Having fallen victim of an unexpectedly excruciatingly high bill myself (I admit I grew a few white hair), I had no other option but to take the matter in my own hands and act pronto!

This article may not bring relief to everyone, as I do understand and appreciate the very difficult situation and drastic choices that many are faced with this winter, but I just hope that this read will offer you some useful tips that may help you saving money on your energy bill as it did for me.

I recently received a gas and electricity bill for December for the amount of £256.22. To make it clear, I live by myself in a three-bedroom house and I can promise you it was not tropical-like. The shocking bill made me realize I needed to change my habits and more and I was committed to turn this into something positive. Interestingly, after searching the web right and left, getting tips form my gas engineer and talking to friends and neighbours, I ended up finding this highly educational and even encouraging.

The good news: the price can be brought down and without having to wear hat and gloves while warming up your hands on a hot meal.

The first thing that came to mind is: why don’t they teach these things at school? I swear there’s some practical things, like this one, that would help us all! But fear not: I have tested them myself and having managed to reduce my bill, I am here to share my tips!

WHAT WE ALL KNOW…

There are some things we all know. For example: we know that double or triple glazing / keeping doors closed / taking shorter showers / replacing light summer curtains with thicker ones in winter /switching to LED lights and turning them off when not used are all things that help. But what if you have to make do with what you’ve got because you are renting or because you live in an open plan house with open plan staircase too (beautiful, but I know how hard is to warm it up!).

Well, there’s still plenty little things that can be done!

MINDSET and CLIMATE CHANGE

Firstly, take a moment to address the way you look at it. It may seem silly but remind yourself that it’s winter and that, although it would be lovely to hang around in a t-shirt, it is winter after all! I am not suggesting you accept the cold, I am suggesting embracing winter: wear nice warm jumpers, dig out thermal underwear (there’s a reason why our parents and grandparents used to have them!) and make it snugly and cozy. I have 2 cats and they are no longer young and at this age they need warm snugly places or they can get sick. With the intention of turning down the heating and reducing the hours it’s on, I felt bad seeing them looking cold and (I swear) miserable! Although I can put on an extra layer, they can’t. So, I went and bought 2 of the snuggliest cat baskets I could find. Make no mistake: don’t fall victim of false economy. If you decide to do something in this line of thinking, do a quick calculation to ensure this still makes financial sense. In my case, cats are now snugly and happy, I’m happy, and I can be a bit more cautious with the central heating without feeling guilty. The idea to take home: put some snuggly layers on!

Secondly, remind yourself you are not alone. At first, I felt stupid and even embarrassed to admit having received such a huge bill and having to make changes. That was until I spoke to others who were resolving to hot water bottles, tight heating regimes not to mention the ones who were thinking of moving to smaller places.

Thirdly, remind yourself that climate change is not an opinion and needs your help! So, it’s nice to know we are all doing our part.

MONEY SAVING TIPS

Ok, now we are in the right mindset, here’s some simple changes you can do.

• Reduce the temperature of water and heating on your boiler

It may seem a small thing but one thing that makes the difference is to reduce the temperature of the water and heating on your boiler, not just your thermostat. This was something I have never done: I simply don’t toy with the boiler! The boiler man comes around once a year to do the annual check-up and I never touch it. Well, it turns out that turning down the temperature not only can save you bucks but can also help your boiler work more efficiently. Try googling your boiler model number and type to see what the best setting is. I found a YouTube video by a boiler engineer who explained how to do this step by step. The result: I noticed no difference at all in terms of warmth but I did indeed notice a massive difference in the bill! Ensuring your boiler is at the correct settings could really save you money!

• Reduce the temperature of your thermostat

Although it’s tempting to put the heating at a Mediterranean 20 to 21 degrees, the truth is that most houses are not insulated enough to ever reach that temperature. You heard me right! Ever felt like you placed the heating at 21 degrees yet it felt not much different from 19 or 20 degrees? Most flats or houses are not able to retain that heat as it’s not just windows and door that leak heat, but walls too. However, your boiler is still working very very hard to try reach that temperature. So, don’t fool yourself and be smart instead: generally speaking the best temperature is around 17 – 17.5 degrees during the day and 18 to 19 degrees at night (albeit elderly people may need a degree or two higher to feel comfortable). For someone like me who liked a tropical 21 degrees, I thought going down to 19 would be the death of me, but not at all! In fact, after having tested 17 degrees during the day and 18 degrees at night, I felt that was not such a huge difference. Despite minus temperatures, I did not go above 18 degrees and me and cats are still rather snuggly. Amazing discovery!

• Rethink heating times

The same as it takes approximately 1 hour to warm up a property, it also takes approximately an hour to lose the heat. I used to turn the heating off when I went to bed but I learnt that even switching it off a couple of hours before I go to bed changes very little in the grand scheme. It was my neighbor who told me she switches it off at 9.30 pm as her and her family tend to go to bed around 10 or 10.30. She simply suggested “why not try it?”, and so I did! Although I now switch the heating off at 10 pm even though I still go to bed at 11 pm or even midnight, I don’t really notice the difference. Plus, like I said earlier, it’s winter: embrace it! Pull out a lovely blanket, snuggle up on the sofa, make yourself a hot cuppa. It’s actually rather soothing!

If you spend most of your time at home, be it because you have small children, are a home carer or because you work from home, deciding on how many hours to have the heating on can be a little tricky. If you work in an office you can let your boss or company pick up the bill…but if you are at home…it’s on you. The other thing against you is that sitting in front of a computer will result in feeling colder than if you were moving around. So, what to do? I discussed this with a friend who lives in Switzerland. We checked the advice given by our respective governments and found them highly different. In Switzerland you are advised to keep the heating on all the time during the cold months, even if at low temperatures, as the house will retain the heat and your boiler with work less hard. In the UK you are advised to keep it on only when needed because the houses are…well…simply put…less efficient! Having visited my friend there, I can only but agree. So, back to…”what to do?”. Well, I used to wake up in the morning an put the heating on until I went to bed. Not now anymore!  Now I have it on 1 hour in the morning as I get up to take the worst of the chill out and then I put t back on at 4 pm until 10 pm. Tropical days are long gone, and I admit sometimes during the day I think to myself “brrrrr” but nothing that can’t be fixed with a hot cuppa or putting an extra layer on. You may think I wear 3 jumper, a blanket and watch my breath exhale when I talk, but the truth is, again, that it’s really not so! And my house is not even fully double glazed and I live in England, not the Bahamas! My advise here is, try/experiment. I think you’ll find that with the right mindset and the right attire, you will be way-way more fine that you initially thought!

• Check your boiler & radiator system are in good order

There are also other more technical things you can do which are looking at replacing your boiler if it’s getting too old and not working efficiently anymore. Also, consider cleaning your radiator systems if you notice they are clogged up and not working efficiently anymore.

Here’s some websites that I found rather useful if not even to answer most F.A.Q. such as:

• Should I get a smart meters or not?
• Which are best, gas or electric heaters?
• Should I set the thermostat or the individual radiators?
• How best set the thermostatic radiators
• How to zone your heating.

Click here for Energy Saving Myths & Tips to reduce your heating bills

CONCLUSION

Whatever your situation, there’s tons of things you can do: from lowering your boiler levels to lowering your thermostat levels, from reducing the hours the heating is on to enjoying putting on an extra layer.

Whatever you do it’s important to feel like you are not alone in this, we are all having to change gear and make some habitual changes, and it’s important to remind yourself that turning your heating down a bit, although it may seem horrendous, it’s actually helping the planet. But whatever you do, don’t make drastic changes. Start with mindset, keep positive and don’t make drastic changes that will be hard to stick too. Instead research your specific housing situation and by tweaking a few things I am sure you will see results!

And most importantly: the aim is not to save money on your bills while being miserable, cold and in danger of making yourself mentally sick. The aim is to make small changes that in turn will give good and sustainable results.

Do you have any tips you think could help others? Why not share them here?

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It’s all perfectly acceptable until we find pleasure and happiness in doing something that some people make a living from, or something people have in their minds could potentially make you money. At that point, we get incited to seek a way of monetizing it or – even worst (and God forbid) – when we derive pleasure from doing something like singing songs or writing a book at a non-professional level, we are often reminded that we are never going to make it big. But in so doing they miss the point entirely and they can even spoil it for us!

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT MONETIZING

When I started this website, I was quickly asked why I wanted to do it. I explained that I enjoyed researching these topics and writing the articles and that I hoped of touching and improving some lives in some ways. I was quickly told, in no uncertain terms, that I was never going to make it work: the competition is fierce, you are not skilled or qualified enough and you haven’t got the right concept idea. After licking my wounds for a while, I found myself scrolling through social media and I came across a picture of the sea in Menorca, where I had lived for a while. I immediately had a wave of happiness remembering the lazy days pottering about in flip flops, breathing in the sea air and basking in the sun. I missed it. I then put down my phone and picked up a book I was then reading. I loved it. I was reading about the unconscious, the knock-on effects when there is a lack of self-esteem and how to improve one’s life! I then logged in to my website and scrolled through some of the articles I had written. I had forgotten some already…and as I opened them, I started reading some of the passages. I loved them.

It was then that an idea quickly came to my mind and I’d like to share it here with you. I like going to the beach, looking at the sea and sunbathing. Do I make money from it? No. I also like taking walks in woodlands. Do I make money from it? No. So, should I now stop going to the beach or taking walks through nature because they make me no money? Of course not!

I decided there and then that although my little website may never make me much money, because it made me happy, it was good and worth enough to me. I don’t need to be the best out there. I just need to be the best I can for my own sense of worthiness, while doing something I enjoy.

