Frugality on SavingNinja

How Expensive is Living in Sweden?

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 06:31:38 +0000

Before moving to Sweden everyone told me how expensive it would be to live here. Even fellow bloggers scoffed at the prospect of the _Saving_Ninja moving to Sweden!? The country with one of the highest income tax and VAT rates in the world! I wouldn’t be able to call myself the SavingNinja for much longer, they said.

When I first arrived here, I found it hard to swallow the insanely high food prices, it seemed everything that we usually bought back in the UK was at least 3 times as expensive, sometimes even more than that. Eating out was another big shock, paying over £25 for a main course per person is the norm in any type of restaurant here, even for a burger and chips.

Your average McDonalds meal will cost around £10, and a 440ml ‘Swedish pint’ of beer in most restaurants will also cost you around £10. Don’t even ask about the cost for a bottle of wine. I thought we would be spending SO MUCH MORE, my FIRE plans would be sullied for sure.

Now that I’ve lived here for over a year, and I’ve settled into a house that I’ve bought with my wife, it’s about time that I go back to the Budget Spreadsheet and calculate our expenses. So, now it’s time for the moment of truth, how much more expensive is it to live in Sweden over the UK?

Is Living in the UK Cheap?

One of my most popular SavingNinja posts was this one; How to Live Off 10k Per Year . It documented what my living expenses were living in the UK and what I did to reduce costs and live on under minimum wage whilst still living a high-quality life.

The TL;DR of that post is that my mandatory yearly spending was £7,856. Adding in £1,500 per year for holidays, and £150 per month on spending/miscellaneous money, that came to £9,356 per year. Which everyone found crazy!

I had people at London meet ups bring up this same blog post even years later saying how impressive that low level of spending was. I’d like to take credit for it, but really it wasn’t that hard, once I’d reduced my cost for the big expenses like my car and my home, everything else came naturally - I’m a cheapskate by nature!

This old post will be the perfect yard stick to compare against my Swedish spending now that I’ve filled in this years Swedish budget on the SavingNinja Budgeting Spreadsheet . Remember, the £10k per year post was released before I started commuting into London, after that my yearly spend went up to around £11,153.

England Vs Sweden The Big Budget Battle!

I’ll create this budget a little differently than the How to Live Off 10k Per Year post. Instead of naming my own expenses, I’ll state the total cost for both me and my wife, then split it at the end to compare. Some things are slightly different, between me and my wife’s expenses, for example she has to spend £7 per month for her SIM card, I get mine from work; she also has slightly increased costs for buying gifts for her family and commuting into Stockholm on the bus, I’ll omit these differences in the list below for comparisons sake as the prior post focused on my expenses alone.

Food: £50 per month
Now this is kind of cheating a little bit. My company pays around £200 per month after tax onto a food card which is meant to cover lunches when working from home, but this same card can be used to buy normal groceries so I’ve docked £200 off the food budget for both me and my wife.

BUT, at effectively £250 per month, I’ve got to say, this shocked me! I thought Sweden would be WAY more expensive in this category. But it seems that even though some things are 3 times more expensive, some food items are about the same price as they would be in the UK, and some food items are even slightly cheaper. We just stopped buying the really costly food items and found new cheap favourites.

Salmon is one of those things that works out cheaper, in Asda the cheapest fresh salmon would cost you around £11 per kilogram, or £19 for a half-decent looking salmon. In Sweden you can get a really nice full salmon for £8 per kilogram.

We still cook our favourite meals from scratch, buy a fair amount of alcohol (although we now buy box wine as it works out as £5 per bottle, just like in the UK,) and we buy lots of vegetables and fruit. Good cuts of steak are not actually priced too high here either, in-fact, we’ve definitely snagged a few deals by buying in bulk and freezing. All things considered, a 25% increase in food costs isn’t too bad (if we didn’t have the food card paying for most of it.)

UK food: £200 - 75% decrease
Winner: Sweden (kinda)

Housing costs: £890 per month (mortgage, ground rent, house insurance),
The mortgage we had in the UK (before we got an employee discount mortgage loan) was £638 per month. Our Swedish housing costs £253 more. A little higher, but not too bad considering we’re in a more expensive home here. We paid £195k for our UK house in the South East, in Sweden for our sea view property we paid about £300k, our loan is roughly 25% larger.

There are also some other things to consider. We don’t pay council tax here, and our water bill and bin collection is included with the ground rent. Combined, these two expenses came to £144 total each month in the UK, taking that off the £253 difference and a £109 increase seems like a steal considering the house price difference.

UK housing: £782 - 12% increase
Winner: draw

Bills: £95 per month
The only bills we pay in Sweden are electricity and internet, gas isn’t very common here. The electricity bill comes to around £74 per month and the internet, £21. My company pays for my phone and an unlimited service plan. We actually spend less on TV here as we now use my wife’s parents Netflix account for free. There’s no such thing as the TV license here either (not that we paid it in the UK anyway!)

UK bills: £100 - 5% decrease
Winner: Sweden

Transportation: Insurance £568, tax £96, fuel £120, service/repairs £1,400 (hopefully less!)
Total: £784 - £2,184 per year
This car is the first ever car that me and my wife have split equally, as we both don’t need one for work. We bought this compact van to make our life a little easier and so we can go on more trips around Sweden without worrying about renting a car. We also hope that leasing the car out on GoMore will cover at least half of this cost (we’ve leased it out twice already!) The low fuel cost of £10 per month is because we barely use it, it sits on the driveway waiting to be leased out most of the time, and the two times it’s been rented they’ve even left us with a bit more fuel in it.

We preliminarily budgeted for £1,400 per year in service and repair costs. This could be higher or lower, but we’re hoping it won’t cost us much as it’s only a few years old (famous last words.)

Miscellaneous: £35 per month
£25 for pet expenses, mainly food, and £10 for essentials like shampoo, bubble bath, and toilet roll. Over the years we’ve become more zero-waste so we don’t have many consumable purchases. We use hankies that my wife made out of old shirts, we have Swedish cloths for cleaning and reusable napkins instead of kitchen roll, and we compost and recycle everything so no bin bags! My wife has everything reusable; MoonCup , and a Magic Make-up Remover Cloth , saving over £100 per year. Our clothes wash better with an EcoEgg and it saves us SO MUCH compared to buying consumable detergent. Next level is a bidet.

Holiday pot: £3,000 per year
We decided to keep our holiday pot exactly the same, we definitely didn’t spend all of this the last few years but we hope to try to in the coming ones. To gauge this figure we calculated our total expenses for the snowboarding holiday we went on last Christmas. This was in a pretty expensive area of Sweden and adding up the costly 7h train tickets (which we booked first-class,) two 6-8 day ski-pass’s, 10 nights stay in self-catering hotel-style AirBnB apartment right next to the slope, and some fun money for restaurants, it came to £1,460 total.

