Small Things to Give Up When You Want to Save More Money
It’s the little things that sometimes make the biggest differences in our lives. When it comes to saving money, you might not think that that couple of pound you spent on a Frappuccino will amount to much in the long run, but the truth is that it’s these small regular expenses that usually make the biggest dent in your savings.
Self-made millionaires don’t build their fortune by spending randomly on everything they want. They’re frugal, they know when to save, and they know how to invest their money in the right places. If you’ve been looking for a way to save more cash, but you’ve been worried about having to give up everything you enjoy, we’ve got you covered. Here are a few small things you can give up to save more in the long-term.
1. Impulse Buys
How often do you go to the supermarket for milk and you end up buying some chocolate, a punnet of oranges and maybe a new shirt while you’re there? Even if it’s just a small spend, like a bottle of Cola, impulse buys can seriously derail your saving strategy. A great way to make sure that you reach your saving goals faster is to push yourself into taking 24 hours to consider any purchase before you make it. That way, you’ll go to the store knowing what you need.
If you see something that you want on the way out of the checkout counter, you’ll have to wait another 24 hours to come back and get it. By that point, the impulse usually will have died down.
2. Buying Lunch Every Day
It’s easy to tell ourselves that we have to have lunch, so we have to pay for our meals each day at work. However, the truth is that there is a simpler and cheaper way to keep yourself nourished. Taking a packed lunch to work will save you some serious cash, and it could better for your health too. When you prepare your meals at home, you get to control everything from ingredients to portion size.
While there’s nothing wrong with treating yourself to the occasional meal, especially if it means that you get to spend some quality time with someone important at work, most of your meals should be made at home if you want to cut costs.
3. Subscriptions you Don’t Use
These days, it’s so easy to sign up for subscriptions, that a lot of us do it without even realising. We pay for something we want once, and then we get the same delivery every month without thinking about it. If you’ve got any subscriptions on your monthly expense list, it might be time to think carefully about whether you need or use them.
For instance, if you signed up for the gym at the start of this year and you’ve not touched your membership since then, it might be time to give up. You can always exercise outside of the gym by going for a run or a bike ride instead.
4. Expensive Car Insurance
You have to have at least the minimum amount of third-party coverage in your car insurance to take your car out on the roads of the UK. However, that doesn’t mean that you need to be spending more than necessary on your coverage. If it’s been a while since you’ve compared your rate to the offers available online, check out the different deals you can get by switching provider.
A lot of people discover that they can actually save hundreds of pounds every year just by switching to someone new. Your car insurance provider simply relies on you being lazy enough to let the renewal happen automatically.
5. Phone and Television Packages
There are countless households throughout the UK today that are paying over-the-odds for phone and television packages when all they really use is their broadband. If you’re not using your home phone, and you barely touch the channels available from your subscription, then get rid of them. If you don’t want to give up your entertainment options completely, you can always try switching to a service like Netflix or Amazon Prime and getting your TV over the internet instead.
Streaming TV is usually much cheaper than paying for a package from a standard provider, and it means that you can narrow your monthly expenses down by a significant amount each month. That’s cash you can put towards things you’re actually going to use!