LEARN TO READJUST YOUR DIRECTION

A friend of mine, who used to earn good money working in the media sector, aged thirty-plus decided to change career path. He wanted to work in the city analysing companies, becoming a fund manager and managing money for big companies. He took time off from work and for nearly three years he studied twelve hours a day in the library to become an investor. Bear in mind, this is someone who could not wait to get out of University and get a job. But did he do that because he wanted to earn more money? No, he did it because he enjoyed it.

One day he happened to speak to a guy who worked for a city firm and asked for some advice on how to get work in that industry. He was told that by the age of thirty he would be aged out because no one would take him out and that he was deluded and hopeless to believe he could become an analyst. The guy went on to explain that the sector was competitive and full of very bright people who come out from top universities and that no one would be interested in him. However, he advised my friend that perhaps if he leveraged his experience in media he may be able to become a media analyst for a small company.

My friend contacted more people but the feedback did not change. The thing with my friend was that he did not want to become a media analyst for a small company. He wanted to become a fund manager. Eventually, despite the feedback, he decided to think out of the box and find a way of making it work for himself. He quit his media job, sold a property and started investing his own money. It is true, he does not walk into a city job managing hundreds of thousands of pounds for big companies and getting large bonuses, but he gets to invest into his own portfolio and along the way he managed to turn that into his main and only source of income.

What did he do? He changed the direction a bit!

SOMETIMES CHECK THE STARS AND SMILE

Talking to a friend of mine who is a composer, he confessed that when he started making music he did not know if he was ever going to make any money from it. He went into it because he simply loved it. When he was not composing, he was missing it. When he was not in studio, he was missing it. Despite what people told him, that the music industry was corrupted and that he’s be lucky not to end in poverty, he reflected on the fact that he did not need to make it big. He was not aspiring to become the biggest composer or the next A lister. He started to look at the music market and what made him think was the fact that as much as there are big markets out there, there are also small markets! Although a few record labels told him he was not A list material, he could be B, C, D or even E list material. Who cares about the label if you get to do what you love!

When we talked about how he came to make a living making music in the sub list markets, he told me that the areas where he had his greatest successes where the areas where things happened easily, where the stars somehow aligned…(or whatever you want to call it – he said)…and when things just seemed to flow. He found that people around him were able and even willing to help him, hence putting him in a better position to leverage his chances making it easier for himself.

That positivity, that energy and enthusiasms you get when you love doing something is contagious and, in a world, where people are often following the flow afraid of being anything different, it does get you noticed!

Former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, author of Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It, explains that when people are in a positive frame of mind they are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve (instead of fight and resist). The positive impact of a smile on your face or in your voice, applies to the smile-er as much as the smile-ee.

When Tim Ferriss wrote his first book, The Four-Hour Workweek, the manuscript was rejected by twenty-five publishers. When eventually the contract was signed with the twenty-sixth publisher, Ferris decided to ask why his manuscript was chosen. He was curious to find out what they had seen in it that twenty-five others had not. The answer is rather enlightening! “Nothing,” was the reply. “We can understand why publishers have rejected this work. But we aren’t’ betting on the book, we are betting on you. We believe you will do anything and everything you can to make the book successful.” As you can see doing what you love with a bit of determination and self-discipline can really make magic!

LISTEN TO THE ADVICE, BUT MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SEEKING

Be careful who’s advice you take. If that person does not really know what you are talking about, if that person does not know your business or industry, or if that person does not have some of the same values you have, then their experience is not relevant to your area.

When my friend was told he was no A lister, it took him a bit of rethinking to realize that he did not want to become an A list celebrity. Having worked in the media and music industry myself for fifteen years, I understand very well the compromises celebrities have to make when they make it big. They work hard, their life is always on the spotlight and no matter how strong they are, eventually the criticism gets to them too. What they say is often deliberately twisted to make the news and everything they do or say is put under the microscope. Even the best and strongest crack. As an audience, you only see a side of that glamour life.

The same applies to other career paths. After fifteen years working in the media industry, I decided to leave. This is something that a younger me, who only wanted to work for MTV, would have never thought I’d say. When I started my career in media that was all I wanted (and oh boy, I enjoyed it for over a decade), but as the years passed, I realized that to go up the ladder meant I needed to became a top producer, a commissioner or a CEO. I had seen some of my friends climb the ladder and I had seen them work long hours and on weekends, getting stressed and traveling for work only seeing hotel rooms and conference halls. I did not want that life. The people who lead that life and make it big, and I do have friends who have happily succeeded in that path, are people who have to be focused and tuned in all the time, but they love it – they dig it! The question is: the idea of being an A list celebrity or a CEO on top of his game may sound appealing, but do you really want to put up with all of the compromises that that life comes with and would you actually enjoy it?

Here’s an important point: just because you are not going to be the next big shot it does not mean you do not have a place or that you cannot become successful within that business or area of interest. There are many ways to success and you may actually find that what you started of by regarding as success is not what you want after all. Perhaps being a singer songwriter in D class gets you to write and sing the stuff you actually like without the life restriction and criticism that an A list celebrity needs to deal with day in day out.

BACK TO THE BASICS – DO ENJOY!

Let’s get back to sitting on a beach or taking a walk in nature not making money.

Aren’t these things key to life?

Think this: people go to work and take a holiday to go sit on a beach and they make no money. In fact, people do lots of things that make them no money! But the minute we start to say we want do something that makes us happy, which people have in their minds could potentially make you money, they miss the point entirely. Remember: you must enjoy what you do!

If you are missing something, then that is the thing you should be doing because that is what makes you happy. If you like painting, paint away. If you like writing, write away. Do it for yourself. Do what makes you happy because these are the things that draw us, that makes us alive and vibrant. That is a good test of what is important. Little disclaimer: of course, you can’t always go and do everything you miss, for example, drugs are not good! Use your head and follow your heart.

If it makes you happy but makes you no money, don’t try to overthink it too much because it costs you money anyways to go sit on a beach, go on holiday, purchase nice clothes, buy a house…etc…etc. It’s part of life.

Furthermore, my personal advice: don’t be afraid to live your dreams even if others see you as an unworthy nobody! Robert Miles,  Swiss-born Italian record producer, composer, musician and DJ, went knocking for two years at every record label’s door before his 1995 composition “Children” finally got signed by a small independent label and went on to sell more than five million copies topping the charts in many countries. A music producer friend of mine, who was partner in a big record label, famously turned down Anastacia because at the time she was over thirty and that was, and still is today, considered old in the music industry. That was just before she made her international breakthrough in 2000 aged thirty-two with her debut album “Not That Kind”.

I’m not A lister but does it allow me to express myself and send out my message? Yes, so hear me roar and I hope you will follow suit Impostor Syndrome free!

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First of all, life should not be all that serious all the time. Being in the know of how to invest your money is one thing, but being savvy with your pennies by acquiring the knowledge that will enable you to make good judgements is also another side of the financially-independent coin, and that sometimes means…for example…. knowing your wines. Think of this, through the years you may have formed a habit of settling for the most expensive wines, but the most expensive is not necessarily the best choice.

Secondly, knowledge is empowering and it enables you to make better informed choices. Gaining knowledge also opens the doors to financial stability and dignity of life. In other words, it can be linked to your self-esteem and confidence as well as your wallet.

So, if you already know you wines well, this article is not for you. But, if you ever felt somewhat awkward choosing a wine from a wine list, if you’ve had enough of waiting for your partner to decide on which wine to put in the trolly or if you bought an expensive wine and you could not explain why it lapped unagreeably on your tongue, then read on. There’s a huge variety of wines out there and being a sommelier is a real job. However, to be able to pick a wine and know what you should pair it with and when to pay more…that is something you can learn easily.

Out of the windows are those long, tedious and complicated wine courses. No more sipping and spitting and faking an interest on all the different types of grapes when wine tasting. Here’s some tips on how to choose your wine based on your occasion so you can simply enjoy!

The different types of wine

Wines come in red, white, rose plus dessert and sparkly.

We are not going to learn everything there is to know about all of the types of wine out there, but we are going to get to grips with the basic, get to know the most popular ones, what they are best paired with and…we’re going to make it fun, so it’ll be easier to remember too!

As a general rule:

• red wines are fuller and with more tannin – generally better with meaty dishes especially red meats
• white wines are fresher and more acidic – generally better with fish dishes but also with vegetables, poultry and even pork
• dessert wines have higher alcohol content and are usually sweeter – best enjoyed with desserts
• sparkly wines have bubbles – great for a celebration and a party!

Many countries produce wine. For a safe bet choose one from Italy, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, United States and Germany. Although other countries also produce wine, the above is a good enough list to start you off!

Although some names of wines come from very specific countries (for example, Sangiovese comes from Italy and Zinfandel comes from California), whereas other (Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir…) are made with grapes grown around the world. To make it simple – as a novice – stick with any of the countries listed above and with any of the names listed below.

In terms of cost, well….it depends where you are buying! If you buy your wine in the UK it will certainly cost you far-far more (approx. £5 – £10) than if you were in Spain (approx. £2 – £6). Different currencies, different alcohol taxation. Again, as a general rule, stick with any of the countries listed above and with any of the names listed below. Easy peasy!

The five key wine descriptors

Body. You’ll often hear “full body”, “light body” or “medium body”. This is in relation to the perceived “weight” of the wine. A full-bodied wine feels thick and generally you will be able to notice some sort of coating along the sides of the glass as you swirl the wine. A light-bodied wine is almost like water. A medium-bodied wine is right in-between.

Tannin. Tannins are a naturally occurring substance in grapes that ends up in wine when the skin of the grape sits in the grape juice as it ferments. Wines that ferment with the skins for a longer period of time end up red = with high tannin content. Wines that have little or no skin contact end up pink or white = with far fewer tannins. Red grape skins have more tannins than white grape skins and this is also how the wine gets the colour.  In general, the darker the wine, the higher the tannin and the stronger the taste. High tannin wines are sharp, bitter and rough or chewy. Lower tannin wines are smooth and soft.

