Money is a pretty taboo topic.
Asking someone how much they earn or what’s in their bank account seems pretty rude, and we’re encouraged to keep our finances shrouded in mystery. If you talk positively about your money situation, that’s considered bad form, but if you admit you’re struggling, that’s a source of shame.
How I Save is our weekly series hoping to open up the conversation.
Each week we chat to a different person, tracking how they spend and save their money for a week. Then we get some expert advice they (and we) can learn from.
This time we’re chatting to Hannah (not her real name), a 28-year-old senior marketing executive living in Manchester.
How Hannah saves:
I earn £30k a year. In my savings accounts right now I have £16,750 saved – £1,500 in a New Zealand bank account, £15,000 in a pensions-type scheme, and £250 of savings in the UK.
I’ve saved this by hiding money from myself. I was being paid into my New Zealand bank account for a remote job and I would keep some in an inaccessible savings account.
In the UK I’ve only saved £250 because I got paid a week ago and finally decided I needed to start saving rather than spend every last penny every month. I hope it’ll last!
I’m saving for a deposit for a new flat. I also want to save for a cheap laptop/tablet to do some personal projects (I only have a smartphone!) and I want some savings put aside so I have some security if I lost my job or had to move back to New Zealand.
If I have £50 left at the end of the month I’ve had a great month. I spend pretty lavishly I think, I enjoy eating out and spending time with friends and travelling. I am usually the type to think ‘I could die tomorrow, let’s have some experiences today’.
I don’t know how much I should actually spend on things in comparison to my lifestyle. Is my spending on food outrageous? I assume it probably is, but I’ll think ‘f*** it’ and buy it anyway. I’ve never had the ‘payoff’ of saving up hard for something and finally being able to buy it. Usually, I will hire purchase or get a loan for a big spend such as new furniture or a car. I’m usually really good at paying things off – I only have £500 in debt on a low-interest credit card.
How Hannah spends:
Monthly expenses:
- £400 for rent in a three-bedroom semi-detached house share.
- £108 for bills – electricity, water, internet, gas.
- £60 a month for an accountant from my freelance days (almost a year ago!). I should probably stop this!
- £12 on Youtube Premium – I use this every day, I watch A LOT of Youtube.
- £10 on Spotify – integral.
- £20 on a car club – I don’t have a car so I use a car club to borrow a car every month or so to go on day trips or something as simple as doing a huge haul at Ikea. It’s cheaper than hiring a car the old fashioned way.
- £50 for a monthly tram pass
- £20 for my monthly cell phone bill
- £8 for my Netflix subscription
A week of spending:
Saturday: Today my friends from out of town came to visit me in Manchester, so I knew up front that this would probably be an expensive weekend as I would take them around and show them all the sights and sounds.
A return tram ticket into the city centre is £7, then I spend £18 on dinner at a nice place, two tacos and a margarita.
Then I spend £8 at the Co-op on the way back because I wanted some snacks to eat while watching a movie once I got home.
Sunday: Continued fun with my friends. We walked around the city and enjoyed various bars and shops from 11am until 11pm! I barely ever go to bars or pubs, so this was a bit of a treat.
I was running late for brunch with my friends, so I caught an Uber into town rather than the tram – £8.
£12 went on brunch at a nice cafe, then £16 went on a new book recommended to me by friends. I’m trying to get back into reading and this one looks great!
I spend £31 at the pub – I paid for a round of drinks and some snacks after lots of walking. It’s one of the nice pubs in Manchester perfect for tourists, so a little expensive. They bought the next two rounds at another bar, so it all evened out.
Then I spend £8 at an arcade bar – one soda and £5 of tokens to play some games.
Dinner at a nice restaurant – including a couple of mocktails – comes to £25. I had to pay my friend back for the weed he bought me a week back and he prompted me to pay him. I don’t spend money on alcohol or going out partying really, so £20 on weed as my only vice lasts me a month or two.
Monday: Back at work today so typically I’ll only spend for lunch and dinner. I don’t eat breakfast and most of the time I’ll get a coffee at work (unless I’m grumpy and need a pickmeup from Greggs or Nero!)
Each month I’ll usually have one or two big spends planned. This month I knew I’d have to spend big on some flights, and also getting my hair dyed. I’ll then try to keep all other purchases to a minimum (other than food or hanging with friends which are generally pretty loose and I tend not to budget for).
Also, I use Monzo, so all my purchases are rounded-up and the extra pennies/50p go into my savings account. Since 28 September this has already provided me with an extra £28 in savings.
I spend £194 on tickets to Sweden – I’m meeting a friend in December in Stockholm and needed to buy ahead so they didn’t get too expensive. This was the cheapest possible flight I could find.
