With the Leaving Cert results in and the CAO offers out, this is perfect time to consider personal skills in a broad sense. But what about skills that can improve your personal financial situation. Frank Conway, Founder of MoneyWhizz has put together a practical, and perhaps fun list of everyday tasks where a little knowledge can go a long way and help keep a bit more money in the wallet.
There’s a particular kind of panic that hits when a plug falls apart in your hand, or a button pops off a shirt five minutes before an interview, or the toilet won’t stop running at 2am. It’s not really panic about the broken thing. It’s the quiet realisation that you don’t know what to do next — and that not knowing is going to cost you money, time, or both.
This is the gap a lot of students and young people are living in right now. Not a lack of intelligence or effort, but a lack of exposure. Nobody sat them down and showed them how to change a fuse, patch a hole in a jumper, or cook something other than pasta from a jar. So when something breaks, the automatic response might be to throw it away and buy a new one, or pay someone else to fix it, or order takeaway again because cooking feels like a mystery rather than a five-step process you already half-know.
The irony is that almost none of these skills are hard. They’re just never taught. There’s no school subject called “Adulting 101,” so most people learn it the expensive way — by paying for convenience until they can’t afford to anymore, or by googling “how to fix X” at the exact moment X breaks, under pressure, with no time to do it well.
The good news is that a small, deliberate set of skills covers most of what comes up in ordinary life. None of them require special talent. Most take an afternoon to learn and a lifetime to keep using. And the payoff compounds: someone who can mend a coat instead of replacing it, cook instead of ordering in, and fix a wobbly shelf instead of calling someone out, isn’t just saving pounds or euros here and there — they’re building a kind of quiet independence. They stop being at the mercy of the nearest paid service every time something small goes wrong.
Clothes: buy less, keep more
Fast fashion made it normal to replace clothes rather than repair them, but repair is often a five-minute job. Sewing on a button, taking up a hem, or patching a small hole are all skills that take one YouTube video and a few tries to get comfortable with. They also unlock something bigger: the ability to buy second-hand or slightly-too-big clothes and actually make them fit. A charity shop coat that’s a size off becomes wearable. A pair of jeans with a worn knee gets another year of life instead of going in the bin.
The kitchen: the biggest money leak, hiding in plain sight
Eating out or ordering in is the single easiest way for money to disappear without anyone noticing. The fix isn’t “learn to cook” in some grand sense — it’s having five or six simple, cheap meals on rotation that you can make without thinking: a stir-fry, a big pot of pasta, a dhal, an omelette, a tray-bake. Add basic knife skills, a sense of how to store leftovers properly, and the habit of batch-cooking so one effort feeds several days and eating at home stops being a chore and starts being the easy option.
Fixing things at home: the lightbulb problem, but bigger
“They don’t know how to change a lightbulb” has become shorthand for a much wider gap. Wiring a plug, resetting a fuse box, bleeding a radiator, unblocking a sink, or patching a hole in a wall are all small, learnable jobs — and every one of them, done yourself, is a callout fee avoided. None of this requires becoming a tradesperson. It requires knowing that these things are learnable at all, which is half the battle when the default assumption is “call someone.”
The right to repair, extended to everyday life
There’s a growing movement around the right to repair — the idea that products should be fixable rather than disposable. That principle applies just as well to personal skills. Basic soldering can save a pair of headphones. Bike maintenance — fixing a puncture, oiling a chain — keeps a cheap form of transport running for years instead of ending up abandoned in a shed after one flat tyre. And increasingly, local repair cafés and detailed teardown guides exist for almost everything, so the real skill is knowing where to look and having the confidence to open something up rather than write it off.
Money and admin: the invisible skill set
Not every money-saving skill is physical. Reading a payslip, understanding what’s actually in a phone or utility contract before signing it, comparing unit prices instead of sticker prices, and keeping even a rough budget are skills with a return on investment far bigger than the hour it takes to learn them. So is something as simple as asking for a better rate — it works more often than people expect, and almost nobody does it.
The common thread
None of this is about becoming self-sufficient in every domain or turning frugality into an identity. It’s about closing the gap between “something needs doing” and “I know how to do that,” so that small problems stay small, and small savings — a mended coat here, a home-cooked week there — quietly add up into something significant over a year, then a decade.
The barrier was never difficulty. It was exposure. Below is a practical starting list — the kind of thing worth working through one skill at a time, at a pace that actually sticks.
How to progress this: Pick one skill a week. Most take under an hour to learn the basics and a few tries to feel natural. By the end of a year, you’ve quietly closed the gap on almost everything that used to mean an unplanned expense. And remember, use online tutorials, and when you outgrow those, search for your nearest educational courses that offer evening classes and skills coaching. And remember, while YouTube can show you the “how”, other resources including Education and Training Boards (ETBs), Men’s Sheds (and increasingly Women’s Sheds), Community/heritage skill groups, Repair Cafés and don’t forgetLocal libraries — which increasingly run free workshops (sewing, budgeting, digital skills, sometimes even tool libraries), and are a good default first call since they’re in every town and free – can correct you when you do something wrong.
Good luck!
The Checklist
Clothes & Textiles
- Sew on a button
- Fix a small hem
- Patch a hole (jumper, jeans, jacket)
- Take in or let out a waistband
- Iron properly and read care labels
Kitchen
- Learn 5–6 cheap, simple meals on rotation
- Basic knife skills
- Proper food storage (fridge, freezer, leftovers)
- Batch cook and freeze portions
- Read a recipe and adapt it with what’s in the cupboard
Home Repair & Maintenance
- Change a plug or fuse
- Change a lightbulb (including awkward fittings)
- Bleed a radiator
- Reset a boiler or fuse box
- Assemble flat-pack furniture properly
- Unblock a sink or toilet
- Patch and paint a small wall hole
Right to Repair / General Fixing
- Basic soldering (headphone jacks, loose wires)
- Fix a bike puncture
- Oil a bike chain and adjust brakes
- Know when to repair vs. replace
- Find a local repair café or reliable repair guide
Money & Admin
- Read and understand a payslip
- Understand a phone or utility contract before signing
- Compare unit prices, not just sticker prices
- Keep a basic budget (spreadsheet or app)
- Practice asking for a better rate or price
Everyday Practical
- Check oil, tyre pressure, and screen wash on a car
- Remove common stains and do a proper cold wash
- Grow a few herbs on a windowsill
- Learn basic first aid
MoneyWhizz is an independent financial education and wellbeing service available to employers and schools across Ireland. To contact, please email info@moneywhizz.org.
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