Flavours. It can be fruity, spicy, smoky, flowery or earthy. You may not be able to identify a favour at first, but if you compare it with another wine you may notice the difference.

Sweetness. Is it sweet or dry?

Acidity. Describing acidity can become complex. Simply put: high acidity makes a wine taste refreshing and crisp (or sour if overdone), whereas low acidity makes the wine taste flat, soft and smooth.

How to serve wine

Decanter or not decanter?

Red wine, especially if on the more affordable spectrum, benefits a great deal from being aired for about an hour or more before serving. This is because the increased oxygen exposure to wine greatly improves the taste by softening astringent tannins and letting fruit and floral aromas come out. Blah, blah, blah…using a decanter is a great idea! Similarly, choosing larger glasses is also a good idea (not because you’ll drink more but because it allows the wine to breath more). However, if you have a particularly fragile or old wine (especially 15 or more years old) then decanting it for more than 30 minutes may spoil it.

You can decant white wines also, although decanting is recommended more for reds as they have more sediments (which you’d want to decant out). If decanting white, you can use a smaller decanter too (same reasoning, it just allows the wine to breathe a little less).

However, you must remember that oxygen does eventually become the enemy of wine as aromatics can float away, so: decant, drink…. but if not finished in a couple of days you may want to use it for cooking.

Chilled or not chilled?

Chilled or not chilled depends on the taste.

Generally speaking, red wines are not served chilled and that is because the tannins tend to taste bitter as it cools. Said this, I have fond memories of my dad chilling his Sangiovese in a bucket of ice during the crippling Italian hot summer days.

White and rosé wines, with their low tannin content, taste better if chilled, although always best not too cold or you won’t taste many of the flavours.

Dessert wines are better at room temperature.

Sparkly wines always chilled!

Red Wines

Cabernet Sauvignon

This is a full-bodied wine.  If this wine was a woman, it would be one with lovely curves. It’s a bold and elegant wine that makes an entrance. It’s a serious wine that has no time for nonsense. It’s a dry one (no nonsense wink wink!)

Now, this wine is usually considered a safe bet when ordering off a menu and has often become the fall back by casual wine drinkers…because if it’s considered the all-start of grapes by the serious drinkers…. then it must be good.

However, Cabernet is generally more expensive and it doesn’t cost more because it’s inherently a good wine: it just costs more.

Best food to pair it with: Cabernet needs fat to latch onto and if you don’t have fat or salt in your meal…well…without going into the boring details…it’s dryness will simply coat your tongue and feel gross and crappy. Order this wine if you are eating steak or something fatty and salty! Otherwise, walk away.

Merlot

Stick with me here for imagery: the word “merlot” reminds me of another Italian word “merlo” which is a blackbird. Merlot = merlo = blackbird. Please lock this imagery for me…it will help I promise! Locked? Okay, where do birds hang around? On trees. And what do trees produce? Fruits. So, the Merlot is a fruity wine. It’s also a soft and smooth…in a way simpler if compared to the Cabernet, but don’t confuse that with lack of quality!

Merlot often has a bad name, but really it shouldn’t. Think of it as a misunderstood wine. Ok, it’s not as serious as a Cabernet, but it’s also smoother as it has less tannin and it’s less needy.

Best food to pair it with: Merlot is a versatile wine with low demands (not like the Cabernet, that demands being paired with fatty or salty foods). It actually goes well with vegetable-based dishes or tomato-based pastas.

Malbec

Ahhhhhhh the Malbec. The Malbec sits in between the curvy full bodies Cabernet and the fruity and soft Merlot. Mostly grown in Argentina, think of it as a mysterious gentleman that smokes cigars. Got that image locked? The Malbec is smoky and toasty wine (because oak barrels are normally used), with plump and dark flavours. Malbec wine also offers a great alternative to higher priced Cabernet Sauvignon!

Best food to pair it with: Malbec go well with BBQ, pulled pork and…. hear hear…with sweet and spicy foods which is not an easy combination!

Pinot Noir

Think of the Pinot as an elegant lady with fair skin and blond hair in an art nouveau dress. She walks into a room full of people with tall, slender and glamorous elegance. Got it? The Pinot Noir is silky, fruity, light and delicate. In fact, it has less tanning (tanning = tan = fair skin lady – wink wink!) which makes it very drinkable and respectable.

Best food to pair it with: this is the time to remind you that whatever you do…never ever-ever drink a red wine with fish. I want you to picture me and my Italian ancestors staring at you in shock for even thinking that’s ok! It is not! And there is actually a reason for that: the Omega3 and the fat in fish when combined with tannin in wine, creates a metallic and coppery flavour effectively spoiling your meal as you’ll be tasting metal and copper instead. The good thing about the Pinot Noir is that, as it has low tannins, it is a safe wine to drink with fish foods. In fact, this is a wine that loves barbecue-glazed salmon.

Syrah / Shiraz

First of all – I hear you ask – what’s the difference?

Simply put they are the same grapes, but Syrah is from France and Shiraz is from…

Little digression here. What animals live in Australia? Koalas and Kangaroos…okay okay…so…lots of “k” and “k” are weird letters…like the “z”. It’s not a perfect imagery but make do! Let’s go back where we left it and

…. Shiraz is from Australia.

There is a small difference in taste, but generally speaking they are also very similar. The Syrah from France is generally a bit more tart (acidic) and leaner in profile than the Shiraz, which also tends to be juicy and with a blackberry, plum or other dark fruits taste.

The important thing to remember here is that both the French and the Australian know how to party! The French have the aperitif time and the Aussie have plenty all parties! So, if is safe to remember it as a party wine! If you need to bring a wine to a party, either will be fab!

Best food to pair it with: think of these as two wines that go to parties, that know how to have fun and are not afraid of mingling. In fact, they pair well with spicier foods too. So, if you want to drink a red wine with your Indian or Tai food, Syrah or Shiraz are your mates!

Zinfandel

We talked about Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Syrah…lovely! Now…Zinfandel! Such a sharp and almost geometrical name! This wine is not from Europe. It is in fact American and although not really found in many other places outside the United States, it must be said it’s a very respectable wine. After all it comes from California and Cali is re-known for Hollywood, The OC, Silicon Valley and these people now a thing or two about wine. This full smoky body wine has a cherry and strawberry fruitiness, with some spicy hints which makes it easy to drink. It is also high in alcohol.

Best food to pair it with: this is a wine that likes it simple. Pizzas, cheese, lasagne and cheese…. did I say cheese? Cheese….out of the package or grilled. Cheese!

Sangiovese

Italy’s national red wine. This is not a fancy wine but it is a wine for the simple pleasures in life and the good times. Boom! Drop the mic get a glass!

It’s the most planted red variety in Italy and, as an Italian wine, it is also much more tart (acidic) and lighter in body. It’s a no-frills wine. It’s the wine for a stroll, for singing and eating good homely food.

Best food to pair it with: Sangiovese goes well with al Italian foods but it particularly loves gamey meats such as venison and duck because it brings out some sweetness. But it also goes well with tomatoes, vinaigrette and balsamic sauces and dressings. It’s wine that is not afraid of strong and acidic flavours.

White Wines

Chardonnay 

When you think of white wines, start by locking the imagery of a Chardonnay and butter. This wine is fruity, buttery and velvety (because of the butter) which is atypical to dry white wines.

Best food to pair it with: it’s a wine that loves to go with raw and lightly cooked shellfish like crab and prawns as well as with steamed or grilled fish, whether as appetizers or as a main. It also goes well with vegetable terrines.

Pinot Grigio

The opposite of a buttery and velvety Chardonnay? The Pinot Grigio. This is an Italian wine and it is a good bet when thinking of ordering a white wine. Light-bodied, dry and crisp enters the ballroom with glamour like Italians can!

Best food to pair it with: the Pino Grigio goes well with seafood and vegetable antipasti as well as main dishes such as seafood salad, fritto misto, seafood, fish and chips and vegetable pasta. A light pasta sauce, weather creamy or with a little tomato, is also good!

Sauvignon Blanc

The Chardonnay is buttery, the Pinot Grigio is dry and crisp…now here comes the Sauvignon blanc! This, is a dry, tart, and acidic wine with herbal flavours as well as tropical fruit. Remember herbal and tropical then!

Best food to pair it with: it goes well with vegetables, delicate fish like sole, mild vinaigrettes and tangy dairy ingredients.  It also goes well with cheese (especially goat cheese).

Riesling 

Because this wine is not bound to a specific country, it means that it can have subtle differences. However, it is usually crisp, and (depending on where it is grown) on the low-alcohol side, with flavours of apple and citrus. Remember appley and citrusy then! A trademark of the Riesling is that it is somewhat a little sweet though still quite dry. Don’t be put off by its sweetness as the Riesling will offer enough palate-refreshing acidity to keep things balanced, so it’s still crisp rather than sugary.

Best food to pair it with: it’s a wine that pairs well with poultry, pork, fish and spicy Thai.  Some Rieslings can also be drunk as dessert wines.

Rosé Wines

Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé

This a savoury wine. With cherry, black currant and pepper spice flavours, this wine is higher in acidity than the Cabernet Sauvignon red.

Best food to pair it with: as with most rosé wines it pairs well with salmon, chicken, duck and lamb (if served pink).  It also goes well with niçoise salad, feta, spinach, mint and quinoa tartelettes, a variety of veggie skewers on the barbecue, charcuterie and soft cheeses.

Pinot Noir Rosé

This a delicate and fruity wine and it is delicate and classy like all the other Pinot (Pinot Noir in the red and Pinot Grigio in the whites).

This is a crisp and dry wine with soft, subtle aromas of crab-apple, watermelon, raspberries and strawberries.

Best food to pair it with: best enjoyed with serious seafood such as lobster, seared salmon, tuna or duck and delicately cooked rare lamb. It also goes well with goat cheese.

