How I Manage My Money: A mother-of-three running her own business earning £19k a year

'Our three children all enjoy various clubs during the week which are not free. For example, swimming lessons and football coaching'

In our How I Manage My Money series we aim to find out how people in the UK are spending, saving and investing money to meet their costs and achieve their goals.

This week we speak to Donna Swyers, 55, who owns and runs an online homeware and clothing shop Somethingforthefamily.com. Donna lives in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, with her husband Dean, her 12-year-old daughter and their 9-year-old twin boys.

I started working in the city in my 20s. By my early 30s I was a partner of the largest property consultants in the world earning a six figure salary including bonuses.

My husband and I had the lifestyle to match; we lived in a large detached house situated on a private road, several overseas holidays each year and we both drove top of the range Mercedes. That lifestyle all came to an abrupt end when we had our first child.

I’d worked through my entire pregnancy and even when I was in labour, I was telling everyone I’d not be taking a long maternity leave.

But then, I looked into my baby daughter’s beautiful face for the first time after she was born and everything changed. I ended up taking an extended maternity leave of 18 months but even after then, going back to work was horrendous. I cried all the way to work, every day on my hour drive down the M11.

I only stayed because at the time I was the breadwinner and we wanted to keep our lovely home.

I suffered very badly from separation anxiety and the same thing happened when I had the twins.

This time, there was no going back. I knew I could never go back to doing those long hours, regardless of the money.

What was the point in giving birth to wonderful children and then not being involved as they grew up? I gave up my partnership but was retained by the firm and worked from home.

Even this was difficult to do properly with two babies in tow. So, that’s when we undertook our first “downsizing”. We moved out of the area completely and I gave up work altogether.

I went back to work after a year, for a friend who owned his own estate agent. But after two years, I needed to do something which would fit around the school day.

So I went to work as a dinner lady in a local primary school. I experienced a very proud moment there, when one of the children said my macaroni cheese was better than their mum’s. I’d gone from completing multi-million pound deals to feeding children, but I felt happier and the stress was gone from my life.

It didn’t take long for me to realise that role wasn’t for me though, so I moved across the road to the Catholic secondary school where I worked as a learning support assistant.

A year later, I was promoted to cover supervisor, where I oversee classes for teachers who are absent. It was at this time that we downsized for a second time buying a house that was near our children’s schools.

Then came along Covid. It was the start of the biggest financial struggle we had ever faced. My husband is a self-employed chauffeur and his earnings were close to zero for over a year.

My salary, £19,000, didn’t even cover the mortgage let alone the rest of the household bills. We cut back on everything we possibly could apart from after school clubs.

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Our three children all enjoy various clubs during the week which are not free. For example, swimming lessons and football coaching. They are expensive hobbies but they enjoy them.

We live in a relatively high council tax area so we pay £200 a month and our mortgage is £1,200. I cook from scratch to save on food costs but our food bill is still around £700 a month.

We have had to make other cutbacks wherever we can and a good example is where we shop for groceries.

It used to be Waitrose and Marks & Spencer but now I shop in Aldi and Tesco and am always on the lookout for Clubcard deals or special offers like buy one get one free.

I am on the cheapest tariff mobile I could find, which is £18 per month. I’ve chosen not to upgrade it for about four years.

There is no need to, it does what I need it to do and it keeps the cost way down. We always shop around for cheaper energy suppliers although ours has just gone bust due to the rising cost of gas.

It was Avro Energy and it brought our monthly bills down by more than £70 per month but unfortunately, this is going to skyrocket now. It’s just another extra cost to find the money for. I haven’t bought a new winter coat or pair of shoes for over six years. I wear my sister’s hand me downs, but they do me nicely. As long as the children have what they need, I don’t care about myself.

It was during the pandemic I decided we needed to drastically increase our income. I’m so fed up with living hand to mouth. The only way forward I could see was to work for myself. I’d seen a TV programme featuring a successful ecommerce entrepreneur and he made dropshipping look easy. After a lot of research, I was ready to begin my journey. Well, I thought I was, it was a huge learning curve and I made a ton of mistakes!

I was determined to do everything myself from scratch rather than pay for expert services as my funds were very limited. It took me just over three weeks to create my website. I was extremely happy with it. It’s professional and satisfies all necessary legal requirements.

Then I had to source products. This was the hardest part. So first, I started the same path as all first time dropshippers; I sourced my products from China. No problem with the cost of buying products as they were very affordable to buy. The quality was surprisingly good too so again, another box ticked. There was an issue, which very quickly became apparent and that was shipping times.

It can take up to 60 days for a product to arrive from China. So it was back to the drawing board for me. There are Chinese based manufacturers who can get products to the UK quicker, but my goal is to work with UK suppliers. But you can’t just sign up with them, you have to meet certain criteria and if you are a newbie then you can forget about it.

I have an Amazon business account where I tend to sell most of my things rather than through my website. The general public are pretty sceptical and reluctant to buy from new company websites. But what customers don’t understand is that if they purchase directly from my website, then I can sell to them cheaper because there are no Amazon fees for me to pay.

We specialise in footwear, fashion bags and pet accessories – because pets are also part of our family – and we have a seasonal page. We have just finished Halloween and we have sold out! Our buyers come via Facebook and Instagram ads which again, don’t come cheap. I don’t make nearly enough yet to consider giving up my current job but the business is growing.

The thing I find odd is the lack of people I know who are buying from my website. A friend will suddenly appear with a new bag or their child with a new pair of trainers, all of which they can source from me for a much cheaper price. It goes to show how hard you need to work and be prepared to give up every single second of your spare time.

I check for orders early each morning and put them through to my supplier. When I get home in the evening and after all my mummy jobs are complete, I retreat to my office to source and list more products and deal with any customer queries. This wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea but I’m determined to make it work.

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