We realise this was the cheapest we could go for a snowboarding holiday of that length here, and for the next one we may want to stay somewhere a little nicer with a sauna - at least for a few nights - but we also realised that if we went on a summer holiday, we’d spend way less. Our summer trips generally involve a bit of a pricier plane ticket and then slumming it in an AirBnB and exploring each day.

One of our favourite holidays was to the Czech Republic and the total for that trip was under £500 for the both of us, even with eating out most days! We managed a week in New York for under £1,000 for Christmas a few years ago. We explored all of the Swedish West Coast this summer and only paid the price of fuel as we wild-camped.

We think we’ll be able to go on a snowboarding holiday every year and continue exploring the world for £1,500 per person each year, but we don’t mind increasing this if we need to!

Luxury Pot: £1,500 per year
This has actually dropped considerably. Our previous budget had the luxury pot total amount at £2,400. In the past I was accounting for upgrading our house like renovating the kitchen and bathroom. Here in Sweden, I don’t feel like they’re is much else to do, at least not for the next year.

We tried to add up what big things we might buy per year, even if we were to buy one big-ish thing like a SteamDeck , or a new snowboard, or a shed, we’d still come under this amount; so £1,500 seemed like a nice figure in case we wanted to buy something extra. We’re lucky that we bought all of the things we needed/wanted when we first moved here before doing this budget!

Fun fact: I haven’t bought any new clothing for at least 2 years. I still want to decrease the amount that I do own so everything can fit into a backpack.

The Grand Reveal!

So, there you have it, our Swedish budget complete. Here are the figures:

Necessary Expenses
Between £13,204 and £15,388 per year combined.
£6,602 - £7,694 each.

This depends on if the compact van costs us anything in yearly repairs, how much those cost, and if we’ve not leased it out to cover some of the expenses. We’ll account for the maximum, but expect the minimum.

But, hang on a minute…. Even £7,694. That’s UNDER the necessary expenses total of the 10k Per Year post which was £7,856. Whaaaat!

Using the 25x rule, this essential spending makes me effectively 138% FI based on a net worth of £271k.

Mind blown.

What is actually going on here? Sweden should be more expensive. The answer seems to be the employee food card accounting for £2,400 of our food budget each year, this warps things a bit, because if I truly did retire, I wouldn’t have access to this. I also wouldn’t have access to the employee phone and plan for that matter. But even still, adding on £1,200 still brings the maximum per person to £8,894 - not too much more than the aforementioned post. And certainly way less than my London commute budget.

I think this points to the fact that Sweden isn’t more expensive than the UK. If you live a pretty minimalistic life anyway, and adapt your grocery list to new tastes, it’s kind of the same. And over here, you won’t be strapped with £50k student loan debt, you’ll get 12 months fully paid maternity and paternity leave, and you’ll never have to worry about health care, even old-age live in costs are paid for (you won’t have to squander your inheritance paying for nursing homes like in the UK!) Not to mention the free child care.

That’s pretty cool.

Adding Luxury to The Mix

We decided to budget for £4,500 in total for luxury, which is the £3,000 holiday pot and an ‘anything else’ luxury pot. This brings our total figures to:

Total Expenses
Between £17,704 and £19,888 per year combined.
£8,852 - £9,944 each.

This puts us way below the £24,316 London commute budget and around the same as the £9,356 each budget in the 10k Per Year post .

If we manage to stick to this budget, it should allow us to save 76.93% of our total take home pay. 83.85% for me and 63% for my wife. This is a number is similar to our post-London budget prediction, but in that one I was saving £40k per year into a pension, tax free. This one see’s most of that 83.85% going into my pre-pension pot, which is awesome!

I’ve got to say, I’m pleasantly surprised that we managed to stay under the £10k per year mark.

Maybe I should stop moaning about how expensive Sweden is?

Caveat

I know what a lot of you are thinking. You’re not truly FIRE, most of your investments are in a pension. Yes, yes, I know. I could argue to you all day about building a pension bridge , and about side-hustle income like my new writing gig . But the truth is: I’d probably struggle if I did quit today. It would also be foolish of me to do so, what happens if we have children or want to move to some place else? Our budget will surely change.

But this post is an exercise in statistics and budgeting. I never intended to actually retire when I reached my ’leanFI’ number. I plan on staying with my current employer for at least another 4 years, and working in some capacity after that, along with creating many more passive income streams . This should make the exercise of ‘would I actually be able to retire?’ purely theoretical. When I do break out of the cave I should be a lot more safe, or fatFI as some like to call it.

But that’s not to say I can’t call myself Theoretically FI right now! :]

How to get a First Class Flight for Free

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 06:30:48 +0000

First-class flights on British Airways are pretty special. Not only do you get access to a luxury chair that can convert into a fully flat bed and is lined with the same Italian leather that they use in Maseratis, but you also get to sample some of the most exquisite wine and food in the world.

A first-class ticket grants you access to the renowned Concorde Lounge where you can fill up on unlimited bottles of £200 Champagne, get a massage, or even take a shower.

These luxuries, however, come at a staggering price. A general transatlantic flight on British Airways first-class can set you back up to £10,000 per person. So how did we manage to get ourselves two first-class tickets for free?

As regular readers of my blog know, I’m extremely frugal. I would never dream of buying a ludicrously priced first-class BA ticket with my own hard-earned cash.

What I did do though, is utilise Avios points.

Avios is a rewards system where spenders can use cards such as the British Airways American Express card to earn flight points whilst they spend. A first-class flight grabs you the best value when spending your Avios points, and it allows people who would never usually pay for this ticket to experience the luxury that’s on offer.

Different flight destinations cost different amounts of Avios points ranging from 100,000 to 300,000. So it could cost up to 600,000 Avios points to get two first-class tickets. Some people would scoff at that figure as with most cards you only get rewarded 1 Avios point for every £1 spent.

With my £10,000 per year annual budget, those 600,000 points would take a hell of a long time to accumulate. But, thankfully, there are loopholes to abuse!

Here’s what I did.

Step 1: Open an American Express Gold Card. This card is free for 1 year, then £140 per year afterward, but you’ll be cancelling before the year is out so you’ll never pay the fee. Make sure you get referred to the Gold Card, this way you’ll earn 12,000 points instead of 10,000. My referral link is here , click ‘view other cards’ for the gold one.

Step 2: Order a companion card so all of your household spendings can go through the Gold Card. You need to spend £3,000 in the first 3 months to get the ‘welcome bonus’. All of your spendings should be on this card. If you think you won’t make the spending in time, buy Amazon gift cards to push you over the line.