Zinfandel Rosé

This a sweet wine with flavours of strawberry, cotton candy, lemon, and green melon with moderately high acidity.

Best food to pair it with: best served chilled, it goes well with poultry, fish, vegetables, charcuteries, cheeses and Thai food.

Sangiovese Rosé

This is a fruity wine with notes of fresh strawberries, green melon, roses and yellow peach complemented by quenching acidity.

Best food to pair it with: best served chilled, it pairs well with poultry, fish, vegetables, charcuteries, cheeses and even couscous!

Dessert Wines

Dessert wine (or Fortified wine) gets its name because it tends to be sweeter and comes after a meal. Alcohol (usually brandy) is added to a dessert wine so that it can retain more of its natural sugars, which are typically used up during the fermentation process.

Dessert wines & Sparkling wines deserve a new chart of their own! As this article is meant mostly for your red, white and rose table wines, we shall quickly glide through this section.

Also, since normally there are fewer options on a menu for dessert and sparkly wines, you are likely to go with whatever they have.

Typical dessert wines are:

• Moscato. Sweet and fruity is a good Italian choice. Although it can also be enjoyed as an aperitif or with spicy foods, it does work well as a dessert wine. Salty snacks like cured meats, nuts, or blue cheese are also a nice counterbalance to Moscato’s sweetness.
• Madeira wines. This wine comes from Madeira, a Portuguese island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and it’s available in a range of dry to sweet styles. Madeira wines are a great dessert wine which also pairs well with cheeses.
• Riesling wines. Some types of Riesling (see the Riesling session above) can be quite sweet. When sweet they can also be used as dessert wines.
• Port. Rich and sweet is best enjoyed with cheeses. In fact, it’s fabulous with cheeses!

Sparkling Wines

Sparkling wine is wine that has significant carbonation, which can occur as a natural part of the fermentation process or via carbon dioxide injection after fermentation.

Due to their bubbliness they are often regarded as the perfect choice for a celebration be it as an aperitif or …sometimes…even with your main!

Sparkling wines can be dry as well as sweet and right here is a chart from driest to sweetest: Brut Nature, Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Dry/Extra Sec/Extra Seco, Dry/Sec/Seco, Demi-Sec/Semi-seco and Doux/Sweet/Dulce.

The main thing to remember here is not to be panicked: it’s a party!

Often people refer to Champagne as the best sparkly wine (also by far the most expensive!). Well, it’s not exactly so.

Sparkling wine is made from a wide range of red and white grapes. However, for a sparkly wine to be labelled “Champagne” it must be produced in the Champagne region of France. Champagne clearly made a name for itself, but there are other sparkly wines out there that are just as good if not better, from other areas. Two valuable competitors are, Prosecco and Cava.

The advice here is not to be blinded by the label but to go with the flavour that you best like.

• Champagne. French and exclusively from the Champagne region, can range in colour from white to yellow and pink as well as it can range in flavours from fruity to spicy and floral. (A bottle can cost anything from £25 to £300 and upwards. Some vintage bottles can literally cost you thousands!)
• Prosecco. A magnificent Italian sparkling wine and shoulder to shoulder with Champagne. Most Prosecco wines are produced in a dry, brut style. However, fruity flavours of green apple, honeydew melon, pear, and honeysuckle make it sweater than it is. (A bottle can cost anything from £7 to £50. Obviously, you will not find it for £7 in a restaurant or bar!)
• Cava. A sparkling Spanish wine, perhaps considered as less sophisticated than Champagne or Prosecco. Light to medium bodied and typically dry, it has zesty citrus flavours. When aged longer it can develop a beautiful baked apple note and a pronounced nuttiness. (A bottle can cost anything from £4 to £30. Again, it will be more in a restaurant or bar!)

Conclusion

Wine is to be enjoyed responsibly. Whether red, white or rosé or whether as dessert or sparkling to celebrate something, it should not intimidate you! And hopefully, this has helped you learn about which is best for the occasion and where to save your pennies!

As a last tip on this subject, you may want to download the Vivino app to your mobile phone through which you can easily get ratings, read reviews, and check prices instantly just by snapping a photo of any bottle or menu.

Hope you enjoyed and cheers!

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Some may have acquired expensive habits and unaware of living outside their means, while some may have found themselves caught on a rainy day and, before they know it, they are trapped in credit cards debts unable to pay them back. There are many reasons why people find themselves in debt, but one thing is sure: if you are reading this article is because you, or someone you know, is struggling under the burden of debt and you are looking at ways to pay it off and live securely.  

The bad news is that paying off debt is hard work. Sorry! You will have to make changes, sacrifices, and there will be times when you will feel tired, defeated and even lonely.

The good news is that paying off your debt and living debt free comes with many positives. By learning how to eliminate your debt you will acquire a renewed respect for money and a better understanding of your finances. Also, by learning budgeting skills you will be able to quit the paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and feel in control of your finances and life choices. Once debt free you will also be able to save for retirement, plan holidays and, needless to say, this will deposit a big-fat happiness cheque in your happiness bank.

The road to dept free living starts today. Empower yourself and start your journey to a better and brighter future by starting with some easy steps.

STEP 1 – FACE THE MUSIC AND QUANTIFY YOUR DEBT

In order to pay off your debt, you will need to figure out how much you are in debt.

Seems silly, but you’ll be amazed! Most people have no idea how much debt they have, which is simply frightening because it means there is no plan on how much and how to pay it back.

Get a calculator, gather together your credit card statements and any other repayments you have outstanding. By adding it up, you will have a more realistic figure. Surprisingly, when most people complete this step, they realize that they have a lot more debt than they originally thought. It may be scary but it needs doing. Remind yourself that you are doing this because you have realized there’s a problem and you are here to solve it.

STEP 2 – UNDERSTAND WHY YOU HAVE A DEBT

An important step to becoming debt free is to face the issues that led to your debt. If you don’t do this step, you may find yourself in yet another debt in the not so distant future.

By identifying the cause at the root of the problem, you will be able to understand what brought you here in the first place and how to avoid it in the future.

Try to be as honest as possible with yourself. Ask yourself questions such as why do you think you are in debt? Could it be you have an emotional spending problem? If so, how does the act of spending makes you feel and why is owning those things so important to you? Perhaps you found yourself in a financial emergency. If so, did you have an emergency fund? If not, why did you not save for one and how can you prevent this from happening again in the future?

STEP 3 – PUT YOUR OUTINGS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE AND CREATE A REALISTIC MONTHLY BUDGET

Budgeting will help you take control over your debt and enable to manage your financial situation in the future.

Gather your bank statements, make a list of your regular outings and try to be as accurate as possible about the “unexpected” outings of the last few months. Fully itemise what you spend each month. You can do this on a spreadsheet, or by using a (free) budgeting tool.

While keeping in mind the reasons that brought you here in the first place (a spending habit or not having an emergency fund, for example), create (and live with) a realistic bare-bones budget. You are going to pay back a debt so you will need to tighten your belt, buckle up and plough through this time, but no point in sticking to an unrealistic budget which is certain to send you straight to a fail!

To work out your bare-bones budget nail down your spending from previous months, slash non-essential expenses, dig a little deeper by asking yourself what else can you do without, list your new bare-bones expenses and tally them up.

If you have a family you may find it’s helpful to sit down with them on a regular basis, perhaps once a month, to review where you are at. Take time to reassess your unified financial goals and whether changes and adjustments need to be made. Communication is paramount in keeping the unit together, involved and motivated towards you family’s financial goals.

Also, by reviewing your debt status from time to time you will be able to see the progress and by looking at where all your money is going, you may spot other savvy opportunities that work for you. You may find missing out on eating out is no trouble but not having cable is a big ask.

STEP 4 – CLOSE YOUR CREDIT CARDS: NO MORE ADDING!

If you’ve made the changes in your budget, have some extra income and it’s safe for you to close your credit card accounts, it may be the next best thing you can do.

By closing off your access to credit cards you are effectively cutting your dependency from them. Whilst this may seem daunting at first, in the long run it will help you to be free of all your debts.

Make the decision of not adding to the debt by cutting off temptation all together: don’t take out extra student or personal loans that you don’t need, cancel your credit card or ask for your credit card limit to be lowered.

Remind yourself that credit cards give you money that you will eventually have to pay back and, if you miss your payments, you will pay sky-high interests on top! It is also good practice to ensure you have some cash or money in your personal bank account before buying something with a credit card, to ensure you will be able to pay back when the deadline comes.

When talking about credit cards it may help to familiarize with some of the terminologies they use:

• Balance. The credit card balance is in negative, not in positive! Your balance is how much money you have spent using your credit card and not how much money you have available!

• Interest rates. If you use your credit card and pay your balance in full each month, then you don’t have to pay interest. However, if you don’t pay your balance in full, or if you only pay your minimum payment, then you’ll most likely owe interest that continues to grow until your balance is fully paid off.

• Minimum payments. The minimum payment on your credit card is the smallest amount a lender will let you pay every month, and if you only pay this amount, they will start adding interest charges to your total amount due.

• Credit limit. Your credit limit is how much money you can spend on your credit card altogether.  Some may give you only a few hundreds, others a few thousands. Credit card companies decide what your limit should be based on your credit score, length of time you have had credit cards, your income, and so on.

As you move away from using credit cards, it’s important to start implementing a healthier habit towards spending and look at embracing the benefits of buying less.

Avoid window shopping by taking up more meaningful pastimes. Find a more meaningful state of mind, for example by volunteering at a care home or by pairing exercising with walking dogs at your local kennel. This is an opportunity to seek more meaningful relationships and less material ones. 

STEP 5 – MAKE A FINANCIAL GOAL VISION BOARD

Visualizing your goals helps focusing on them. You can do this by displaying your financial goals on a spread sheet. Yes, an excel doc may not be as attractive as a pretty mood board, but having something visual in front of you may help you make that goal a little bit more real.

