Here’s how to save big money

You look at your account and feel shocked, thinking: This can’t be happening! Someone must have stolen my card and bought a load of diamonds and gold with it or something. In a major strop, you then open the transaction list and go through it item by item. You think: Uber: Oh yeah, last weekend ... drunk at four in the morning. And then ten minutes later there’s a transaction where you bought a Pope’s hat from the online costume shop! Oh no, what was I thinking? Three days later, three Hawaiian shirts from the second-hand shop. All right, but they were a kind of investment in the future. The keyword here being ‘electricity prices’. Or something like that. Netflix, Disney Plus, Spotify: Yeah, yeah and yeah again. Momos, cocktails, a new pop-up – a quick trip to the local bar because a friend was visiting from abroad. And then ‘What, back out again one day later’?

And so it went on, until I realised: my card hadn’t been stolen. I was just spending too much money. Oops. But that’s just it: saving money doesn’t always have to hurt. Sometimes it’s pretty easy. I’ll tell you how.

Tip 1: The subscriptions thing

Netflix, Spotify, Disney Plus, AppleTV, maybe 15 photo apps designed to pimp my pics for Instagram, a yoga app that was supposed to help make me flexible since the pandemic (haha). They’ve got to go. So I looked at all the subs in the app store, and I asked myself: do I really need these? A mouse click later and they were cancelled. You should try it – it’s worth it. And of course you don’t have to give up everything. You can share passwords, for one thing. 

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Tip 2: The exercise thing

Armed with good intentions and new jogging shoes, I marched into the gym on 3 January. I told the instructor that there’s nothing I’d like better than doing strength training for an hour, four times a week. Not to mention at least 30 minutes of endurance training before that. Goes without saying. And now? It’s a joke. I go maybe four times a month. If that. Actually, no, that’s a bit of a lie. It’s more like twice. Running in the park’s definitely a cheaper option and a colleague of mine regularly trains using free fitness lessons on You Tube. Next year I can definitely skip the expensive fitness sub. What about you?

Tip 3: The restaurant thing

The nice thing about city life is always having a new restaurant, bar or café to discover. But eating out regularly is a drain on the cash. So now I give eating out for lunch a miss twice a week. Instead, I plan ahead, cook at home and bring my Tupperware along to the office. My colleagues have started looking jealously at my food. Or maybe they feel sorry for me. It’s hard to say. But one thing’s for sure: I’ve saved a lot of money since I started doing that.

Tip 4: The shopping thing

I don’t know about you, but if I go to the supermarket on an empty stomach, I mostly come back with loads of stuff I never intended buying. And it gobbles up your cash. My colleague’s a bit smarter than me here. She cleverly makes a list of everything she wants to buy and also looks online for deals. Like for loo paper. Or detergent. OK, OK, I admit it. I’m often still too lazy to do all of that. And too hungry to think straight. But nobody’s perfect, right? Maybe you can do it, though?

Tip 5: The gas and electric thing

Everyone’s talking about it, but it’s hard to imagine what our lives will be like using less gas and electricity. Putting on two jumpers and thick socks at home is easy. But what other things can you do? Here are a few suggestions that I’ve already integrated pretty well into my everyday life: cooking on a low heat and using a pan lid to avoid losing the residual heat. Use economy fittings on taps and shower heads. Avoid pre-washing and high wash temperatures and skip the final drying cycle. Replace filament or halogen lamps with LED lights. And, very important this one: kiss standby mode goodbye. Know any other good energy-saving tricks? Then share them with me.

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