Step 3: After 3 months you’ll hit the welcome reward which will grant you 10,000 reward points (12,000 if referred), you should have also amassed an extra 3,000 points from the spending itself.

Total points: 15,000

Step 4: Refer your partner via the American Express Referal Program. Have them open up a Gold Card. You’ll earn 6,000 points for this.

Total points: 21,000

Step 5: Do the exact same thing for your partners’ card, shift all spending onto this one. After 3 months you should have hit the welcome bonus again.

Total points: 33,000

Step 6: Cancel the Gold Cards. Make sure you’ve converted your Membership Reward Points into Avios points before you cancel the cards to avoid losing them.

Step 7: Pick a new American Express Rewards Card which awards Avios points such as the British Airways card and repeat the process again from Step 1.

After you’ve not had a certain brand of card (the Membership Rewards cards and British Airways cards are different brands) for 6 months you’ll be eligible for the welcome bonuses again.

Doing this referral trick will allow you to be in a constant state of earning referral and welcome bonuses throughout the year.

There’s one more trick that you can do in order to double your points when you’re ready to buy your first-class ticket: getting a companion voucher.

How to get a Companion Voucher

Some of the cards reward you with a Companion Voucher when you reach a certain spending tier. This item allows you to take a companion on your reward flight for no extra Avios points, effectively doubling your points.

There are a couple of methods that you can use to get one of these handy vouchers. The first is with the standard British Airways American Express card.

With this card, you need to spend £20,000 in a single year to get the voucher. This is a tough spend for quite a lot of people, so I’d only go down this route if you know you’ll have to buy some big-ticket items throughout the year like a new boiler or other home improvement purchases.

The alternate method and the one that I used to get my Companion Voucher is to get a British Airways American Express Platinum Plus card.

This card costs £195 for the year, but it awards you with a whopping 25,000 Avios points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend, which more than covers the cost of the card.

With the Platinum Plus card, you only have to spend £10,000 in the year to get a Companion Voucher, this is a lot more achievable.

Something to also consider with the plus card is that the voucher lasts longer. With the standard card, it only lasts for 1 year before it expires, with the plus you have 2.

Conclusion

Using these methods we managed to save up enough Avios points to get two first-class flights to America in only 2 years. It added an awesome flare of luxury to our already exciting honeymoon, and we’re now saving up again!

Here’s what I learned along the way.

The companion voucher expires! I had no idea that this was the case when I purchased the £195 Platinum Plus card.

The two years that they give you to use the voucher also begins as soon as you hit your £10,000 spend, which in our case was a lot sooner than we thought.

You also need to return from your trip before the voucher expires, and as Avios flights have limited availability, you usually need to book 11 months in advance, this makes for a very small window of opportunity to book your flight once you receive your companion voucher.

You also might not yet have amassed the total Avios you need by the time you need to book your flight.

Due to this, I would advise you to only begin focusing on your Companion Voucher when you’ve got all of the points you need to book your first-class flight. This will save you a lot of stress!

Avios flights are quite limited. We had actually planned to travel around Japan for our honeymoon but we didn’t realise there were no first-class flights offered for this route. Due to our efforts with getting the card (and our companion voucher running out), we decided to go on our next best holiday instead which was an American road-trip!

Make sure you check where you can go with a first-class ticket beforehand to avoid disappointment.

You have to pay ‘tax’ for your flights. The small print which British Airways adds to their rewards scheme is that you still have to pay fuel tax for your flights even if booked through Avios. These generally cost around the same as an economy ticket (we paid £550 per person for our flights).

It’s a small price to pay when you’re getting a first-class ticket worth £10,000, but make sure you realise that you’ll need to stump up a bit of cash beforehand!

I’ve found Avios to be the best form of spending rewards out there. The gold card even gives you two free airport lounge visits per year (unlimited booze and food!).

Avios points can also be used for extremely low-cost inter-European flights, costing as little as 10,000 Avios with a £15 fuel charge, pretty awesome.

Have any of you taken advantage of this great rewards scheme? Let me know in the comments below. I’ll leave you with some pictures of our awesome first-class flight experience!

Posh first-class check-in

Got given some honeymoon freebies

Had a bit too much champers by this point!

My - wife - joined me for dinner, first time we’d eaten caviar (not a fan!)

How to get a Free Degree!

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 10:02:12 +0000

University has been the ticket into the white collar world since the inception of capitalism. Of course - there are other, normally more difficult, ways to gain entry into this world, but needing the ‘checkbox’ of a degree is still becoming ever more prevalent in the industry.

Student loans are too expensive, even with tuition fees rising by three times in 2012, you still need that little 3-word line on your CV that says; University degree - achieved.

I don’t plan on paying for my kids to go to university, why? Spending money on your children is the wrong way to distribute your wealth , for one. But there are other, more specific reasons why I’m against the notion.

A Bachelor’s Degree in Growing Up

I’m grateful for my university degree. Whilst living away from home, not only did I meet my beautiful wife to be (in the first week), I also earned a degree in ‘growing up’.

University halls are kind of like unconventional boot camps for teenagers. You live your first year in squalor, eating nothing but bacon sandwiches made in the most unhygienic kitchens, wandering aimlessly around the crack-den-esque hallways and listening to non-stop drum and bass by your resident DJ, whilst completely decimating your own sleep cycle.

But, somehow, you realise that you can’t live like this forever and in the process, you learn; how to wash your clothes, do your food shopping, socialise in a normal way, and interact with other people.

You eventually (kind of) learn how to be a functioning member of society.

Your Entry into the Club

I’m grateful that getting a degree gave me the ‘entrance stamp’ into my white-collar job as a software engineer. Without it, I wouldn’t have landed the job which I currently have, it’s so corporate that they simply reject anyone without a degree. It’s a requirement, not a nice-to-have.

I would have undoubtedly still been able to land a general software engineering job at some point, I just would have had to climb the corporate rungs a lot slower. I’ve known very few colleagues in my career who haven’t got at least an undergraduate degree, and I know they worked extra hard to get to where they were.

Pure Selfishness, or Liberalism?

Even though I am thankful for my degree, I don’t actually believe in them. I gained more relevant technical skills in just 2 weeks on my first engineering job than I did in a whole 3 years at university.

What I do believe is that degrees (most of them) are actually a disguised form of tax for the white collar worker. A way for capitalism’s gears to keep on turning. Revenue from Universities in the UK for the year of 2016/17 was a staggering 44.27bn. It’s no wonder that they want corporations to insist on you needing one.