You could, however, also make a more visually appealing one using a real size pinboard to display the things that debt freedom will allow you to do. This could be a holiday or being able to save up for a house deposit.

STEP 6 – STAY MOTIVATED

Tightening the belt to pay off a debt is never going to be fun, despite the knowledge that many benefits are waiting at the end of the road. I am a great believer that it’s important to keep a positive mindset and that it’s up to us to create a positive narrative our life. One way that may help you get through this time is to celebrate the small successes. Set yourself regular targets and rewards, for example, when you repay your first card of your first £1,000 of debt, think about rewarding yourself with some kind of treat… but do not go overboard!

Also, it’s important to try not to get stressed and compromise your health over your debt by reminding yourself that you are already actively working towards it. You are still entitled to retail some time to enjoy life by going out for a walk, or having a laugh with a friend. Just because you make it a point of having a miserable time your debt will not disappear. However, by spending time with your loved ones, you’ll be able to take your mind off, perhaps even share some worries with someone you trust which will help you to recharge your batteries and keep motivated.

STEP 7 – PLAN FOR A RAINY DAY

One of the most common reasons people end up in debt is because they don’t have an emergency fund. An emergency fund is something that everyone should have. We can’t predict the future. No one can tell us when the next emergency will happen, but being prepared is half the battle. Your car may break down, you may fall it, your hours may be cut back or you may lose your job (the recent Coronavirus pandemic did a great job at reminding us of the emergencies that could lurk just around the corner!). You need to be prepared because if an emergency does arise, you won’t be forced to rely on credit cards or borrowing money in order to solve your situation. Your emergency fund is there to cushion you if an emergency arises!

Typically, it is recommended that you save somewhere between three to six months of expenses in your emergency fund.  

STEP 8 – LEARN TO LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS

Drop expensive habits. You should always be spending less than you earn.

If you’re consistently coming up short each month, you may want to take a closer look at your habits. It may be that you have a little spending problem and learning to live within your means will need to be on top of your list.

However, money spent on food and entertainment can easily add up too, without you noticing. Reviewing how you spend money each month will certainly give indications that you can work with.

You don’t have to cut back on everything, but you may need to readjust on what and how you spend your money. For example, you can still dine out, perhaps not at the finest restaurants. You can still buy cup of coffees when out but you may want to consider heading to a local unbranded one where you may get more for your money. You may also want to consider helping your case where you can, for example by compromising on packed lunches instead of eating out during the week, in order to earn a dinner out in the weekend.

You may also want to reconsider your needs. For example, do you need a newer phone or another accessory? Try to view this not as a restriction or punishment, but as a way to build  healthier spending habits which will help you reach your goal sooner and live better.

Here some suggestions that may make a difference to your monthly expenditure:

–          Ask for lower interest rates on your credit cards — and negotiate other bills.

• Renegotiate for a lower monthly phone bill. You will be amazed how much mobile phone network providers are willing to compromise both in terms of money and deal in order to keep you on, if your contract is due for renewal.
• Save money on food by packing your lunches and shopping smart. Buy fresh raw ingredients instead of ready meals and consider cutting off meat which will certainly reduce your grocery bill as well as making you healthier.
• Swap an expensive hair saloon for a cheaper local one. Having my hair done makes me happy, but simply put, some hair saloons are crazy expensive!
• Consider whether you need cable, satellite TV, or any other media service provider.

These are just some ideas. Hopefully, by looking at your monthly outings you will be able to identify what works for you.

STEP 9 – BUY & SELL USED

Although buying second hand may not be everybody’s cup of tea (I personally find buying second hand clothes a no-no) a lot still has to be said in favour of second hand for other items, such as furniture. Explore!

If you have something that is worth some money, that you are not particularly attached to and that you don’t need, consider selling it. Let someone else enjoy it and give it a new lease of life.

STEP 10 – EARN EXTRA MONEY

If you have compromised on a lot of the above mentioned and you are still struggling to meet ends, consider changing your job for a better paid one or finding a way to make some extra money.

I am not so much in favour of getting a second or third job when you already have a full time one, as this could really have a serious impact on your health. However, maybe you have been sitting on a comfortable job for a long time and getting a new job with new challenges could actually do you good by showing you how many other things you are capable of and boosting your self-esteem. Perhaps you are a teacher and maybe you could consider some seasonal work, or maybe you could consider looking for an online job that you can do in your free time: from becoming a virtual assistant to offering your professional skills as a consultant. Check out TaskRabbit, Upwork.com and even your usual job seeking platform like Monster that more and more are adapting to today’s’ demands for flexible working from home.

STEP 11 – PAY WITH CASH, NOT PLASTIC!

If you haven’t done it in a long time, give it a go! It’s a surprisingly interesting experiment!

Paying with cash, rather than by card, makes you really think about the money that you are spending. Somehow, the actual act of handing over cash has a bigger impact on our spending perception.  It really forces you to think about where your money is going, how you are spending it and how frequently. It does an excellent quantifying visual job.

For me it’s like cake. I know cakes are packed with sugar, but when I eat a cake that I haven’t baked myself, I am somewhat immune to that knowledge. However, when I bake it and I see how much sugar goes into it, that knowledge really acts as a reminder to eat it sparingly.

STEP 12 – PAY INTO YOUR DEBT FUND EVERY MONTH

To make headway on paying your credit card balances, if you can, pay more than the minimum repayments each month. Credit card companies put the minimum repayments out there to keep you hooked. They are not your friends. They make money off you.  So, set up a standing order or direct debit and if you can add more without killing yourself over it, pay more into it every month. Even an extra 50 quid can make a difference.

Also prioritize repaying your most expensive debts first. Store cards tend to be much more expensive than mainstream credit cards, so get rid of those first. But even when prioritizing, continue to make at least the minimum payments on all your other credit cards to avoid extra charges.

Finally, carefully revaluate your savings contributions. Yes, you want an emergency fund, but if the interests on your savings are lower than the interests on your debts, then that’s false economy.

STEP 13 – MOVE YOUR DEBT TO A 0% BALANCE TRANSFER CREDIT CARD

Now, only do this is you are well organized and disciplined! Applying for a long 0% balance transfer credit card can be a good idea, as it can give you the opportunity to pay your debt, or part of your debt, without paying interest on it for an initial period, normally 6 to – even – 30 months. You normally pay a fee for the balance transfer to move debt across, but this is still cheaper than having debt charged at upwards of 16% per year!

I would strongly recommend that if you choose this option you must be disciplined and that every month you pay money into an account so that, when the deadline comes, you can pay it all off at once!

STEP 14 – PAY OFF BALANCES WITH FUND MONEY

Maybe you recently received an inheritance, or a bonus, or you received a tax refund, or you won the lottery. Whatever type of “found money” it is, it could go a long way towards helping you become debt-free. So, if you recently received some sort of fund money, stop and think before you go on a wild shopping spree!

STEP 15 – CONSIDER A PERSONAL LOAN

If you are stretched to the limit with your belt tightened to the max and you’re still struggling to make minimum repayments and you’re worried about taking out another credit card, a personal loan can work out more expensive than a 0% interest credit card, but has the big advantage of giving you some leave and peace of mind while giving you a set end to work towards.

CONCLUSION

Living with the constant stress of a pending debt over your head and living paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle is no fun. It is also extremely worrying to have no way of saving up for a rainy day. For as strong an invincible as we may feel right now, we are not immune to bad luck, emergencies and global market pandemic or catastrophes. 

No matter what type of debt you’re finding yourself in, it’s important to face the music, quantify it, understand it and act upon it.  It may not happen overnight and it will be hard work, but it’s well worth paying your debs off as it will enable you to move on and lead a better and more meaningful life concentrating on the things that matter to you.

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I’ve met quite a few people now who have reached Financial Independence (FI), and I’ve read a number of blogs and articles giving advice on how to achieve it. My own personal approach to getting to FIRE and maintaining my income through my Early Retirement is very different from most other financially independent people, or FIREistas.

I believe that in order to get to Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) you need to work on three key things:

• living within your means and saving money
• finding ways to increase your salaried income or generate additional passive income
• developing the mindset, temperament and knowledge to be able to invest your money at high rates of return

Today I want to talk about the last of those three, and the one that I think is the most important, learning how to invest your money successfully.

The Standard Approach to FIRE

In the FIRE community there seems to be pretty much a standard accepted formula for achieving FI. It involves living a miserable existence of extreme frugality for many years whilst trying to save up the equivalent of 25 times your income so that you can retire early. After you retire, you invest all your savings in tracker funds which give you the average market return of 7 to 10% per annum, and draw down 4% of your money each year to continue living an extremely frugal life until you die. This doesn’t sound like much fun to me.

Nowadays most people, pretty much everywhere around the world, live and work in big cities. I think that saving 50 – 75% of your salary every year whilst living in a large city is extremely difficult, if not impossible, given the high costs of accommodation and transport in densely populated urban environments. It’s why many people dismiss FIRE as a delusional fantasy and a pipe dream, only achievable if you have a very high income to start with.

Other FIREistas advocate spending all your spare time working on a side hustle, such as running a blog or location independent business to boost your income so that you can stop working at your day job. But most of these side operations would quickly fail and stop generating income if they were not constantly monitored and maintained with a fair amount of time and effort, even after achieving FIRE. I don’t call that retirement.

My approach is different. I agree with the idea of improving yourself to max out your own earning potential and developing side hustles which provide good passive income. But I also think that learning how to invest your savings at high rates of return will allow you retire sooner than others, and with a smaller nest egg saved up. It will also give your greater financial independence than if you relied on customers, subscribers or tenants for your income. Your time would be better spent learning how to invest than finding ways to live more frugally by cutting coupons or saving a few cents on a bag of carrots.

