HOW I’M SAVING MY MONEY

Irish people talk about their spending and saving habits

“My fiancé and I opened up a joint savings account to help us save more efficiently. This takes an amount from our wages every week from our current accounts. If we didn’t have this, I don’t think we would have saved a penny, so I’d strongly recommend everyone to do this.

“It was scary to look at our spending habits! But we had to look at all of our outgoings and cut our spending where we could. We tried to do smaller things such as cancel our TV package, as it’s a huge monthly bill that we could do without.

“I used to stop for a latte every morning on my way to work and I cut this out completely! That’s five days a week at €2.50 each so clearly, I needed to stop. I now bring my own flask of coffee to work and bring my lunches. Doing all of this has really helped contribute to our savings goal.” Laura Farmer from Co Monaghan “At the start of our savings journey, we had planned on saving a certain amount each per month. But we soon realised the figure was just not realistic. Life got in the way; things such as car tax, new tyres and little things popping up that we hadn’t planned for. The best advice I could give is to be realistic on saving goals. “We had to sit down and really look at our spending habits. Some of it was really surprising. We made savings such as cutting out online shopping, well for me anyway! There are concerts coming up that we both would have loved to have gone to, but it did not fit in the budget. So there has definitely been cut backs, but we know that it will all be worth it in the end.” Natalie Hehir and Nigel Dooley, Co Offaly