The most beneficial skills I learned from my ‘degree’ were how to live independently. However, these same skills could have been gained from any number of other expeditions, ones that don’t require the burden of a lifetime debt.

Do you Really need a Degree?

You can still earn a very good salary at home with matched betting and other entrepreneurial pursuits . As technology advancements continue, the entrepreneurial mindset will undoubtedly increase. And if there is one thing that an entrepreneur doesn’t need, it’s a certificate stating where they studied. Entrepreneurs care about determination, being good at what they do, and getting results, not superfluous pats on the back.

But the world hasn’t changed for the better just yet, unfortunately, for certain careers, you still need to obtain that little (but expensive) piece of paper.

How to get a Degree for Free

There are ways to avoid burdening yourself or your children with huge amounts of debt, and FIRE might help you to do it!

Moving to Scotland can bag you a free degree. Scotland is the only place in the United Kingdom which gives its residents a free education. They also house some of the best universities in the country such as the University of Edinburgh.

All you’ll need to do is move there 3 years before your kids are set to go to university and then they will qualify for free tuition. You’ll also benefit from extremely low house prices in some really beautiful places.

Fancy this castle?

If you’re from elsewhere in the EU (not England, Northern Ireland or Wales), you don’t even need to live in Scotland for 3 years to qualify for free tuition, you can just go there to study!

For the people who are from England, Wales or Northern Island and aren’t able to move to Scotland for 3 years, don’t worry - there are still plenty of options for you.

UK Students can currently go to 11 different EU countries to get a free degree, take your pick from the list below:

Germany

Sweden

Norway

Finland

Denmark

Poland

Hungary

Austria

Greece

Croatia

Slovenia

You can even pop over to France and study for as little as £158 per year. That’s the cheapest student loan you’ll ever get!

Damn, I’m annoyed that I didn’t know about this back when I was searching for a university, me and my partner wracked up a huge 70k worth of debt between us. We could have had a massive kick start in saving for financial independence if we’d been a little smarter, and we would have got to experience a new culture too.

Conclusion

So, why am I not paying for my kids to go to University? Because they shouldn’t need a piece of paper to prove their worth, but if they did, they should be able to get it for free anyway!

What are your views on paying for your child’s education?

How to Work in the City on a Budget

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 07:30:22 +0000

Since I started commuting and working in London almost two years ago, I’ve met a lot of people that say they can’t save money due to big cities being too expensive.

London is one of the most expensive places in the world, but I’ve learned over this period that spending is still a choice. In-fact, I think bigger cities have cheaper options than some of the more rural places, you just need to know what to look for.

All the coffee you can drink

Every city worker needs their coffee fix. Do your wallet a favor and grab a free myWaitrose card here. This let’s you get a free premium ground coffee (Latte, Cappatino or Americano) once per day with any Waitrose store purchase. Grab a 10p Banana or 4p new potato and you’re good to go!

I once had a competition with my work colleagues to find the cheapest item in Waitrose to get a free coffee. I managed to find a very small new potato which cost me 2p. Cheapest coffee ever! I had no shame weighing the potato and selecting my free coffee. I even bought it via my American Express!

They’ve recently changed this service to require your own cup, so make sure you don’t forget to bring your reusable.

Extra Hack: You can sign up to myWaitrose with many different email addresses. They’ll send you a ‘temporary card’ in a PDF file instantly (this lasts forever). Take a picture of this to use in-store. You’ve now got as many 4p coffees as you can drink every day.

Buy a thermos

Another option is to make your coffee at home - All you need is a good thermos . The Waitrose method may actually be cheaper than this, but sometimes you just need that special type of roast.

Thermoses are also good for storing soup or tea and taking on long wintery walks. It’s one of a frugal seekers best weapons!

Avoid eating out

The number 1 spending problem for many city workers is eating out. London has so many options that are sometimes hard to resist. But nothing beats what you can cook at home, you can cook anything you like and to your own taste, and it’s much better for your savings. Some great go-to meals that I always make are Minestroni, pasta salads and chicken noodle soup. Cook them in batch at the weekend to save time.

My old colleague once told me he bought food out for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day in London and spent over £30 on most days, sometimes even as much as £50! That’s a hefty chunk of your potential future fund that you’re throwing down the toilet.

Buy in a supermarket

If you absolutely must buy something to eat, buy food from a supermarket. You can get a loaf of bread for as cheap as 50p in Waitrose. Grab a jar of peanut butter and a bunch of bananas and you have a high-protein snack for the rest of the week (all for under £3.50!) Bring cutlery from home to aide with your preperation. Some other good options are bagels and cream cheese, nachos and hummus or all types of sandwich fillings.

Use apps like Redi

Using mobile applications like this one, you can get discounted meals at top eateries for under a hugely reduced price. I once got a Burrito from Wrap It Up for 99p. Companies use applications like this to try and entice you into their resteraunt with the hope that you’ll make a return trip and pay the full price.

If you absolutely must have your eat out ‘fix’ then be smart about it and use applications like this. It will also take you to some new and exciting places each lunchtime.

NOTE: Redi has now had a name change to ‘Camdem Eats’. Click here to go to their landing page .

Commute in to work

Many Londoners that I meet exclaim that they’ll never get on the property ladder due to London house prices being far too expensive. I always say to them; “Why don’t you buy outside of the city and commute in?”

There are plenty of very cheap areas which are communtable distances to London which are ideal for first time buyers. Basingstoke, Aldershot, Reading and Farnborough are some. You can even find studio apartments for under £100k. You’ve got no excuse to not get on the property ladder.

Don’t miss out on property price increases, real estate are some peoples best asset classes. You can use your 30-45 minute commute to work on your side-hustles, read books or listen to podcasts. I’m writing this right now whilst I’m on my commute! It’s the perfect time to get stuff done.

The benefit of moving further out to cheaper areas is that you’ll always get a seat on the train. If you commute in from towns that are, say 25 minutes away, you’ll almost definitely be standing up for that whole time, unable to do anything productive. You’ll also pay a massive premium on house prices for that extra 10 minutes ‘saved’.

Get a fold up bike

The best thing that I did when I started working in London was getting a fold up bike. I now get from the train station to my office in 10 minutes. If I opted to get on the underground instead, it would take me 30 minutes, I’d have to deal wtih constant delays and I’d also have to pay upward of £1700 per year! No thanks. I’d rather get the free exercise and see the London views instead of have smelly armpits in my face.

Buy a season ticket

Buying your train ticket yearly reduces the cost by a huge amount. For even more savings buy through a credit card like American Express and try to find an offer such as 3% savings when buying through Trainline.