Invest like the best

Imagine…there seems to be practically a foolproof way of getting good results out of common stock investment with a minimum of work. It seems too good to be true. But all I can tell you after 60 years of experience, it seems to stand up under any of the tests that I would make up”

Benjamin Graham

In order to get better than market returns in my retirement, I use a simple value investing strategy. It’s based on the work of the father of value investing, Benjamin Graham. He was a great investor in his own right, but his teachings also produced an unusually high number of really successful investors who followed his investing style, the most notable of which is Warren Buffett. Over the past several decades, Buffet has consistently been one of the top three richest people in the world. I’ve modified Graham’s technique a little to make it more effective in modern times, but in essence I buy companies that are cheap based on a number of metrics and sell them after a specific holding period.

My returns using this technique over the past 4 years have averaged 15% per year. And because I make more income from my savings than other financially independent people do, I need a smaller pot of money to fund my retirement.

I’m not going to go into the details of my investment strategy in this post. I just want you to see how important it is to make as much money as you can from the money that you already have. Over time, a higher rate of return can make a massive difference to your net worth.

Making (more) cents from cents

Let’s look at how investing your cash at a high rate of return actually compares to only getting the market average rate of return and what that means for your journey towards financial independence.

I’m going to use dollars here but if you want to, you can substitute pounds, euros or any other currency. The principal is still the same.

If you use the standard FIRE method of saving up 25x your income before you stop working, and living on 4% of it per year, then to have $40,000 income a year during your retirement, you will need to save up $1,000,000 before you can achieve FIRE.

4% of $1,000,000 = $40,000

Fair enough. But if you can get an much higher return of say 12% on your nest egg and you draw down 8% to live on, whilst reinvesting 4% to account for inflation, then you only need to save up half the amount, that’s $500,000, for the same $40,000 income during your retirement:

12% of $500,000 = $60,000

of which you will need:

8% to live on = $40,000

4% to reinvest = $20,000

Now it’s pretty clear that even if you didn’t earn any interest on your savings, it would only take you half the time to save up half the money, $500k instead of $1million, before you can get to FIRE. That’s already great news.

But the really cool thing is that earning high rates of return on your savings will get you to FIRE even quicker than you otherwise could. If you reinvest that money, you can build up your savings pot more rapidly and actually get to $500k in less that half the time it would take you to get to $1million!

Getting to Financial Independence Faster and Early Retirement Earlier

During the years while you’re still working, you obviously need to be living within your means and regularly and consistently putting money aside towards your retirement. If you can invest that money at above average rates of return, your savings themselves will be earning you even more money than they would otherwise. And the power of compounding will really accelerate your returns at those higher rates. This means that you won’t have to work for as long before you have enough money to retire.

Let’s look at how this works in reality. Let’s say you want to have $500k when you retire, so that you can live on $40k a year, and let’s assume you can save and invest in a tax free investment account, which you should be doing anyway.

This is how long it will take you to save up $500k at the different rates of return:

Save $15k a year at 0% = FIRE in 33 years

Save $15k a year at 1% = FIRE in 29 years

Save $15k a year at 7% = FIRE in 18 years

Save $15k a year at 12% = FIRE in 14 years

So if you can make 12% on your savings you could retire after only 14 years working! That’s 4 years earlier than you could at a rate of 7%, and 15 years earlier than if you just stuck your money in an ordinary savings account at 1% interest a year.

If you were aiming to save a million bucks for your retirement like most FIREstarters because you only know how to earn a market average return, then you would have to save $15k a year and invest that at 7% for 26 years before you could retire.

If you didn’t invest it or earn any interest, saving up a million bucks at fifteen grand a year would take you 67 years. That’s becoming financially independent and retiring late, otherwise known as erm… FIRL, Financial Independence Retire Late, which is exactly as good as it sounds.

The key thing to understand here is that by learning to invest at higher than market rates of return, you could retire 12 years earlier than most people who are aiming for FIRE, after just 14 years in the world of work.

Is it really possible?

Now some people are going to say that the average return on the S&P500 is actually 10% a year, not 7%, so this isn’t a fair comparison. But the simple value investing technique I use has been backtested by myself, by others and by Benjamin Graham himself to produce at least a 15% return when tested over a minimum 5-year period. Graham checked this over a 70 year timespan.

My own investment returns over the past 4 years since I retired have averaged 15% per year, including one down year and one year of major volatility due to Trump’s tariff war and the Brexit uncertainty. Now this has been achieved during a period when value investing has underperformed other investing styles. When value investing starts to outperform again, which it will, I should do just fine.

So I believe it’s quite possible to achieve 12% a year over the long term on a conservative basis, using this method of investing. And to make it a fair comparison I have taken a conservative view of the possible returns from the S&P500 as well. Even if you replaced the figures above with 10% and 15% returns instead, it would take you 13 and 16 years respectively to get to $500k. You’d still be retiring 3 years earlier using Graham’s method instead of investing in a bog standard market tracker.

And I’ve ignored any pay increases which would allow you to save more every year. These would disproportionately benefit Graham’s high return investing technique.

Nerves of steel

But investing like this comes with a huge caveat. Using your savings to generate a higher return over the long term than the market average is not easy to do. Understanding the technicalities of any investment strategy is, in my opinion, only a small part of what is required to be a successful investor. The rest is down to developing the correct mindset, self awareness and self-control to implement that technique correctly.

For a real world example of this in action, let’s look at the returns of one of the most famous investors of modern times. For a decade and a half, between 1977 and 1990, Peter Lynch ran the Magellan Fund and earned a staggering 29% average annual return. But over the same period the average investor in the fund actually lost money! Yes you read that right. The people investing in the Magellan Fund made a negative return despite the fact that the fund itself was outperforming the S&P500 by a huge margin.

How could this be? Well, the individual investors were moving their money in and out of the fund at all the wrong times, depending on how they felt about the markets. They were reacting with fear during bad times and greed during good times. In other words they were reacting emotionally to the market. There are many reasons why people do this but the end result is the same. They wind up moving their money in and out of the stock market at precisely the wrong times. If Lynch’s investors had just stuck with him through good times and bad they would have earned a 29% average annual return for over a decade. But doing this would have required nerves of steel. Successful investing is simple, but not easy.

The Magellan fund’s track record is still to this day the best mutual fund performance of all time. Incidentally, Peter Lynch was using value investing techniques too, although his methods took a lot more work than the strategy I use. If you want to know more about how he did it I suggest reading his books One Up on Wall Street and Beating the Street. Lynch also used a lot of the techniques suggested by Phil Fisher in his classic book Uncommon Stocks and Uncommon Profits, kicking the tyres on a vast number of companies to find the undervalued, unappreciated stocks which would go on to become tomorrow’s winners. Many people believe that Lynch burnt himself out over those 13 years due to the sheer intensity of work required to achieve the results that he did. I don’t think it’s possible for the average person like you or me to get returns like that, especially if you also have a day job.

No EMO

“If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money”

Warren Buffett

Reacting emotionally to the gyrations of the stock market is what makes successful investing so hard for most people to do. You need to understand and accept that the market will go up and down a lot, but that over long periods of time it has always gone up. They say that past performance is not necessarily a guide to the future, but that applies to the short term rather than the long term. Over long periods of time the stock market has risen tremendously.

In any one year, stock prices can fluctuate wildly, sometimes by up to 50% or more. Sticking to your investment strategy through thick and thin will lead to long term success. This is the mindset you need to develop. But having the correct mindset is one thing. Having the temperament to pull it off is a quite another. Watching your wealth fluctuate massively like this over a short period of time is really difficult to do. Watching it fall and stay low for longer than a year or two is really, really hard.

I’ve spent years learning how to control my own emotions and training myself to become nonreactive towards the movements of the stock market. Developing this mindset was really difficult at first and I fell prey to many of the emotional ups and downs that the majority of investors suffer from. But over time, like most things, the more I worked at it the easier it became.

I also studied the natural human tendencies and biases which make us behave so irrationally, despite our misplaced belief that we are rational beings. This helped me understand that no matter how hard we try, some of our own biases are virtually impossible to overcome and the best course of action both in life and investing is to find a way to overrule them.

Having and implementing a rules-based system of investing is vitally important. As the individual investors in the Magellan Fund found out, ignoring your emotions and sticking to those rules through thick and thin, through good times and bad, is really tough.

To mitigate this further, many great investors also have a checklist based system which they go through methodically when selecting individual stocks to buy. These might include both quantitative and qualitative criteria. My own personal checklist is the strategy itself and I stick to it like superglue.

Buy low, sell high

The great thing about my strategy is that at times when the stock market has been rising strongly and is overvalued, it will stop me from buying stocks completely. It forces me to act against my own human tendency towards hubris, and my fear of missing out when other people seem to be making money easily. It naturally makes me buy low and sell high, the exact opposite of what most individual investors do when their minds are ruled by fear and greed, which is to buy high and sell low.

It’s important to remember that just following any old rules-based system does not necessarily guarantee success. Obviously it’s got to be a tried and tested method that you have complete confidence in. My approach is based on the work of Benjamin Graham, arguably one of the greatest investors of all time. His simple formula has been backtested on data over many decades, and I’ve tweaked it to make it work in our modern times of algorithmic and AI investing. I have faith in the strategy and I now have 4 years of personal experience to back up that faith.

Prior to my retirement I used other value investing techniques to get high returns on my savings and save more quickly. By doing this, I was able to retire early despite never having lived a particularly frugal life, or working particularly hard at my day job. But since discovering Graham’s simple investing methods, I believe I could have retired even sooner if I’d applied them many years ago.

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Demystifying investing

For many people, just the mere concept of investing brings chills down my spine! So, the first thing I want to do it to demystify this but reassuring you that investing does not need to involve angry people wearing suits screaming at each other nor a heart attack on a plate! Most importantly, you do not need to be a professional stock broker nor wealthy to have a taste of it.

