Giving up the smashed avo

SOPHIE ELSWORTH WASTED spending is resulting in Australians frittering away thousands of dollars a year on bite-sized expenses from buying takeaway coffees to bottled water to catching Uber rides.

The nation’s smashed avocado obsession is taking its toll on our pockets and so too is consumers snapping up bought lunches or ordering home deliveries in droves.

Experts have warned consumers this needs to be wound back and the money be better used elsewhere – either for paying down debt or stashing away savings.

And the good news is it doesn’t mean going cold turkey on incidental costs completely, even curbing back some discretionary spending can leave thousands of dollars extra in your pocket.

New analysis crunched by financial comparison website RateCity has revealed if Australians cut back three $3.50 takeaway coffees per week over the next decade they would smash $6800 off a typical $300,000 30-year mort- gage. And for the nonmortgage holder if they did the same but tipped the excess cash into a savings account earning an average return of 1.96 per cent, they would end up with $5960 in savings.

While giving up one weekly treat of a smashed avocado breakfast – at $20 a pop – would result in $15,900 being paid off the mortgage or an additional $13,900 in stashed cash.

Tribeca Financial’s chief executive officer Ryan Watson said too often consumers underestimated “how much they spend on the little things”.

“We call it ‘leakage spending’, it certainly adds up across the course of a year,’’ he said.

“You simply need to be smarter with your money as opposed to necessarily earning a lot more of it.

“By bringing your lunch to work four out of every five home loan and $9100 in savings over 10 years, RateCity found.

And $3 bottled water could be cut back – by ditching a daily habit of buying a bottle $13,600 could be paid off a home loan or $11,900 thrown into savings.

The site’s spokeswoman Sally Tindall said making small “lifestyle changes” could result in huge savings but warned of the trap of using “tap and go.”

“A little bit will grow into a big amount of time because of the power of compound interest,’’ she said.

“Tap and go is a little bit dangerous because you don’t see the money coming out of your wallet, you will only realise how much is spent when you sit down and look at your bank statement.”