Easy Ways To Spend Less Money Every Month

With the cost of living rising ridiculously fast, and everyone feeling the pinch, I thought I’d share what we’ve been doing to reduce how much money we spend on every day things. By my calculations, doing these things could actually save us £3,800 this year, which is quite a large amount!

Firstly, set yourself a budget, listing all of your incomings and outgoings. If you know what you’ve got coming in and going out, you can see where you can make changes. There are loads of budget trackers available to download or purchase, or you can simply list everything out in an Excel spreadsheet.

Check that you are being paid what you’re owed. This might sound like the most ridiculous tip; surely we get paid what we’re meant to, right? But, if you work different shifts, or you’ve done overtime, or you’re due a bonus, check that you have been given the right amount. Your employer will trust that the person who has done payroll got it right, and won’t go back and double check for you, so it’s up to you to make sure that it has all been paid correctly. You’d be surprised how often this can be wrong!

The same goes with benefits; use an online benefits calculator to see if you are eligible for anything, and then make sure that you are claiming it. I haven’t put an amount saved against this as we haven’t discovered any discrepancies so far.

Go through your direct debits and get rid of any that you no longer need. Old gym memberships, annual passes to places that the kids used to go to when they were younger, dating sites? You’ll be surprised how many just sit there, slowly draining your bank account. You could save £200 this year by doing this.

Review your TV and broadband. Their prices seem to creep up, and there doesn’t seem to be any reward for loyalty, so it might be tine to switch to a cheaper one. 

Are you using all the channels that you’re paying for or could you get rid of some of the add ons? Things like sports channels, or movie channels, or kids TV.  It’s easy to forget that you’ve got them, or that you’re paying an extra £5 or even £10 a month for them. Reviewing these services could save £100 this year.

The same goes for subscriptions.  Do you really need Netflix, Now TV, and Disney plus? Is both Kindle Unlimited or Audible really necessary? Can you live without your monthly beauty box or gin subscription. We’ve saved £240 this year by cutting out two of these (bonus points if you can guess which ones!)

Mobile phones! Our mobiles have become one of our most important items – I partly run my business on mine so I know I definitely couldn’t be without it. But do you actually need to upgrade every two years, or could you keep the phone that you’ve got and move to a SIM only deal? With a standard iPhone contract being around £55 per month, and a SIM only deal around £15 a month, you could save £180 in a year by not upgrading. And let’s face it, two year old iPhones are pretty impressive.

Gym memberships – no I’m not going to tell you to cancel your gym membership. For those that use it to maintain their mental health, improve their physical health, socialise, or just get away from the kids, a gym membership can be seen as a necessity. However, have got the right membership? Many gyms have ‘tiered’ memberships, and you could be paying for something that you don’t actually need, like full family access to everything, when all you need is a gym only membership. Switching could save £60.

Cutting down on takeaways can save £600! There, I said it. Going from one takeaway a week to two a month could save £600 in a year. There are loads of takeaway recipes online that are actually really good, and some supermarket pizzas are just as good as takeaway ones. I was shocked by how much we were spending on takeaways, even though we ‘only’ have one a week.

Set a budget for your shopping. This is getting harder to do as the price of everything seems to be rising every week. We’ve always bought a lot of branded stuff but we’ve been buying more own brand stuff these last few weeks. Switching supermarkets can also save a lot of money – Aldi is well known for being the best budget supermarket. Keep your eyes out for offers too, and if you can, buying things that you know you’ll actually use can save quite a bit. These things can all add to £1,200 over a year.

Make your own coffee instead of buying one. Even if you only buy two a week at £4.50 a coffee, you could save £468 this year.

The same goes for lunches – making lunch instead of buying it could save £780 in a year. This is based on 5x £3 meal deals a week. Obviously you still need to eat, but if you include it in your shopping budget, or eat leftovers, it’s a huge saving.

This one’s not as relevant as we head into summer, but turning your thermostat down by 1 degree could save £100 per year. And that’s based on utility prices at the beginning of this year, who knows how much you could potentially save on the current astronomical prices.

So all of that adds up to over £3,800 over a year, which is quite a lot of money. Drop your best money saving tips in the comments!