£7 goes on lunch – I wanted something healthy today so went with a salad box from Friska then £7 at Aldi for a cheap pizza for dinner and some toiletries.
I have chronic illnesses so I have to fill quite a few prescriptions each month. Today I pick up one of them for £9.
Tuesday: £3 at Greggs for a grumpy breakfast. I needed that bacon and sausage with red sauce and a cheeky flat white to get through the morning.
£6 at the local Chinese supermarket for lunch – two packets of noodles and some kimchi to last me two different lunches.
£10 at Tesco for dinner Went full hog and got a bunch of ingredients to make tacos from scratch, including guacamole and dessert.
Thanks to being chronically ill, I had to have a specialist appointment in Leeds. As a result I spend £68 on train tickets for me and a friend acting as a support person. Trains are expensive and being unwell is not cheap.
Wednesday: Today I had to go to Leeds for my specialist doctor appointment which required some added expenses I don’t typically expect.
£8 for two flat whites and a muffin – shouted my support person/BFF a coffee as it was an early morning train and I felt bad for dragging her along (but extremely grateful for her company).
I then got an £8 Uber from Leeds station to the hospital… the wrong hospital, so that meant £6 on another Uber racing to the actual hospital I meant to go to.
Then £6 went on another Uber from the second hospital back to the Leeds train station.
Lunch is £9 at Pret a Manger – a sandwich, a coffee, and a cookie. I needed something quick and tasty before racing back onto the train and heading back to work in Manchester for the rest of the day.
My hands have been super dry so I buy a £5 hand cream from The Body Shop.
After work I was in the bathroom cleaning my piercing and the ball fell off and down the sink. Nightmare. Had to race to Claire’s Accessories (the only place open at that time) and buy a new piercing for £14 so the hole doesn’t close up. Not planned, and I was NOT happy to have to buy from Claires!
£6 at Tesco – This was for dinner, something small and simple so I could just go to bed after a nightmarish day.
Thursday: Lunch is £8 at Leon, where I meet up with a friend before she leaves the country.
Then for dinner, I grab bits for a nice creamy pasta for £6. Tesco didn’t have the salmon that I wanted, so I had to go down the road to M&S to grab some for £5. Usually I don’t buy food here because it’s a bit too expensive, but it was out of stock at Tesco.
Friday: Another grumpy morning, another Greggs breakfast to cheer me up – £3.
£10 at a Korean restaurant. I went out for dinner with a friend to catch up. Only ordered one thing from the menu and no drinks to try and keep costs down.
£4 at Sainsburys – on the way home after dinner I decided to treat myself because it was Friday night and get some ice cream from Sainsbury’s. Craaaazy Friday night in front of the telly with a Magnum, what a dream.
Total spent this week: £539.
How Hannah could save:
We spoke to the experts over at money tracking app Cleo to find out how Hannah can save better (and what we can learn from her spending).
Note: the advice featured is specific to one individual and doesn’t constitute financial advice, especially for a London budget.
Ever heard of a supermarket? Your food spend is frivolous and you know it. The munchies probably aren’t helping either.
Main vice:
We totted up all the food spending you got through over the week. It took us a while, but the results are in: £147. That’s £588 per month i.e. £188 more than your rent (and it’s not even listed as a bill).
Living in the moment is zen and all, but a bit of foresight is going to make for a much more exciting financial future. We suggest you kick things off with a weekly supermarket shop.
For anyone reading: we’re sure you’ve heard it before, but meal planning works a treat when it comes to saving. You’re unlikely to ready yourself for a solid bank balance with a plethora of ad hoc Prets.
Where you’re going right:
£15k in a pensions-type scheme. Love it.
Roundups? Fantastic. We’ve also heard you can hide money from yourself using clever algorithms…
We’re big fans of spending on experiences, so we back that flight to Sweden.
Here’s your spending plan:
Safe to spend: £1,200 for the monthly expenses you mentioned, plus a weekly supermarket trip and money for your healthcare needs. We’ve also factored in £10 a week for your grumpy Greggs fund, and let you keep £6 a day for your lunch (we know habits are hard to break).
Safe to burn: £360 for the pub, meals out and the odd accidental Uber. This includes your two big spends a month, so choose carefully.
Safe to save: £340, which means it should take you less than two months to wipe that £500 of credit card debt and get on that flat deposit.
Bottom line:
Contrary to the popular saying, it’s time to stop putting your money where your mouth is.
How I Save is a weekly series about how people spend and save, out every Thursday. If you’d like to anonymously share how you spend and save – and get some expert advice on how to sort out your finances – get in touch by emailing ellen.scott@metro.co.uk.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/24/save-28-year-old-senior-marketing-executive-manchester-16750-saved-10973928/
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