We often find ourselves spending inadequately, with no real financial education to guide us in the right direction. We all make New Year’s resolutions, but they can often be disastrous, with 80% of people failing by February and regretting it instantly — have you managed to stick at yours? One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is to cut down on spending, and although this sounds achievable, if you don’t have a fully-pledged strategy in place, the likeliness of failure spirals out of control.
There are many scenarios that you could find yourself in where you have to pull out cash to fix a problem — whether this is a broken boiler or when you need to make a third journey and you’ve only bought a return ticket. It all adds up. For that reason, we’ve made some assessments on how those extra savings can come in handy if something like that was to occur.
Travelling
Making small changes can result in huge changes — and you should start off with the way you travel. Using a megarider ticket from Stagecoach, who offer cheap bus pass prices, you will be able to travel as much as you want and can tailor your own needs to the ticket type. Whether you’re in need of a weekly bus pass for your travels, or a monthly one — you will find yourself making a huge saving in comparison to buying a ticket every day.
£168,880 is the price you will pay over your lifetime when owning your own vehicle in the UK. With efficiency growing in public transport, there is no reason for you not to consider making the bold move that could help you fulfil your resolution this year and save you a fortune.
The biggest contributor to this sum is the cost of petrol, and although the price fluctuates over time, the average yearly cost comes to £1,052.04. Servicing a vehicle costs can add up to £441 over a twelve-month period — which can change depending on the individual’s situation. MOTs can cost up to £168.46 annually. Cost of parking is on the rise, and with more vehicles on the roads, there seems to be a higher demand. Over the year, a motorist can find themselves paying £145.80 on parking. When it comes to insurance, this can sway dramatically as younger drivers will find themselves paying a higher cost to be on the road — on average, insurance costs an experience driver £436 every year. Tax can equate to £116.35 on a yearly basis. Car supplies can cost a driver £29.61 and if you were to go abroad and wished to drive, holiday rental cars can leave you £180 out of pocket. Speeding tickets equal £25.12 for the average driver here in the UK. This would cost a driver £2,594.38 in total where commuters find themselves paying considerably less for a significant service — imagine the saving you would make with a megarider ticket!
Lifestyle costs
Making savings by making lunch
Lunch breaks are becoming costly, with many people finding it the easier option to buy lunch on-the-go. But what if we told you that, on average, forking out for lunch every day could cost you £1,288 according to research carried out by VoucherCloud. Evidently, you could make a huge saving by preparing your lunch at home — whether this is making a quick sandwich or taking in a tin of microwavable soup to heat up. When we looked at the total working days in 2017, there was 252 — if we went by Poundland’s price of tomato soup, which is 50p, you would find yourself paying £126! A massive saving for anyone looking to cut down on costs.
Making savings by making coffee
Brits visit coffee shops at a minimum of three times per week on average, according to MyVoucherCodes — and it’s becoming an unavoidable problem, with over 21,000 stores in the country. This means that Brits visit coffee shops around 156 times a year with an average spend of £8.52 — with travel expenses, this could go up to £13.85. This creates an annual average spending of £2,600, a majority of which could be saved if you were to opt for taking your own coffee to work.
People opt for coffee shops because they prefer branded coffee — but calculations show that if you were to buy a 250g pack of Douwe Egberts ground coffee, you could make a total of 30 cups. When looking to see how much a 1kg pack would cost, Amazon has priced the coffee at around £15, meaning that each cup of coffee would cost close to 13p. Try taking a flask to work and even purchasing an on-the-go coffee cup that will see you through your day.
Making savings by quitting smoking
As the average price of a packet of 20 cigarettes is now £10.40, you could make a yearly saving of £3,796 if you smoked one packet every day — this huge saving should be the encouragement for you to quit. MoneySupermarket.com has stated that non-smokers pay around £6,309 less for life insurance, which could be something worth investing in for the new year.
Many smokers are turning to the vaping craze, to help them quit for good and safe money in the long run. 10ml bottles of liquid cost around £5 on average — saving those who turn to vaping around £1,900.
Expenses that you could incur
Out of 2,000 people asked on a survey, over half said that they experienced an unexpected expense in the home. On average, these costs totalled £248.70 — showing that any saving is beneficial for occurrences like these. 47% of these issues happened in the kitchen, a room which is essential to the day-to-day running of any home, and if you don’t have the money to pull out instantly, it could cause an everyday stress. Using the savings you would have made by taking your own lunch and coffee to work, quitting smoking, and travelling smarter — you will be able to make life easier. It was also found that 35% of people had to use a credit card to cover the costs of unexpected expenses. With 18% of them not being able to pay more than £100 on their own, 17% had to borrow from friends and family!
How will you be saving money this year?
Sources:
https://www.providentpersonalcredit.com/unexpected-expenses/
*collaborative post
