Invisible purchases
Most of us have been guilty of spending money without thinking about it from time to time – from a magazine before taking a long train journey, to our usual coffee on the way into work, or a scratchcard whilst at the supermarket getting groceries, it’s easy to spend almost unconsciously on small but regular items.
Indeed for some of us, these ‘invisible purchases’ make up a sizeable chunk of our day-to-day spending, and so it’s definitely worth thinking about this habit and what we might be able to do to address it.
To begin with, you might like to try the One-Week Spending Challenge – a way of taking a snapshot of everything we spend in an average week, by writing down absolutely all purchases. So anything bought with cash, card (including contactless) and also online transactions should all get noted down. You could use the Notes function on your phone or good old pen and paper.
Once you’ve got the week’s spending captured, go through and pull out any ‘invisible’ purchases – things that you didn’t plan on buying, and that you probably didn’t think much about before you did. You can then consider how you feel about limiting or giving up some of those purchases.
If you want to see the impact of reducing some of these habits, you can use the MoneySavingExpert Demotivator tool to see how much you might save if you cut back on certain items.
It could be easier than you think to reduce your spending and save some money towards something you really want instead!
