Making savings to fund £140 opera tickets is an aria I’m rather good at
SOME concert, festival or musical tickets will always cost a lot – even if you find a discount. But if you are planning to see your favourite band or show whatever the expense, you can at least offset your costs.
Retired book editor Diana Briscoe is a serious opera fan. She cherishes visiting venues such as Longborough, in Gloucestershire, Glyndebourne, in East Sussex, and Garsington Opera, at Wormsley, a venue in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire and which this summer celebrates its 25 years with a production of Fidelio – the only opera written by Beethoven.
But to fund her love of opera, theatre and ballet – and to boost her pension – Diana, 64, rents out a spare room in her home in West Hampstead, North-West London.
She wants the flat to herself sometimes, so she rents the room via website monday to friday for people who want to live somewhere close to work during the week and return home at weekends.
Diana, who lives with her two Burmese cats Shurby and Issy, receives about £600 a month, for which her lodgers get a reasonably sized double bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, their own television, broadband and use of both the kitchen and sitting room. And the extra income means that she can fund her favourite activity.
Diana says: ‘It can cost at least £100 for a ticket to the opera, so any assistance is very welcome.
‘It makes the difference between sitting at the back of an amphitheatre and getting a seat near the front.’
If you haven’t got a spare room you could overhaul household bills to free up extra funds.
Switching your energy supplier can save you up to £350 a year. Visit a price comparison website such as uSwitch to find out if you can cut costs. All you need is a recent energy bill or annual energy statement.
Or use comparison website Gocompare to see if you can cut back on car or home insurance premiums.
Move your direct debits over to an interest or cashback paying current account such as Nationwide’s FlexDirect or Santander’s 123 Account and you could put additional savings towards your hobbies.
Another simple way of generating a bit more money is to declutter the house of old CDs, books and games in return for cash, selling via a website such as musicMagpie or WeBuyBooks.