Of all of life’s worries, financial woes are often the greatest, and most frequent. For many of us, staying financially afloat is a constant struggle, and getting on top of things can seem like a never-ending road.
In fact, financial stability may be closer than you think. Through better everyday money management, you’ll find that little improvements add up to big savings, without really impacting your quality of life.
Here are a few ideas that have the potential to make a huge difference to your finances.
The morning coffee
You, like millions of others in the UK, may well enjoy a delicious morning coffee from your local coffee shop, perhaps along with a nice pastry too. Harmless enough every now and again, but for many the coffee shop visit is a daily habit that adds up to a shocking sum over the course of a year.
Towards the end of last year, the Independent reported that the average person was spending £303 a year on coffee. Sounds a lot, doesn’t it? However, if you’re a daily consumer of the likes of Starbucks, Costa or Café Nero, that figure may be much higher.
If you’re a regular at your favourite coffee house, take a moment to step back and calculate your spending. It sounds rather strange to say but opting for a brew at home instead could be worth over £1,000 for daily coffee drinkers.
DIY lunches
While we’re talking food and drink, lunchtime could be costing you just as much as your morning beverage, if not more.
Buying your lunch every day presents a costly game, especially for those working in a city centre with access to quick and easy fast food. A daily £5 lunch results in £1,300 spent over the year, which is a conservative estimate of British lunchtime spending.
Making your own lunches at home will be time consuming, but it will not only enable you to curb your spending, but you’ll also be able to enjoy better variety in your lunches as well as encouraging a healthier diet.
Automate your finances
Modern online banking has made day-to-day financial management significantly easier, and you can take advantage of some of the newer banking tools to merge your accounts and install more efficient spending and saving practices.
You can automate your monthly payments so you never miss a bill; automate sending money into a savings account on a regular basis; and even automate money to an emergency fund in case of unexpected costs.
Automating gives you the chance to escape your own poor spending behaviours. By automatically distributing money coming in before you’ve had chance to spend it elsewhere, you’ll significantly reduce your chances of overspending, missing key payments and hitting hard times in the future.
It’s easy to set up and should be an essential of any modern money management plan.
As mentioned in the beginning, small changes lead to major improvements, and you can easily utilize one of these methods to see big benefits in the near future.