There are multiple ways you can begin making savings. But, before you head to the comparison sites to switch your bank accounts and energy providers, why not start saving by looking a little closer to home?
There are multiple aspects of your life that could be having extreme financial implications on your lifestyle, but what are they? Crunching the numbers is paper coffee cups retailer, Inn Supplies.
The cost of coffee
You can’t deny that the coffee industry is booming. The UK’s coffee shop market was worth £3.4 billion in 2016, up 37% from £2.4 billion in 2011. What’s more, in the next five years experts predict that the market will grow by a further 29% to reach a worth of £4.3 billion.
Because of this, more people see that buying a cup of coffee is a necessity rather than a luxury. Research carried out on behalf of MyVoucherCodes has found that we visit a coffee shop three times a week on average — or 152 times a year.
The average cost of a medium latte is £2.45 (using Costa Coffee as a reference). Based on the number of times we’re likely to visit annually, this means our caffeine addiction is costing us £382.20 per year. If you were to pop into your local coffee store five days a week — once for each of your morning commutes — you’d be spending a huge £637!
If you made coffee at home, you cold make some great savings. According to Douwe Egberts, a pack of its 250g ground coffee will make approximately 30 cups of coffee. Assuming that a 1kg bag will cost around £15 (according to Amazon prices correct as of December 2017), this would deliver a price per cup of around 13p.
Don’t forget to factor in the cost of the energy you use! However, even if this price was to rise to 50p per cup — which is an unlikely high — you could still slash the cost of three coffees per week to £78.
The cost of alcohol
Results from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey found that 29 million people over the age of 15 drank alcohol in the UK. While the UK clearly has a thirst for alcohol, how we’re drinking it is changing. One YouGov study has found that in 2017, 15% of British adults preferred to drink alcohol at home. The country is clearly split between pub and home drinkers, with the latter growing in popularity as the number of pubs declines.
You won’t be surprised to find that beer is the most popular alcoholic drink in the UK (35.6%) which is soon followed by wine (32.9%).17% of Brits head to the pub 26 times a year (once every fortnight), research by Ritz Crisp & Thin shows — so how much is this habit costing us?
However, the average price of a pint of lager in a pub is £3.58. Assuming three drinks per visit, each trip to the pub will cost £10.74 on drinks alone. Over the course of the year, this would rack up £279.24 — a cost that could be even greater if you were to increase the frequency of visits or the number of pints consumed.
The Office for National Statistics revealed that in November 2017, the average price of a small glass of wine was £3.74. Assuming two glasses of wine per each of the 26 yearly visits, and this will set you back £194.48.
If you were to skip that trip to the pub and drink at home, you could be making some great savings. June 2017’s industry figures show that a bottle of wine costs £5.56. With roughly just over four 175ml glasses in each bottle, the associated cost per glass of drinking wine at home shrinks to £1.39 — representing a £2.35 saving.
From our calculations, you could pick up a crate of lager for the same price as one trip to your local pub.
If you can’t resist going to the pub with your friends, why not order a soft drink as a cheaper alternative? These are often considerably cheaper than their alcoholic alternatives. For example, a diluted juice drink can cost under a pound, while a cola or lemonade costs approximately £2.20 — £1.38 less than the average cost of a pint.
The cost of smoking
Another popular new year’s resolution is for people to quit smoking. In the UK, a packet of 20 cigarettes costs £10.40. For a 20-a-day smoker, this gives a weekly cost of £72.80, a monthly cost of £291.20 and a yearly cost of £3,494!
Have you tried using the NHS online calculator to work out how much you could save?
That’s how much your lifestyle is costing you. Of course, you still need to enjoy yourself! However, now you know roughly how much you’re paying out annually on these lifestyle habits, perhaps you’ll be able to make better decisions on everything from your post-work pint to early-morning coffee.