sacrifice the time I get to spend with DD by going back to working full-time, and then having that extra pay be cancelled out by needing more childcare. My parents are gobsmacked that we don't have any savings but I don't know what else we can do.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks for saving money when you're not on a large combined salary?