As a driving instructor, how can I reduce my outgoings?

After a year long pandemic, you may have some ideal time to analyse how much money you're spending whilst running your driving school. Here is our guide on how you can improve how you manage your outgoings.

List out your outgoings!

Our key piece of advice is to start simple, you will only know your outgoings after you list them out.

By listing out how much you spend as a driving instructor, you will better understand how much money you can save and exactly where those savings can come from. Sometimes we have hidden costs, costs we didn't realise we were inducing.

Thankfully, we have built a simple widget to help you analyse your costs and that takes into consideration inflation and cost of living increases over the next couple of years.

Have a think and try to list your finances. Some ideas are: fuel, website, GoogleAds, Facebook Ads, SEO, insurance, franchise fee, association fee, daily coffees, and road tax.

What's happening with the cost of fuel?

The cost of fuel during the pandemic has fluctuated a fair bit over the last two years. However, we can always consider that, in general as fossil fuels reduce, the price of fuel will increase.

As of January 2021, according to the RAC, prices have increased by 2p per litre which of course will have significant impacts on driving instructors. With the expected boom in UK holidays and transport to increase in the UK it would be sensible to expect the cost of fuel across the globe to increase.

When planning for the following year, we should assume that the price of fuel will increase and ensure that we plan for that going forward.

Actions:

• User websites like Confused.com and Petrol Prices to work out your cheapest price for fuel in your area.

How much will PPE cost you?

It's important to stay safe and keep others from harm. We can expect that learner drivers will need to wear face-coverings during lessons. Additionally, it will be key that instructors can clean their vehicle before and after lessons. If a learner has forgotten a face covering, it may be wise to carry spare one in the vehicle.

Actions:

• Source cheap face masks, Amazon and Chemist 4 U are good options for when buying in bulk.
• Hand Sanitiser or anti-bacterial wipes, again, buy these in bulk to keep costs low.

Reduce Yell, GoogleAds and Websites Spend

Monthly costs come in the form of directory services and GoogleAds or even your own website. With the industry boom that is expected post-lockdown, it's realistic to not expect to advertise nearly as much in the next 6 to 18 months. This is a great reason to analyse your outgoings on advertising and perhaps cut back slightly.

Are you paying for a listing in a phonebook? We'd advise against this as the Return On Investment is generally not worth it.

Additionally, companies like Yell charge between £10-£100+ per month for listings, you could save by reducing your outgoings on these services.

Regarding your own website, you can easily analyse the value by measuring the cost and the number of learners that book you through that. If it's paying for itself, definitely keep. However, if you're not seeing much traffic, its worth considering removing that expense.

Actions:

• Measure the number of customers that came through your website, and calculate if the the cost is less than the revenue generated.
• Check are you paying for an SEO expert to maintain a high Google ranking? Perhaps consider removing this cost.
• We'd advise the reduce spend on advertising services like GoogleAds and Yell.

Franchise Fee

This is one is a personal decision. Being part of a franchise has definitive benefits, depending on which franchise. It's worth asking yourself, is the goal to be a fully independent instructor. If it is, then perhaps now is the time to make that jump because you will have much more job certainty now and for the next 12 months.

If you're happy with your franchise, and gain a lot of benefits, then it's worth staying of course.

If you are looking to leave and are worried about sourcing any pupils, GoRoadie has your back. We have helped countless instructors become fully independent. Take us for a spin with our free profiles and free first pupil, there's zero risk. Try GoRoadie for free.

Actions:

• If your goal is to be independent and you're currently part of a franchise, write down on paper the steps you need to take to leave in 2021.

Cut the coffee spend

If you've looked into money saving habits before, cutting your spend on coffee has definitely came up. There have been tons of case studies done about why spending £2-£5 per day on coffee ads up, it's clear to see.

If you were to buy a £3.50 coffee, five days per week, for 46 weeks. That would cost you £805. Roughly 2% of your entire income would be spent on coffee.

Our advice, save your bucks, make coffee at home and take it with you.

Actions:

• Cut the coffee spend, prepare it at home and put it in a flask.

If you found this useful, why not check out our Should I increase my lesson prices blog.