Typically, when people are looking to cut costs and save some money, they turn to cut down on smaller expenses. Stuff like eating out, getting takeaways, buying a certain premium beauty product, or taking taxi rides are regularly reduced or altogether removed in an attempt to have more money by the end of the month.
Even though the standard practice is to shed some of the less essential costs, the best and easiest ways of saving money have to do with reducing the amount of your biggest expenditures. Stuff like entertainment, housing bills, and food shopping can all be tinkered to drop monthly costs and potentially save you a lot of money.
Reducing your biggest monthly expenditure
Due to the arduous process of getting one in the first place, so many people just accept that their mortgage rate is what it is, even though there can be cheaper options out there. Initially getting a mortgage is an experience that is daunting for many but there are specialist online services such as Trussle to help you compare mortgages, where consumers can see available rates for themselves and even remortgage in order to get a better deal.
There are several ways in which such brokers can help you to get a good mortgage rate, and while you’ll want to do your part and maintain a good credit score, they can easily help you to remortgage to a better rate. Through remortgage calculator on the above site, you can find out if you can save money each month by getting your mortgage moved elsewhere.
Going food shopping at the right times
We’re not going to tell you to cut out the foods and brands that you like or start shopping at budget supermarkets because everyone has their own taste preferences and ideal shopping experience. Instead, all that you need to do is make sure that you don’t go shopping when you’re in a particular state: hungry.
As relayed by Forbes, being hungry ups your desire to buy stuff, and not just food, either. Studies have shown that when hungry, people seek to acquire up to 70% more stuff than non-hungry people, even if those items are as uninteresting as binder clips. Worse still, in stores like supermarkets, the whole layout of the store is designed to incite impulse purchases, which has an even greater impact on hungry shoppers.
Realising the new world of entertainment
Almost automatically, we assume that we need a TV Licence to keep us covered for watching all of the terrestrial channels and maybe even a subscription service to satellite TV providers. However, with the rise of streaming services, this has become less and less necessary; as Lifehack reports, as almost all streaming services are cheaper than cable or dish TV.
If you’ve all but fully integrated your entertainment time to streaming services like Prime Video or Netflix, you don’t need to pay the £100-odd for a TV Licence each year. Just check what is covered by the TV Licence and make sure you don’t prefer to watch such content online, for example on iPlayer. Also, you may find that it’s cheaper to use the streaming services offered by the likes of Sky over continually paying for the box subscription.
Remortgaging for a better rate, not shopping while you’re hungry (which includes online shopping), and considering switching to an internet-based entertainment lifestyle could easily save you a fair bit of cash.
