An expert has revealed how changing how you eat lunch could save you over £77,000
A financial expert has revealed how taking your own lunch to work could save you around £1,300 a year, and £77,000 over 20 years. The finance expert, who goes by @finetunedfinance on Instagram and Facebook, has revealed their hack for increasing your pension pot more easily. They explained: “If you’re going out to work, taking your own lunch could save you £1,300 a year.
“If you invested this into a pension at 8% pa over 20 years, you’d have a whopping £77,000 extra in your retirement account. Increase your savings each year, as the cost of your lunch would increase, and that additional pension fund could jump to over £96,500.” According to @finetunedfinance, saving money doesn’t mean that you ‘need to be a Scrouge’. They said: I’m often told, ‘I don’t want to live like a miser now just so I can retire rich – I may never make it!’ To which I reply, ‘I don’t want you to be a miser either… be a conscious spender instead.’”
Adding that: “Being a conscious spender is being frugal, not like being Scrooge. It’s not about denying yourself all of life’s pleasures. It’s about being aware of your outgoings and focusing on a few financial priorities, it’s something that has been popularised by the FIRE (Financially Independent Retire Early) movement, and for some become a necessity because of the cost-of-living crisis.”
@finetunedfinance also recommends looking at where your money actually goes and said: “I recommend that you spend no more than 50 percent of your net income on your fixed expenditure i.e. your household direct debit payments and bills. Then 30 percent on your variable expenditure i.e. your debit, credit or cash payments which includes your groceries, fuel and general spending money, this leaves 20 percent available for you to save for your future self.”
They went on to explain that one of the best ways to be ‘more aware’ of what you’re spending, is to do something that most people already do and ‘compare prices’. They explained that: “Shopping around is common sense to me, and I have always done it. So have most people: before making a purchase 86% of Brits look for deals.”
But that means 14% are missing out on potentially significant savings by purchasing the first price they see. @finetunedfinance explained: “How long is that? According to the Office for National Statistics, if you are of working age, you’re on average going to live well into your mid-80’s but you may not be average and you could live far beyond this. That’s 20 years past the state retirement age, a long, miserable 20 years if you don’t have enough retirement savings behind you. So while I don’t recommend living like Ebenezer, I do recommend making practical changes. An easy win to get ahead might be your lunch, various research shows only half of people make packed lunches – this leaves a staggering 50 percent of people buying lunch out every day.”
They went on to explain how taking a packed lunch can save you around £1,300 per year, which means if you invested this money into an 8% pension over 20 years, you’d be able to add an extra £77,000 to your pension.