Lot’s of companies offer season ticket loans so that you can benefit from the discounted yearly price, this can be a good option if you don’t have the sufficient funds to buy the ticket right then. I would however recommend against this. Buying through a rewards credit card can gain you some pretty awesome rewards and for most of them, you’d be hitting the welcome bonus instantly. This year I’ve booked two 1st-class flights to America for the price of an economy ticket through Avios!

Use OLIO to be extra thrifty

There are places like Pret all over London that give out free food at the end of the day. Use this application to find out when and where. You’ll also be doing your bit for the environment by helping to decrease food waste.

The benefits of being in a big city like London is the supply of free food is never ending. You will be constantly inundated with free samples in train stations that will happily give you more than 1 if you ask. Places like Itsu and Wasabi reduce their prices massively half an hour before closing time. You can pick up Sushi sets for a 75% reduction in price!

Go to free conferences

This is a great way to network and also get a free lunch. Use websites like X to see what’s on and when. This is especially good for developers. Sky normally hosts free tech meet-ups through-out the year where attendees get free pizza and beer! All in the hope of attracting new hires through their ‘fun culture’.

These tips help make London a cheaper place. I actually spend less money working here than I did working in the south-east where I had no free food or cheap coffees and only expensive pubs with an aggressive ‘You must eat out every Friday’ vibe. Working in London has actually put me off ever eating out whilst at home. I don’t fancy paying £6 for a battered cod or £10 for a shitty Chinese anymore when I know I can get much better quality food in London for under £5. Cities are cheaper… when you know where to look.

Have you got any tips for city working? Let me know in the comments below.

How to Find Cheap High Internet Speed Broadband

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 07:00:18 +0000

If left to fester for longer than the contract period, Broadband and TV package costs add up quickly. Bills can more than double with countless rises throughout the year. This is even more prevalent with Broadband deals.

Did you know that if you actively manage your Broadband and switch when your contract has ended, a Fiber connection is actually cheaper than the standard, slower connection? This is because they’re hoping you won’t switch when your contract is up!

We can beat them at their own game with a little bit of time and scheduling.

Broadband and TV packages, like many other areas in the UK are dominated by big corporations with a lot of money and not much regulation. They use sleazy car sales techniques to rope the gullible into contracts which double or triple in cost when the ‘introductory rate’ has finished and they use scare tactics to make you sign up and stay. The contracts are incredibly hard to cancel and usually have a plethora of connection issues with support call centres reading from scripts.

To put it bluntly; they’re absolutely rubbish. Take a look at TrustPilot for the biggest Broadband providers and you’ll see that most have a 1 star rating. These companies put profits first because they can get away with it. It’s an industry that they own, making it incredibly hard for any disruptors to penetrate it, so they can do what they like.

So, we’re stuck with them. What can we do to pay them as little as possible?

Switch, switch, switch

As with most services that you own, the motto here is to make sure you always switch. Almost all services (unless you find a gem like Bulb <- Use theFIREstarter ’s affiliate link to get £50 off) have an ‘introductory rate’ that ends after your initial contract. This is even the same with most mortgages.

It shouldn’t be like this, companies should be discounting the price for loyal customers who’ve been with them for the longest. But, they’ve found a way that’s earning them more money by tricking the unbeknownst and they’d rather take that route than provide customer satisfaction. In the 21st century, we truly live in a cut-throat digital world.

SO, you must switch when your contract is up. Either switch or negotiate a new deal, unless you want to be stuck paying a hella lot more for your service.

Let’s compare internet plans on offer so we can check them out.

Sky Broadband

£25 per month for 18 months
Then rises to £38.99 per month
35.6% increase in price

Virgin Media

£27 per month for 12 months
Then rises to £42 per month
35.7% increase in price

BT Broadband

£29.99 per month for 18 months
£80 reward card given for new customers (bringing monthly cost down to £25.50 for 18 months)
Then rises to £37.99 per month
32.9% increase in price (taking into account £80 reward card)

Plusnet

£23.50 per month for 18 months
Then rises to £32.98
28.75% increase in price

I couldn’t find any broadband provider that doesn’t hike the prices up for existing customers. What has the world come to?

On average you’ll be paying more than 30% extra if you stay with the same provider, forcing you to switch every 12-18 months.

Luckily, it only takes up a little bit of your time once a year to decrease your bill massively every month.

Cashback sites

These are a must with any contract signings, especially Broadband deals! This is my Quidco cashback history for the last two years of broadband purchases.

Cashback sites even make fiber deals cheaper than standard deals. If you make sure you switch every time your contract ends, you’ll end up with much cheaper internet (faster too!).

From browsing through my top two favorite cashback sites, Quidco and TopCashback , searching ‘broadband’ returns a lot of results. The best offer I found was on Quidco with this BT broadband deal of £125 cashback as well as the BT £140 reward card.

With this exact BT broadband deal, the cost is £39.99 per month, with the £125 Quidco cashback and £140 BT rewards card, the true monthly cost now comes down to £25 per month!

If, when you get to the end of your 18 month contract, you decide to stay on this deal. Your cost would go up to £58.99 per month, more than doubling your monthly cost. Making it even more ludicrous if you decide not to switch.

These cashback offers generally take a few months to come in after you’ve signed up, but I’ve never not been paid. It’s good to get into the habit of checking TopCashback and Quidco before you enter into any new contracts or buy any big ticket items as usually they’ll be some money you can save. These sites work similarly to affiliate hacking[efn_note]Link to guide coming soon[/efn_note] as they’re giving most of the affiliate commission that they earn back to you.

They’re really simple to use and completely free! All you have to do is search what you’re looking for, click on the deal that you want and then click on ‘get cashback’ or ‘go to deal’ and it will automatically redirect you to the product website.

If you’ve not signed up to any cashback sites yet, I’d recommend doing so here (get a £10 cashback bonus through this link!) and here , then you’ll be ready to quickly scan what’s on offer before making a purchase or signing a contract!

Negotiate

Before you actually switch your service, you should first try and negotiate a better deal with your current provider. This is a normal procedure and the cancelling department for your provider will be ready to offer you all of their latest deals to get you to sign up to another 12 or 18 months! Sometimes you may even get a better deal than what’s advertised online.

Before you ring up, you’ll first want to check online to find the best deals that your current provider and others have on offer, including the cashback you can get. Write all of this down and use this as ammo when you’re negotiating.

Next, ring up your current provider and state that you want to cancel. You’ll be fast-tracked through to a smooth talking salesman who will try and get you to stay.

Here are the numbers you need to ring for some of the bigger providers:

Sky Broadband - 0333 759 2632

Virgin Media - 0345 454 1111

BT Broadband - 0800 783 1401

Plusnet - 0800 013 2632

TalkTalk - 0345 172 0088

Again, make sure you find the best deals available and check Quidco /TopCashback .

