The Personal Finance Hub

“What” – it’s very easy for someone to tell you to stop buying the “What” – perhaps the daily coffee? It will save you £3 a day, £15 a week, £780 a year (or for a higher rate tax payer the equivalent cash in the bank from a £1300 pay rise .. ever thought of it like that?). However, if that coffee is your daily luxury then who I am to say stop buying it – only you know the enjoyment you get from it relative to a £1300 pay rise… is it a must have or just become a habit you can’t kick? Scanning your spend and seeing the “What’s” is important to get visibility on where your money actually goes, what things actually cost over time (eg: the daily coffee over a year) and then questioning if you are comfortable with it. The answer might be yes, yes, yes and that’s fine…the point isn’t to say spend on nothing and go live in a cave at weekends while your bank balance builds up – it’s about making conscious decisions on spend.

“Where” – ok, so you know “what” you are spending your money on and perhaps you’ve identified some spend habits to reduce. Well how about now looking at items you can’t or don’t want to stop spending on but would consider getting them from somewhere else. One group is debts and utilities – Why?

Well these are the spend items we have limited discretion over (eg: Mortgage/Energy/Broadband) but the products are fairly commoditised and who provides them usually isn’t too important with price therefore the primary driver – do we really care if we buy our energy from British Gas or Ovo, or pay our mortgage to Barclays or HSBC? Reviewing these big ticket items has scope to make serious savings .. how much? Well as a case study, I spent 40mins during my Eggs Avocado reviewing and switching my parents energy and media packages, saving them c.£1100 a year. Staying true to my accounting background, I make that an impressive £1650 per hour, on par with Paul Pogba or Kevin De Bruyne’s hourly rate. Unfortunately, switching utilities isn’t a daily job like professional football and back to reality this isn’t how much every household will necessarily save. However, if you haven’t reviewed your energy deal or media package in the last 18months+ you might not be far off this level of savings or perhaps more. Better still, there are so many great resources to make this easy for you which I’ll be sharing.

“How” – probably the least obvious and under utilised of the three lenses. This captures several areas but at its core, it is ensuring you get rewarded for the money you are going to spend anyway. This might be…

• Using cashback offers in your Debit Card app to get money off specific retailers or purchases
• Using cashback rewards or vouchers codes for the purchase – yes these really do pay!
• Making sure you use loyalty cards when doing your shopping
• Consider using reward credit cards (only for the disciplined!)