In this day and age when money is hard to come by yet ever so easy to spend – especially if you’re an expat spending in euros and earning in pounds – we all need ways to help us save money. Ideally as effortlessly as possible!
In this report we’re going to look at ways expats can save more offshore – or onshore for that matter – by taking advantage of a few canny ideas that will see you squirreling away everything from spare change to money saved in other areas of your day to day life.
Whether you’re looking for just one, two or a few ideas to save a couple of pounds here and a few euros there and to make sure you’re building up a security blanket even when times are tough economically speaking, trust us to come up with simple ways for you to save!
The two tricks to making more of your money are of course spending less so that you can save, and ensuring your savings are well looked after in an interest earning account! So before we even look at ways you can save your money effectively yet relatively effortlessly, we need to address finding the right savings account for you.
Finding the Right Offshore Savings Account
If you’re going to be saving small cash amounts relatively irregularly, it may suit you to have a simple onshore savings account with your local bank that you can access easily. You can pop in and deposit a handful of change when you’re passing, and be able to get that money back out quickly should you need to. However, if you’re going to be making a more concerted effort to get money squirreled away safely for your long-term future, it can make sense to spend time seeking out the best offshore account.
Your key to success in this area might just be recruiting the services of an offshore financial adviser. You can talk to them about how you will be saving and what you want to achieve from and with the money you’re putting away, and from this information your adviser can find the best account for you. This is likely to be one that achieves the right balance between the amount of interest it pays and the amount of access you can have to it with given amounts of notice for example.
With the right account in place, it’s time to look at ways to effortlessly save more offshore.
Top Five Ways for Expats to Save More Offshore
1) Sit down and work out your essential outgoings each month, deduct them from your income and then set up a direct debit from your current account into your savings account for the amount left over each month. That way you won’t be tempted to spend over what you need to spend, and with a direct debit in place you won’t even have to think about moving the money. It will happen without any effort and you may not even notice the impact it has on your life – apart from the positive one when it rolls up nicely in your savings account each month with interest flavoured icing on top!
2) If you don’t like the idea of committing yourself so firmly to a fixed amount each month you have two other options, one requires more discipline from you, the other one requires the assistance of your banker. You can either look into your account the day before pay day and transfer everything out of it into your savings account. Or, you can ask your bank to ‘sweep’ out your account at the end of each month. Sweeping is a service only some banks offer – and they usually only offer it when you’re sweeping cash from one account at the bank into another one held with the same bank! But if this is you, then you can ask your bank to sweep any spare cash out of your current account into your savings account on a given day.
3) If you’re very disciplined you can save your change and your discounts every time you shop. So, if you shop and buy something for £3.59, round that up to £4 and put the 41p into your savings account. And when you go to the supermarket, where you get discount offers, buy one get one free offers or you are able to take advantage of a coupon to knock money off your final bill, tot up the money you’ve saved and put it into your savings account. This can be quite a hassle and require a lot of discipline – or, you can get your children involved and have them work out how much you’ve saved or rounded up and put it into their savings account for them in return for them doing the maths for you!
4) Save your loose change every time you empty your pockets, at the end of every day or at the end of every week. If you carry your loose change in your pocket, empty your pockets every night into a pot or a piggy bank. If you carry your loose change in your purse or wallet then either empty it every single day or at least at the end of the week. Then once a week or once a month, put all that saved change into your bank account. It soon adds up, and what’s even better, you don’t even notice you don’t have it! It saves your pockets and wallet wearing out so fast too!
5) Bonuses, pay rises, any extra cash earned for an extra job or for an item sold – these are unexpected pay days and as they are unexpected and a bonus, you can pop the money straight into your savings account without even missing it. It can sit in there until you really need it for something, and all the while it’ll be earning interest! Perfect!
As you can hopefully see, to save cash isn’t so hard. A few pounds here and a few euro cents there can make all the difference to you at the end of the year. And whether you have enough at the end of the year to go on holiday, boost your pension or just to buy a lovely bottle of something special for Christmas, you will have made the most of your money rather than just frittering it away on a coffee here, a newspaper there or some sweets for the kids.