Take all of the reward cards and cashback, add it together and then divide that with the contract length, then take that off the advertised monthly figure to get your true monthly cost.

Monthly Cost - ((Cashback + Reward Cash) / Contract Length) = True Monthly Cost

Round up

So, to round it all up, here are the ultimate steps to follow to find the cheapest broadband deals (or any other service).

Go to a comparison website like MoneySupermarket or CompareTheMarket (my favorite), search for the cheapest Broadband deals.
Load up Quidco and TopCashback and also search for Broadband cashback offers.
Use the cashback offers and comparison sites to calculate the true monthly cost using the formula above.
Ring up your current provider and say that you want to cancel.
Negotiate the lowest deal you can with the cancellations department. Never accept the first offer (think like you’re bartering at a market).
Decide whether you’ll accept the negotiated price and sign up to a new contract or go with one of the other offers you’ve found.
1. Remember to consider costs such as ‘set-up fee’ or ‘delivery charge’ if your new provider has these as it will effect your true monthly cost.
2. Remember that you can’t switch to your existing provider as a new customer (you can if you’ve not been with them for 12-18 months), but they should offer you at least that deal for you to stay anyway.
Pick an offer and sign up!
Set a reminder or start a Google sheet to remind you when you’ll need to start looking again (in 12 or 18 months time).

NOTE: Broadband providers are really sneaky and make it pretty difficult to set up with a new company on the exact date that your contract ends with your previous company. You can’t actually cancel your broadband and then activate with a new provider without paying hefty ‘disconnection’ and ‘reconnection’ charges.

Most providers also can’t give you an exact date for when you’ll be switched over. This means that it will be less hassle for you to wait until your contract end date then begin the switch to your new provider. This unfortunately also means that you’ll pay the inflated, end of contract price for 2 - 4 weeks, but trust me, it’s worth the cost.

A similar set of rules can be followed for things like car insurance, home insurance, utilities. Any service that has some kind of contract really.

What might the future hold?

Even though we can beat the mega corps at their own games and get the price that we deserve, it’s still pretty frustrating that we have to do this. It’s not always been like this, but these days, most companies seem to be relying on cut-throat sales tactics and free trial conning rather than customer satisfaction.

We are starting to see some changes with utility companies where smaller disruptors can actually get into the market and offer a customer-first experience. Internet service providers haven’t quite got there yet.

But there is hope! Thanks to this guy.

Yep, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is hoping to fix our internet problem by launching 12,000 mini-internet satellites into orbit by the end of 2020. His plan? To provide low-cost broadband connectivity to the whole planet.

Until then, you’ll have to keep on navigating the financial swamp and keep on switching!

How Anyone Can Get a Student Discount

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 07:30:24 +0000

NOTE

This is one of the best hustles that I know. I’ve convinced a lot of people at each office I’ve worked at to become a student and get a TOTUM card. The amount of offers you can get are insane, the best being 10% off Apple, 10% off the CO-OP and half-priced Amazon Prime. If you are lucky enough to grab a card for 3 years when one of the loop-holes open, go for it! They’re worth every penny. As you’ll see from the strike-throughs, this post was actually written a while ago. The loop-hole then closed so this never got posted. Yesterday, it opened up again with a different method. I’ve now got my 3-year card coming in the post! So if you want to benefit from all of these savings, hurry! It might not last long. WARNING: It didn’t last long. Learndirect is now not recognised. Go to the comments to see if a new loop-hole has opened up.

Being a student is great, not just for all of the free time that you get, but for the amazing student discounts too! Apple currently offers students a 10% discount on MacBooks, a 20% discount on Apple Care and they’ll also throw in a pair of £249 Beats headphones for free.[note]The Beats headphone promotion only runs between July and October.[/note]

Being a student isn’t an exclusive club for the young; anyone can be a student. It doesn’t matter if you’re retired, working, or claiming benefits. NUS doesn’t discriminate. Bearing that in mind, the 21st century saw the doorway to education open up like never before, due to one thing; the internet. The internet bought into fruition the ability to learn online with millions of online courses available to anyone who has the inclination to learn. 1 in 4 students now opt for an online course rather than attending a brick and mortar school. This also brings the unique opportunity to become a student with next to no effort at all. Strapped for cash? Go to this post to make £30 in 10 minutes! The way it works is you find an online course which is either free or very cheap, you sign up to it, you’ll then be eligible to buy an NUS Extra TOTUM card which is the card that will unlock all of those great student discounts. Let’s walk through the process from start to finish.

Finding a course

You can now sign up to a free course on Learndirect which makes you eligible for a TOTUM card! Go to Learndirect and click ‘Free employability course’ at the bottom of the page. After entering your details, confirm the email that they send to you and you’re done! You’ll need to find an online course through a provider that NUS has a partnership with. I recommend using New Skills Academy courses. These guys offer some great deals through Groupon for very cheap courses to unlock your student discount benefits. Just type ‘New Skills Academy’ into their search bar and sort by lowest price first. The lowest I could find on Groupon (via this link ) is currently £12. Remember, you don’t actually have to do the course, you’re just buying it for the student discounts!

Applying for the NUS TOTUM card

After you’ve enrolled onto the course, you’re then ready to apply for a TOTUM card. The card costs £12 for 1 year, £22 for 2 years or £32 for 3 years. I’d recommend getting it for 3 years so you don’t have to go through this process again for a while. The cost is worth it even if you only get the Amazon discount. Follow the steps below.

Launch the NUS/TOTUM website by clicking on this link
Enter your email address and then confirm it
Type in the course provider as your place of study (learndirect if you went with them)
Enter the start and end date, if you are choosing a 3 year NUS card, enter your end date to be 3 years from now
Choose “Professional/Vocational” for the course level
Enter the length of time you want your NUS card to last (I would recommend 3 years)
Upload a photo of yourself, this will be displayed on the card
Enter your personal details. If it asks for a student number or password, you should be able to find this in the account which you’ve set up for your online course

Grab £125 Free Cash

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 06:30:16 +0000

This is a bank account switching offer. Read The Full Guide to Bank Account Switching for more information on how to make the most of offers like these.

Natwest have just opened up an extremely generous switching offer; £125 lump sum cash. This offer is even open to existing Natwest customers[note]You’re not eligible for this offer if you’ve had cash back for switching to Natwest since October 2017.[/note].

Just like the Nationwide Bose Headphones offer , this too just requires one deposit. The money can then even be transferred back out of the account. It also doesn’t require you to set up or transfer over any direct debits, making it an extremely easy switching offer to complete.

