Personal Finance/Wealth Management
Five Top Saving Tips On A Tight Budget
The period to be vigilant and protect your hard-earned cash is now
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has started global inflation in virtually all goods and services. Everyone is affected, and all areas suffer from unexpectedly high prices, the worst is oil and gas. For most of us, these are essentials, and we must use them, so we have to buy them. Nevertheless, that does not mean we cannot look for some areas to save money to ease our finances. Let us look at some of these areas.
Car Sharing
This is where you pool your car with those of the neighbours and or colleagues to collective run one car a day. This means if you are seven, you only run your car one day a week. The one car does school runs, shopping/groceries, office drops and pick-ups etc. This can considerably save on petrol and mileage for each person on the car-sharing scheme.
In the UK, an average motorist spends between £1700 and £1200 a month on fuel. This car-sharing scheme can half this cost.
Ditch Gym Membership
It is possible to ditch your gym membership and commit to training videos on YouTube. I know some people use the gym to socialise and network, but you can always look for other ways to do this, e.g. meet-ups, local libraries etc, which cost next to nothing.
Reduce Eating Out
In this information age, we know that eating out is not that healthy, but most of us do it to socialise, to meet up with friends we don’t want to bring home etc. But we can deliberately cut down on eating out, by taking a packed lunch to work. This will probably save you almost a thousand pounds a year.
Same with buying coffee. A cup of Costa coffee or a similar brand will set you back £4.95. Buy your own premium coffee bottle to take to work so that you can make your coffee at work.
Drink cooled boiled and treated tap water in your reusable bottle. Research has shown that tap water is safer and purer than most bottled water. You save on your money, you save on the environment too. You can save about £500 per year by drinking your own treated water.
‘’We all spend money on what is most important to us. So when you say “I can’t afford it”, you actually mean “it is not important enough to me”. Improve your priorities and you will increase your bank balance.’’ Rob Moore
Beauty, Facial, Spa & Nails At Home
This is to say, you can ditch some luxury items that are not necessary. One of such is self-pampering. We have to realise, though that some people see self-pampering as a pick-me-up to boost their mental health when stress takes its toll on them. Simple wax, a massage or a fresh manicure/pedicure can actually be the pick me up available to boost our mental health.
Spa and home beauty might need some gadgets, but you will end up saving your money in the end.
Stop Emotional Spending
Emotional spending, also known as retail therapy is when you go shopping to kill off depression or anxiety. Retail therapy is usually done by credit cards, so you are not aware of how much you are spending, and the risk of just buying what you don’t really need.
A fundamental law of money is that volatile or extreme emotions tend to erode wealth
Watch out for triggers too, that is you should know yourself very well, and deal with them soon enough before it gets out of control and cause you a huge debt.
A lady, Zamira Hajiyeva spent £16m in Harrods during her depression days. Her husband is in jail for fraud in Azerbaijan. The retail sales assistant narrated how she spent £100,000 on chocolate in a go. It was obvious she was depressed, but that was not the time to go shopping, unfortunately.
The Takeaways
- You can take control of your money, and save, even in this difficult time.
- Never go on a shopping spree while sad, depressed or angry. It will spiral you into debt.
- Savings give you financial backup which is available in times of crisis.
- You need the right motivation to user you into a savings mood.
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About The Author
Lanu Pitan is a Nigerian ex-pat living in the United Kingdom. She is a Chartered Accountant for many years before she retired as a Group Head Finance of a Publicly quoted Insurance Company. She now manages her own small operation.