All you need is some spare cash (even as little as £50 a month), the mindset (educating yourself not to panic and why) and learning a few tools that will allow you to decide how to invest along.

Long are gone the days where investing was just for the Wolves of Wall Street. Today, investing for beginners is much easier and simpler than ever before, so if you are curious about investing and you have a little money to play with, read on!

What is investing?

When you put money in a bank, that money sits there earning very little interest until you need it. It’s essentially secure but earns you very very little.

When you invest in the stock market, you are buying something that you believe will increase in value over time. The hope is that you will get a profit (the share is worth more than you paid for it) but there is a possibility you will get a loss (the share is worth less than you bought it). You must always remember that there is a risk and that there are no guarantees: it’s a gamble.

You can invest in all types of things, from gold to bonds, shares and cryptocurrencies. To keep it simple, since this is a beginner’s guide and investing does not need to be complicated, let’s look at the two most well-known forms of investment: shares and funds.

• Shares: when you buy a share, you are buying a tiny stake in a company. Those shares can, and do, go up and down in value for various reasons. When the company performs well you get a profit but when the company performs badly your investment may not grow and, worst case scenario, you lose the money you invested.

• Funds: Funds are baskets of companies but they can even be baskets of other funds which are baskets of companies. Professional fund managers manage some funds, but that doesn’t mean they do the hard work for you, or that they are any good. Most managers underperform the market, for example they do worse than the market average. It’s difficult to know who will perform best going forward. For managers – the past definitely does not predict the future. Not all funds are managed, for example tracker funds are not, so companies are automatically added or removed when they drop out of the index due to bad performance etc. This is why it’s a good idea to cut out the middleman and invest in tracker funds, which give you the market average. Another way is to invest in sector funds or individual companies directly if you know about the sector (perhaps because you work in that industry). 

Bear in mind that on top of the share value, some companies also give you dividends. A dividend is a portion of the company’s earnings paid to its shareholders (you). When funds get dividends from shares of companies they own, they can also pay those dividends out to you.

It’s important to understand that the greater return you want, the greater risk you’ll have to take, so you might want to start off with funds where your return might be lower but less risky. Tracker funds are an excellent way to start investing and they can be great fun as you can invest in anything you are interested in: from tech to pharmaceutical, from properties to cars. What is interesting is to look at the future and start thinking what will be needed in the years to come. For example, will water become scarcer and more valuable? Will more and more people suffer from diabetes as obesity and urbanization grows? Or perhaps you are considering a property fund because you are keen to step on the property ladder but can’t afford to buy a house.

One piece of advice, as for all things, never keep all your eggs in one basket. Diversify your portfolio by investing in different companies, industries and regions and review it from time to time.

Is investing good for me?

As a rule of thumb, you should never ever invest more that you can afford to lose. This is because it is important to underline that investing, no matter what you invest on, is a bit like gambling. The market goes up and down in pretty much a cyclical way. Sometimes it may be down for a short period of time, sometimes it might be down for a long time. You need to be prepared to having to wait out those downward waves.

In order to do this, make sure you save up an emergency cushion fund for a rainy day or for the market downturn. Make a list of any repayments you might have such as loans, mortgages and credit cards and consider paying off your debts before venturing into investing. As a general rule, if you invest any sum of money make sure you don’t need it for at least five years. Why five years? Because it is relatively rare, but of course not impossible, for the stock market to experience a downturn that lasts longer than that. Investing is a long-term game, so if you are looking at investing short term, perhaps you are better off considering more conservative options such as a savings account that offer shorter locked in periods.

How much to invest?

Investing even very small amounts can reap big rewards. Do not walk away from investing simply because you think it’s a game for the big wealthy fishes. In fact, as you start, it’s best to start with small sums so you can see how you feel about it and what works for you.

The best thing to do is to invest a little every month rather than all in one go. It’s also important to invest the same amount of money every month whether or not the market is going up or down.  This will help to smooth out the price you pay for any shares you buy, because share prices (and fund prices) can vary quite a lot in the short term. When prices are low you get more shares of a company (or more units of a fund) for your money and when prices are high you get less.

You can think of buying shares in the same way you might buy anything else in the shops. When stores have a sale on, you can buy more items for the same amount of money. Similarly, when stock market prices are low you can buy more shares for your money because they are on sale too. It’s buy one get one free!  When prices recover, you will own more shares that you have bought cheaply and fewer shares that you have bought when they were expensive. The trouble is no one knows when stock prices will be high or low, or when they might go even higher, so investing every month takes the worry, and risk, out of trying to time the market. 

How to avoid the panic: it’s all in the preparation and the mindset!

Once you have saved up an amount of money you can play with and secured an emergency cash fund, you have one more question to ask yourself before you start investing: what is your risk tolerance? Are you someone who worries? If you are, maybe this is not right for you. It is important to understand that once you have invested in something, assuming you are a beginner and want a relatively easy ride with not too much interaction, it is unhealthy to keep checking it day in day out. Let me give you an example: if you bought a house, would you be checking the value of your house against the property market every day? Probably not! You would likely sit on it for a few years and consider selling it when the market is up. Investing is the same.

Investments can go down as well as up. Don’t be tempted to sell or buy shares just because everyone else is and you are panicking! Similarly, don’t believe everything you hear. Everyone has an opinion. Keep your ears open but do your own research!

Before you throw in the towel, reflect on this: in the book “never split the difference” by Chris Voss, the author talks about loss aversion showing that “people are statistically more likely to act to avert a loss than to achieve an equal gain”. This is because we feel the pain of a loss more than we enjoy the equivalent gain. At the moment you are likely to gain 1.35% to 2.1% on a bank savings account versus an average of 7% when investing.

Warren Buffett has famously said that a low-cost index fund is the best investment most Americans can make — and choosing individual stocks only if you believe in the company’s potential for long-term growth.

Open an investing account

To invest in the stock market, you need a trading account. There are many options out there and each of these accounts will offer you different benefits, choices and charges.

Here is a list of the best known stockbrokers for UK investors.

Personally, I find the Interactive Investor trading accounts very easy to use as well as cheap. You can open an account from as little as £9.99 a month and if you invest monthly, that money goes towards your trading costs, meaning you essentially have low or no charges if you invest regularly.

I am a bit of a lazy investor, in the sense that I don’t like having to check my portfolio too often, so I find investing mostly on funds makes my life easier yet bringing in good returns. Another platform I use for indexes is Vanguard. Here you can find a good selection of funds with good dividend returns. Worth checking it out.

Start investing

Now you have a trading account you can start investing.

It’s good practice to do a little bit of research before you commit to buying.

There’s a lot of good websites out there that can help you form a decision. You can even follow what famous investors do, for example on GuruFocus, to get a feel for it. Yes, you will not be able to invest when they do, as the reports are delayed by a few months, but it will give you a feel for the kind of shares they are buying. It will also help you practice with checking company performances.

You might also want to check out the Interactive Investor beginners’ guides which offers information on a range of investments as well as a glossary of terms that you might come across as you invest while Bestinvest is good for checking out the monthly reports on more than 85,000 funds.

Remember that trading individual stocks is always riskier than investing in index funds. This is because an Index fund offers a large selection of stocks within one fund so your risk is diversified

Don’t forget your Stocks & Shares ISA!

If you live in the U.K. it’s worth remembering that every year you get a £20,000 ISA allowance. An ISA, or Individual Savings Account, is a scheme allowing individuals to hold cash, shares, and unit trusts free of tax on dividends, interest, and capital gains. It’s a tax-efficient way to save and invest your money as you don’t pay Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax on the interest or returns your money makes. However, you must remember that once the tax year is over if you have not used all your allowance you will lose it.

A common way, if not the first thing you should consider, is to start investing via Stocks & Shares ISA as if you use your ISA allowance to invest, you’ll protect more of your money from tax.

You can invest this as one lump sum or smaller amounts. You can choose to use all of this ISA allowance for a Stocks & Shares ISA, or you can put some in a Stocks & Shares ISA and the rest in a cash ISA.

To invest via a Stocks & Shares ISA, all you have to do is open a Stocks and Shares ISA at your chosen stock broker. This will mean that any dividends or profits you make will be tax free.

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The much-awaited festive season brings Christmas trees, fairy lights, baubles, garlands, candles and bubbly making it all very joyful and just lovely! We start looking forward to spending time with family and friends and, in preparation, we make gift lists. The downside is that far too often we end up spending most of December thinking and searching for presents. To ensure the Holiday craze does not get to your sanity or your wallet unnecessarily, try this: on the run up to Christmas, and especially today just a few days away, stop, think and relax instead.

When I was little Christmas presents were fewer and mostly from my parents and grandparents, but for a long while into my adulthood presents seemed to sprout from everywhere: family members I saw just once a year, distant friends with well-timed parcels, colleagues keen on secret Santa and even neighbours who seemed to appear with a gift at my front door on the day before Christmas. Although this seems all very nice, over the last few years it has brought me to ponder over the necessity of it all.

A curious observation has been that, apart from the gifts that came from the ones really close to me, the rest often appeared to be impersonal, as if bought in a rush, under offer or recycled without much thought behind. It is not that I do not understand or appreciate what it means to buy on a budget and the challenges of not knowing the person you are buying for very well. What I don’t fully understand is the need for this dance. The second observation has been that, typically, I find myself running out with a guilty feeling looking for presents for people who I had not planned to buy for but who have presented me with a gift. My thought is: do we really need this? Wouldn’t it be nicer to spend time together with a cup of hot choc or glass of bubbly in the comfortable knowledge that nothing is suddenly going to spring out of a bag making us feel unprepared or with less pennies in our pocket?