Notes

Pay in at least £1500 before January (doesn’t have to be all at once)
Log in to mobile or internet banking before January
You must keep the account open until the £125 bonus gets paid to you on the 13th of April 2019.

Fast-track

Go to the offer page and sign up for a new Nationwide account, ensure you opt in to the switching service when prompted. Once opened transfer £1500 via online or mobile banking into the account then transfer it back out again. Keep the account open until you get your free £125 on the 13th of April.

Why I Don't Pay My TV Licence

Sun, 23 Sep 2018 18:50:13 +0000

In 2017-2018 the BBC made £3.8324 billion from charging people for a ‘TV licence’. Think about that for a second… The BBC is making more money from their ‘TV licence’ than some of the biggest companies in the world. There’s mainly one reason for this; most of the UK believe they need to have one. They think it’s a tax, and the BBC are doing everything in their power to convince you of this.

A ‘TV licence’ costs £150.50 per year and 94% of the UK pay for it. It was first introduced in 1946 to cover the costs of funding television broadcasting services. For over 70 years we’ve been paying it, long after the initial requirement for it passed. Most people think it’s a tax, a lot of other people think that if you own a TV or a PC you need a licence for it. I thought this too; I paid it for over 3 years whilst at university when all I had was my personal computer and Netflix.

The real fact, however, is this; contrary to what the name suggests, you don’t need a TV licence to own a television. You only need it to watch live television or the BBC iPlayer. You don’t need one to watch any of the other 599 channels in the UK via streaming or on-demand services. You can even watch Sky channels on Now TV as this is an on-demand service.

After years of needlessly paying £150 per year for a ‘TV licence’, one afternoon I realized that I barely ever watched live TV. My main television consumption was coming in the forms of services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. I much preferred to watch shows when and how I please rather than seeing what’s on the telly. In fact, the only time I was watching live TV was occasionally in the mornings before I went to work; I’d shove on Good Morning Britain for 10 minutes, it was the easy thing to do. But, was that 10 minutes in the morning worth £13 per month to me? Did I think it was worth almost 10x the amount that I pay for Netflix ? Did I value it more than a Spotify premium account, which at £10 per month I’ve deemed as too expensive? No, I absolutely did not.

Amazon prime costs £7.99 per month, it’s half that price if you’re a student. That membership gives you unlimited 1-day delivery (or Amazon credit), a lot of shows on Amazon Prime - with some pretty awesome exclusive titles, the ability to borrow a book each month and access to over two million songs ad-free via Prime Music. Why on earth would anyone pay more than double that just to watch live TV? On top of that, you’ll be funding a company which uses scare tactics with warnings of £1000 fines if you don’t buy their service and sends aggressive enforcers to your house to see if you’re ‘illegally watching TV’. No, I didn’t need a ‘TV licence’ - and I’m going to convince you that you don’t need one too.

Other Services to Use

Netflix is probably the best service in the world right now for shows and films. Becoming big first in the USA, Netflix slowly but surely adopted a larger UK audience over the last decade. There are now over 9.5 million UK citizens who subscribe to the service. Netflix has over 700 original series and films which are only available on their service. This original content is some of the best which I’ve ever seen and contains the likes of Stranger Things, Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards and The Crown. Netflix also doesn’t just show one type of genre; you can find cooking shows, travel shows, documentaries and a whole plethora of children’s TV shows. If you’re missing your favorite BBC TV shows; Netflix has you covered. Most things which were on the BBC end up on Netflix. They’ve got 7 seasons of The Great British Bake Off, all of the ‘Planet Earth’ and ‘Life’ series and other great BBC shows like Doctor Foster and Black Mirror. All at a much more discounted price than the £13 per month ‘TV Licence’. Netflix is truly a master TV service, you could easily live with just this.

Most modern TVs now come with a Netflix button. It’s just like live TV, but better!

Amazon Prime as previously mentioned comes with a whole load of benefits in addition to a whole TV service. A lot of people would have Prime just for the next day delivery perk but may not have been using Prime TV. Although Amazon isn’t as refined as Netflix with their TV applications, they pack some excellent exclusive content. It is home to one of my favorite TV shows; Vikings, and also has a number of other great exclusives like Black Sails and The Man In The High Castle. All for under half the price of a TV licence, or a quarter of the price if you can grab a student deal!

Now TV is Sky’s on-demand service. It’s actually cheaper than a full Sky package and you can subscribe/unsubscribe whenever you like without entering into a contract. The TV pass is only £7.99 per month and gives you on-demand access to all of the popular Sky channels. You can even get a Sky Cinema pass for access to all of the film channels (although a little more expensive). I usually buy a month of Sky TV when shows like Game Of Thrones and The Walking Dead are airing as they are the only series which I’d use those channels for.

Free on-demand services are also available for all popular TV channels. These include shows like Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Yes you heard that right…You don’t need to pay £13 per month to watch anything on channels 3, 4 and 5. You can use ITV Player , All 4 and My5 . In-fact, it’s better to consume television on these services as you can choose when and where you’d like to watch them, instead of being a slave to the TV guide.

How to Consume These Services with Minimal Effort

A lot of people who watch live TV say that they do so as it’s easier than watching on-demand services. All of the devices below are things which you can buy to make consuming things like the above services with ease from your television set. These will provide a much better service than your ‘TV licence’ and will save you tons of money in the long term. A lot of them may not even be necessary as most modern TVs are now smart TVs which have all of the on-demand applications available with the click of your remote.

Google Chromecast is, in my opinion, the best and most versatile of all streaming devices. You simply plug it into the back of your TV via a HDMI port and go through a quick set up on your Apple or Android device and you’re done! You can then stream all of the aforementioned services from your phone via a ‘cast’ button which casts it straight to your TV. With this nifty device, you can even mirror your phone on your television, play any video on your PC via Google Cast or even cast your whole desktop. All for only £30!

Amazon Fire TV Stick (with Alexa Voice Remote) can be used as a smart TV remote. For only £39.99 you can get a buttery smooth smart TV experience with any television set. This also includes all streaming applications, not just Amazon Prime. It’s the perfect replacement to those addicted to live TV, all for a much lower cost!

Roku Streaming Stick is a little more expensive than the other options but provides more applications and a highly polished user interface. This newer streaming stick also comes with higher specifications supporting 4k streaming and boasts a stronger wireless receiver. Comes with an modern remote control which boasts a Netflix button!

Apple TV is the most premium of the streaming devices available on our line up. This device will give you ultra-fast streaming capabilities and provide you with advanced options such as Siri and iPhone integration. You’ll also be able to do things like play games and listen to music via your Apple TV. The price comes in at an eye-watering £179 which is why I would generally recommend one of the other devices, but, this is still miles better than paying almost the same price every year for the ‘TV Licence’!

