How To Save Money On Day-To-Day Expenses​

• Learn how to make a budget

  We talk a lot about budgets in these guides, and there’s a good reason for that. Setting yourself a budget is a lot easier than it looks, and it’s absolutely Job One when you’re taking back control of your wallet. Even if you’re just looking to save on your everyday spending, though, you’ll still need to learn how to make better use of your cash.

  All you need to do to get started is work out what you’re spending day-to-day on average. Make an actual list, and try to paint as complete a picture as possible of where your money’s going. It’ll help if you separate it all out into categories (like “travel costs”, “work lunches” and so on). That way, you’ll be able to work out which ones are absolutely essential and which you can bring down. With that list in hand, you’ll be all set to start making savings.

• Save money on lunches

  Buying food when you’re out at work is one of those easily missed expenses that can become an “invisible” drain on your finances. After all, you’ve got to eat, right? It can be expensive buying prepared food every day, though, with average work lunch bills easily hitting anywhere between £3 and £10 per day. You might not notice the money trickling out like that, but over time it stacks up fast. Simply making a little extra at dinner the night before and taking the leftovers in to work with you can fatten up your wallet to the tune of £15-£50 a week.

• Ditch the plastic and pay in cash

  This is another simple trick for keeping a firmer grip on your financial steering wheel. A lot of our overspending comes down to the fact that it’s been made so easy to part with our money. Wave a card at a machine or tap a button on our phones and the transaction’s done. It hardly feels like spending at all! If you’re looking dependable for ways to slow your expenditure, think about giving the plastic a breather for a bit and switching back to cash. Take the money out that you’ve budgeted for the week, and work your way through it. Setting a rule that you can’t spend what you don’t have in physical cash will really clamp down on any impulse spending. It sounds a little old-school by modern standards, but it really is one of the best, most reliable changes you can make to track what you’re spending and save money quickly.

• Track your spending

  While we’re on the subject of keeping track of the cash you’re parting with, it’s a good idea to make a solid habit of that. Seriously – set aside some time once a week to see how your actual spending measures up to the plans you made. A budget will only ever be as good as your ability to stick to it, after all. Recording your costs as they crop up will go a long way toward spotting and fixing any overspending you’re doing. You’ll also probably find a few opportunities to save even more along the way.

  Free budget spreadsheet

• Plan your travel ahead

  Travel, whether it’s for work or anything else, is another one of those costs that we tend to think of as non-negotiable. If you’re going by train, though, you’ve got a few options that can make a big difference to the asking price of your ticket. The first thing to do if you’ve travelling by rail regularly is look into your railcard options. Grabbing one of those can save you up to a third of your ticket costs on its own!

  The other thing to do is try to book your train fares in advance. Ticket prices tend to be cheaper the earlier you buy them, so the sooner you book the better the deal you’ll tend to get. By comparison, buying your ticket on the day could see you being charged an incredible five times what you would have paid if you’d booked a few weeks in advance!

• Use the help that's on offer

  If your travel to work is getting to be a problem, and you can’t see any way of bringing the cost down, you might try asking your employer if they run any schemes to help. It turns out a lot of businesses offer zero-interest loans for travel to work. Basically, your boss fronts you the entire cost of your travel, then you pay off what you owe through monthly instalments. Sorting out your travel this way means you can grab a discount season ticket you might not otherwise have been able to afford outright. Those tickets work out a lot cheaper than buying your fares on the day, and your repayments will come out of your salary automatically so you don’t need to budget specifically for them. Over the course of a year, you could easily be looking at savings worth hundreds of pounds!

• Even simple changes mount up

  Cutting down on everyday overspending is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s not about making occasional big, one-off savings. Instead, you’ll get better, more reliable results simply by chipping away at your day-to-day expenses consistently over time.

  Take your daily cup of coffee, for instance – and yes, we know we’re on dangerous ground by asking you to cut back on that essential caffeine hit. The thing is, you don’t even need to cut back your tea or coffee intake to make savings. Just consider whether you could bring in your own from home in an inexpensive flask. That way, when you feel your energy levels flagging at work, you’ve got the solution on-hand instead of having to trek to the local cafe to top off your tank. Those store-bought coffees might not seem like a huge drain on your wallet at maybe £3 a pop, but a couple of those a day will run you £30 per week. That’s up to £120 a month you could save, simply by making one tiny change to your daily routine.

  If you’re serious about saving money and developing better financial habits, take a look at our other guide, “4 Fixed Income Saving Strategies - Combine to Win!” That’s where you’ll find some of the very best budgeting tricks, like following the 50/30/20 rule and making “zero-based” budgets. In the meantime, keep checking back here for more money tips and updates. We’re experts at saving you cash and we’re always here to help. That’s the reason why you’re better off with RIFT.

  Saving strategies for fixed incomes

Here's our top tips on how you can save money right now.

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