In Spanish there is a word for presents we receive with which we have no idea what to do. They are called “pongos” and the reason is because they answer to the question “donde lo pongo”, meaning “where shall I put it?”. What if we said no to pongos, no to unnecessary presents and replaced that with spending quality time with our loved ones? I believe banning the pongo-dance will, not only help us fully appreciate the meaning of this special time of the year, but also aid our finances. Least but not last, it will go a long way to reduce our carbon footprint. Interestingly, I once came across a picture of a lorry with the sign “Don’t like trucks? Stop buying shit! Problem solved.” Quite thought provoking, huh?

So, where does the decluttering come into play? In the last few years I found that decluttering in the month of December is a really good reminder of all the things we already have which we don’t even need. Even when we try to hide or deny it, deep down we know our homes, garages, lofts and sheds are full of stuff and this stuff clutters our homes, makes us spend more money and buy more boxes to contain these things that we are not even using! Not to mention the feeling of guilt we often feel when we do not use or wear something or when we find ourselves hiding an unwanted present that was never really us. All this stuff can even weight us down and hold us back making us view moving house or taking up a job or sabbatical abroad seem impractical and complicated.

Since early age we have been exposed to consumerism through advertising, product placements and well displayed store windows. We are continuously exposed to it and as we see more and more of our peers possessing more and more of these things, we too can from time to time unknowingly turn into mag pies. But spend some time exercising your power over it and you will suddenly start wondering what the fuss over owning more and more stuff is. Do we really need the latest fruit juicer? Do we really need a new watch or another set of candle holders? By the way, just I case you were wondering about it – the latest perfume fragrance is not going to make you that much sexier!

While you go about decluttering, think about getting rid not just of your material stuff but also of those subscriptions you no longer enjoy or no longer have a use for. Learn to live with what you really need and declutter your life of unnecessary things and costs. I was once asked how was it possible I did not hold a movie streaming service subscription since they are so cheap. “It’s just a few pounds a month” I was told “surely anyone can afford that!” This comment left me rather perplexed. Of course I could afford it, but my question was: “why if I have no use for it?” Plus, as a tip, most streaming services replenish their stock very slowly, meaning you are often better off signing up for a free trial or just for a couple of months when you know you’ll be spending some time at home, like during the holidays.

Perhaps, consider sharing your thoughts with friends and family too. You might have seen a familiar social media post doing the rounds every year around Christmas. The one suggesting being the present instead of buying presents, wrapping someone in a hug instead of wrapping presents, sending love instead of gifts and being the light instead going to see the lights.

Most people already have a lot of stuff and decluttering in December is a great way to be reminded of that. Consider selling or donating what you no longer need. There is also a lot of joy in knowing that by letting go of your unwanted things you let others enjoy them. There’s a lot of charities out there fighting for good causes who would be thrilled to have your unwanted treasures! Be the present and spend quality time with your loved ones. That’s what’s truly is important and instead of worrying about not seeing everyone because of the gift fear, make a point of seeing everyone and wrap them up with a warm hug. Don’t let consumerism stand in your way to human contact and happiness. Finally, feel relieved in the knowledge that you’ll have no overdraft worries weighting you down on Christmas day.

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The art of buying less is a bit like the art of getting into shape. Eating less without doing any exercise, or just exercising without changing our eating habits, simply won’t cut it. In order to achieve a sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle that will bring long lasting benefits, the physical act needs to go hand in hand with a new mindset. .

The benefits

Buying less as a lifestyle choice is not just about avoiding eating into our overdraft as we wait for the next pay cheque at the end of the month, but rather about developing the mindset to spend less money.

We can become so obsessed with material things that sometimes we lose sight of what is truly important. As a friend of mine once said “don’t get too hung up on the material stuff, we only keep them for a certain amount of time in this lifetime anyway!”

The buying-less philosophy is about understanding our needs and reprogramming our mind by educating ourselves that when we buy things that we don’t need all we gain is a short-lived pleasure. It’s about appreciating that when we learn to live with less, we can choose to work less and even retire early. It gives us the freedom to choose what to do with our time! Perhaps you’d like to volunteer or dedicate your time to help causes you feel strongly about?  

Finally, having less stuff means that we need less space in our homes to store them, so we can live in smaller houses than we otherwise could. Smaller houses also mean less utility bills! An uncluttered home is good to our mental well-being and, buying less is also good to the environment. So, as you can see, there are plenty benefits!

Differentiating short-term happiness vs long-term happiness

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. “

Fight Club

We are constantly bombarded with advertising messages projecting images of goods and services that we are actively encouraged to buy and consume as if in doing so we would gain, not just the material good, but the success and lifestyle also. We are made to believe that by buying that something we will be happy. These sparkly and glittery adverts make it very hard for people to save money or live within their means, as their ultimate and repetitive message is always the same: buy more! But do we need to consume so much? Do we really need this or that?

We need to change the way we view consumerism and become self-aware of how it affects our path to purpose. A one-off impulse purchase can give us short-lived instant gratification, but it’s the lifetime experiences that give us long-term gratification. It’s only when we truly understand this that we chase to be part of mass consumerism and, free of the strings that have held us hooked on buying more, we become indifferent to its temptations making its measurements of success and power no longer applicable to us.

Choose wisely

We all have different needs and different taste in life. While it may be easy for me to say “no” to  buying an expensive painting, it may be too difficult a temptation for someone who really loves art and gets great pleasure from looking at it.

Truly, what it comes down to is understanding our core beliefs and learning to compromise.

In 2017 I took a two-year and three-month sabbatical to go and live on a tiny Spanish island called Menorca, not working by choice. I chose a lifetime experience over short-term gratification. This move required careful financial planning, but I like to use this example as a testament to the fact that buying less does not need to result in a miserable existence!

After a few deep and honest soul-searching conversations with myself, I decided this was something I wanted to do.  So, I made some carefully evaluated financial choices to retain financial security without blowing my capital and end in poverty and went for it. I wanted sun, sea and a good lifestyle. I didn’t choose to go and live in California where your daily expenditure can be high. I carefully selected Menorca because the quality of life there is good and also cheap! Even though I lived in a beautiful three-bedroom villa with garage, pool, terraces and all types of comforts, I only spent a third of what I used to spend in London comparatively. I did this, while my investments earned me dividends as I sunbathed and cheered at spectacular sunsets. Of course, I also had to live by my means. For example, although eating out there is very cheap, I didn’t go out every night but only once or twice a week. I learnt to enjoy and appreciate the free things in life such as taking a walk along the beach, spending time with friends and simply living in the moment. I learnt a new language and embraced a new culture by mixing in with the locals and I even took some free courses with the Open University simply because I was fascinated about some of the topics. With my newly gained freedom, I enriched my life and gained greater happiness and satisfaction.  Interestingly, as I did not work and as life on an island is pretty chilled, I also did not need work clothes and very quickly I begun to feel that buying anything new really had not much of a fascination to me anymore. As long as I had a pair of flip flops and some summer clothes all was good.

As an added bonus, when I returned to the UK, eager to unpack all of the beloved possessions I had left behind in a storage facility, I realized that my material things were not that important at all. Just furniture, bits and bobs. Just stuff. There’s a beautiful line that comes from a movie of which unfortunately I do not recall the title. In the movie the protagonist is heartbroken at having to store all of her possessions in a storage facility. As she locks the door, she looks at the manager begging him to look after her things, at which he replies “yes yes, I understand. It’s your life packed in there. Funny how some people never come back from ‘their life’ after all!” I think this line speaks volumes!

My point is, buying less will certainly result in having more disposable but, even better, learning to enjoy living with less is where you will find the potential to a more gratifying life. A state of mind that can provide a lifestyle in which your dependency on your job is broken and where mass consumerism’s rules and measurements of success and happiness no longer apply.

A lesson learnt in time

Normally, once people dig deep into their core beliefs in search of what makes them truly happy, gratified and fulfilled, it does not tend to be material things such as luxury cars or a private cinema room in the house. They tend to find that it’s rather time, relationships and life-experiences that truly adds to their long-term happiness.

My one-year expenditure in Menorca did not even come close to a mid-range new car and I strongly believe that no new car could have ever given me the same level of happiness and fulfilment.

Buying less is not about being frugal and living without enjoying or experiencing life. It means learning what and why is important to us and ensuring that it does not clutter our path to purpose in life. But as we learn to buy when needed and as we learn to be less interested in material things, we also need to learn how and where to compromise.

Easy steps to practice:

• Think of the “buying less” philosophy as a lifestyle and not as a temporary remedy to meet a financial goal.

• Practice the benefits of buying less by favouring long-term life experiences over material goods which will bring you more long-term gratitude over of short-term happiness.

• From time to time remind yourself that the more you buy the more you need to work to sustain that lifestyle. The less you buy the more you become free of consumerism and its absurd measurements of power, success and happiness.

• Understand that spending less does not need to be living a frugal life. Avoid failing due to overdoing it. You don’t need to cut out all the good things. Learn to compromise on the things that matter to you. You don’t need to justify it to others, but be true and honest to yourself. Do you really need to buy this?

• Rediscover yourself and your core beliefs. What brings you true joy in life? What brings you fulfilment? Learn to differentiate between what you need and what you want. As the song by Rolling Stones goes “you can’t always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need”. Don’t let your life be run by mass consumerism and don’t let possessions rule your goals in life.

• Enjoy the free things and learn to live in the moment! Take a walk, borrow a book from the library, enrich your knowledge by enrolling at a free course with the Open University, consider volunteering for a cause you believe in and spend time with your loved ones!

• Choose your role models wisely! Time to re-evaluate the Instagram influencers and celebrities you follow: do they display good solid values or are they all about product placement, expensive wardrobes and an unattainable lifestyle?

• Added tip…from time to time check your subscriptions. Do you still need them? It may be a small outgoing per month but over time they add up and it can be difficult to factor them in in our monthly expenditures as we don’t really see the cash leaving our wallet. Studies have shown that we are more likely to perceive the actual cost of something when we pay with cash instead of paying by card or direct debit.

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