You’ve Sold Me! What Do I Do?

So, you’ve decided that enough is enough and you’re going to stop paying ridiculous sums to the BBC for a shit service. What do you do now? First things first - you cancel your ‘TV Licence’ direct debit. If you inform the BBC that you’re leaving but don’t cancel the direct debit, the cheeky buggers will keep on charging you. They can’t possibly fathom that you won’t be watching live TV and they’ll assume you either accidentally canceled it, or are ‘breaking the law’..

Next thing you’ll want to do is go to the TV licencing website , fill in your details and enter into the question box the text below.

I no longer need my TV licence. I have decided to stop watching live TV and the BBC iPlayer, I am turning to alternative streaming providers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. My address is:

[ENTER YOUR ADDRESS]

I have canceled my direct debit, please reimburse me any payments owed.

Next step is to pull out your TV Ariel, wrap it up and place it in a corner. You can now enjoy your free £150.50 and stress-free life with the ability to watch anything whenever you want.

I’ve now not held a ‘TV licence’ for almost 5 years and I’ve saved almost £1000. I have never actually been visited by one of the angry TV licensing people, but I have been sent threatening letters by them plenty of times. The BBC actually sub-contracts TV licensing enforcement to a company called Capita. These guys earn an expected £1.10bn to £1.55bn per year going around to poor old grannies houses and threatening them with £1000 fines and calling them criminals if they don’t buy a TV licence. They do this as they earn a commission for every person they get to re-sign up! Don’t let them scare you, they’re thugs, hungry for commission.

Join the enlightened 6% of the UK which haven’t got a TV licence today and pull the plug to a better - on-demand life. Comment below and let me know if you pay £13 per month for a TV licence and if you plan on continuing to do so. I’ll leave you with a list of the BBC salaries which you’re paying for ;]

Gary Lineker - £1.75m
Chris Evans - £1.66m
Graham Norton - £899,999
Steve Wright - £550,000
Nick Grimshaw - £400,000
Scott Mills - £280,000

Free Bose Headphones Worth £170!

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 08:03:20 +0000

This is a bank account switching offer. Read The Full Guide to Bank Account Switching for more information on how to make the most of offers like these.

Could this be the best bank account switching bonus is history? First Direct are offering a free pair of Bose Wireless Headphones if you switch your current account to them. Here’s the link .

I’ve always been an advocate of bank account switching, but this seems like the best one yet. I don’t know why they haven’t advertised it more; each person I’ve told about it seems to have not heard about it. I now have a bunch of people at work all waiting for their Bose headphones to arrive!

This is also one of the extremely easy switches! It only requires you to move £1000 into the account once; not monthly! No direct debits need to be transferred either. The £1000 can then be moved back out of the account into your main account, you can even do this in 10, £100 transfers, one at a time.

The cherry on the top is… Wait for it… First Direct will give you £100 if you leave after 6 months!

So, grab yourself a pair of £170 headphones, leave the account for 6 months (you don’t even need any direct debits), then grab an extra £100 for switching to another current account! Terms .

The trick with getting all of the bank account switching rewards is to ensure that you have at least one spare bank account which you don’t use as a main account. You then don’t have to go through the hassle of switching all of your real life payments every time. You should have multiple bank accounts to make the best of your emergency pot savings anyways, so the extra switching bonus is just a little extra profit.

Some bank account welcome offers, such as the HSBC £200 one requires two direct debits to be switched over. For bank accounts like this, I just set up two Little Debits of £1 each the month before the switch. This can then be canceled once you get your bonus (it’s worth the trade).

Some bonuses also require money to be deposited into the account each month. For this I simply set up a standing order to deposit the required amount in and then out again from my main account at the beginning of each month, this really works, and is hassle free!

How to Live Off 10k Per Year

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 14:56:11 +0000

Me and my partner have always been low spenders. I came from a family where my parents both earned minimum wage for all of their lives so I’ve learned to be happy with less. I’m fed up with being met with disbelief or responses insinuating that more or less I must have a rubbish life when I tell people at work how low my expenses are. Here’s a little break down of them (I split everything equally with my partner).

Food: £100 per month (MAX! per person). A lot of what we like to eat is generally cheap (Pho, Pasta dishes, Risotto, Curry) and we cook everything from scratch, we buy no ready-made sauces etc). This also includes nice rice, vegetable and chicken lunches. We also buy wine, beer and at least once per week nice steaks/lamb shanks. I’m genuinely quite shocked how people can manage to spend much more than this.

Mortgage: £638 split between me and my partner. We live in the South East of England, we just decided to live in a smaller 2 bedroom maisonette rather than a house (there are only 2 of us), it cost us £195k. *note - only £120 of this is actually disappearing with interest, the rest is going into house equity (effectively an alternative savings account!).

Council Tax: £980 per year (£480 each). Benefits of a lowish cost area again.

Gas/Electric/other bills: £50 per month each (MAX!). This is mainly our gas and electric, we pay no TV license as we just watch Netflix (which costs us £1.50 each, each month - as we share with family). We always find the best deals with Fiber internet each year using Quidco , so this doesn’t come to more than £5-£8 per person each month. And we both don’t have any phone contracts, this year we both took up a Three deal of £8 per month sim only but with the Amazon gift voucher they offered we ended up spending negative £5 per month each for 2GB Internet, unlimited texts and 200 minutes each month (yes we got paid to use this!).

I also bike to work, I don’t own a car, my partner leases a new Ford Fiesta which is costing her £120 per month. We will be getting rid of this when her contract ends as we both live close to work. Now this covers all of my essentials, good food, mortgage, bills (Fiber internet and good TV). This comes to £6056 per year. We also dedicate £150 per month each on spending money (and we save up this if we want to buy something big e.g. fit a new kitchen).

That brings the total to £7856. We also have a budget of £1500 each per year for holidays, this is MORE than enough. We went to New York last Christmas (flights were only £250 each, thank to Jack’s Flight Club ). We plan to go to Japan for a month next year and Canada next Christmas.

When you realize that spending lots of money on holidays won’t make them better (we found it to be more fun budgeting!) you can travel anywhere you want! Airbnb is your friend, and you have more fun :-] Remember; Spending Less Makes You Happier! .

So total spend for a very good life, lots of travel and good food for us comes to a total of £9356. We both save way over 75% of our income. Why do people look at me like I’m crazy or malnourished?

Please if anyone else spends under minimum wage and is happy, let me know I’m not alone! It really annoys me when people simply say “You can’t live on minimum wage!”. My parents have done this for all of their lives and they’re extremely happy, they’ve paid off their house, and they go on holidays every year. If anyone has any questions about my spending, ask away!