Money saving hacks to try in your lunch break | Lifetise
By: Caroline Hughes
Tags: Budgeting, Money, Saving, Money Management, Finance

Want to know how to save more? If you constantly find yourself stretched thin when it comes to money, or living paycheck to paycheck, now might be a good time to reflect on some of your spending and saving habits. But…it’s nearing the end of a difficult year, and we’re guessing that the last thing you want to do is take a long, hard look at your money management.

To make things simple, we’ve put together 4 quick money saving hacks that you can start implementing right this second. They could leave with you a lot more in your account at the end of each month. Have a read through some of our ideas and you might thank us later!

#1 Cancel those pesky outdated subscriptions

Tracing back through your bank statement and having a closer look at your monthly outgoings can be a huge money-saver. You might be subscribed to a magazine that you’re no longer excited to read. Or maybe you’re still signed up with Deliveroo Plus from your free trial three months ago.

Cutting out tiny outgoings might not seem like a big deal, but in the long run you could be saving yourself between £40 — £60 per year. If you’re not signed up to any pesky outdated services, why not consider going halves on some of your current subscriptions? Whether that’s splitting the cost of your Netflix account with your best friend. Or sharing your Spotify subscription with your partner — why not have your cake and eat it too (at half the price)?

#2 Commit to a savings challenge

One of the quickest hacks is to set yourself a small regular savings target.

Here’s our Lifetise members’ favourite challenge:

Monday to Sunday challenge

Save £1 on Monday, £2 on Tuesday and continue until you reach £7 on Sunday.

You’ll save £28 a week (that’s about £120 a month) and a whopping £1,456 if you keep it up for a whole year.

Small challenges like these are fantastic for highlighting areas which we can cut down our spending in. If you’re ready to really level-up your saving skills, a tried and tested trick to manage your money is the 50/30/20 method, which we hugely recommend.

#3 Switch to a 0% credit card

Do you have credit cards with high interest rates? Paying 18% or 20% interest on purchases you buy can really get costly if you don’t pay it off quickly. Plus, if you’ve racked up a bit of debt on your credit card, you’re probably finding that all your money goes on paying the interest. The actual debt bit never seems to go down!

See if you can switch to a 0% balance transfer card. We don’t recommend applying for a new card until you have checked you’re likely to get it. Because this can affect your credit score. The good news is a lot of credit card companies allow you to check that you are eligible before you apply.

Why is a 0% card so good? Well, you can transfer your existing credit card balance to this new card. All of a sudden, you won’t be paying 18% or 20% interest on that debt. So whatever repayments you make will actually pay off the balance, not just the interest.

Plus, if you need to make any more purchases on your credit card, you won’t pay interest on those either for a fixed time period (often up to 18 months into the future). So you can make a plan to pay off the total amount over a period of time without any interest.

Let’s say you owe £1,000 already on your credit card. You also need to buy a new laptop and it will cost you around £750. So you’ll have a total of £1,750 to pay back.

If you get a 0% credit card that gives you zero interest for 12 months. You can split that £1,750 into 12 monthly repayments. Which means you’ll pay £145 a month. Much more manageable.

#4 Create a fun and inventive weekly meal plan

This might be an unexpected one, but making a weekly meal plan can be an incredible way to cut down on spending. Do you frequently find yourself heading into Sainsbury’s to do a small shop and leaving with multiple impulse buys that you grabbed off the shelf? If this sounds like you, planning out your meals in advance and writing a list of the ingredients needed, can help you to do a focused food shop and avoid impulse spending.

Committing yourself to trying out new recipes will also help you to become more creative in the kitchen, and will stop you from ordering that late night KFC from JustEat or Deliveroo.

Here’s some inspo for delicious, wallet-friendly meals.

Chicken satay skewers drenched in sticky, peanutty goodness from Mob Kitchen

Comforting and filling vegan rainbow dansak from Bootstrap Cook

This 🤤 drool-worthy French onion soup from Budget Bytes.

Let us know which of these money saving hacks you’re going to try and share how you get on. We love a good success story, and want to know whether our tips and tricks work well for you. Like what you’ve read? If you want to learn more about how to level-up your money management skills, have a browse through some of our thought-provoking articles on saving here.