What type of saver are you? Take our interactive quiz to find out if you’re a Goal Gary or a Lavish Lucy
ARE you careful with your cash or more of a spontaneous spender?
The way you use your money can indicate how best to save those pounds too.
Research by NatWest revealed that one in four of us has less than £100 in savings.
But fear not if your reserves have stalled, as TV money expert Emmanuel Asuquo has savings advice for every kind of spender.
He says: “A finance specialist, like me, can work out the best ways to save to suit your personality. Doing a small thing regularly will help you see results.”
Use our interactive quiz below to find out what type of spender you are and Emmanuel gives his verdict on each.
Tight Tony
YOU never like to spend and in an ideal world you might enjoy hoarding your money.
You are good at finding discounts and deals, and using them to save your hard-earned pounds.
Tight Tony personalities can often be a little anxious about money, seeing it as a form of security.
HOW TO SAVE: As you tend to be good at saving, you’ve hopefully already got a rainy-day fund in an account with a top-paying interest rate, but a fun way to save more is by using Premium Bonds.
It’s a type of savings account backed by the Government that doesn’t offer interest.
Instead, you have a chance every month to win prizes with as much as £1million up for grabs.
Each numbered £1 bond you buy is a separate “ticket” in the draw.
Rainy Ryan
YOU always want to save for a rainy day, but have no clear idea how to consistently put cash away every week.
You dislike spending on fun things such as holidays as it seems wasteful, but are happy paying for emergency things like a boiler repair.
HOW TO SAVE: Saving should come easy to you, and a good way to make money work a little harder is the Notepad Mystery Box method.
Write different amounts you’d like to put into a special savings account, on pieces of paper, and put them into a bowl. Every Sunday, draw out a piece to determine how much you will be putting away that week.
Budget beforehand to work out how much you can put away as a maximum amount, £25 is a good top value.
A good way to save a little, often.
Goal Gary
YOU enjoy spending, and really only save when there is the specific goal of something big, like a holiday.
You could be very good at putting cash away but it has to be for something you care about and will make sacrifices for. When there’s no good reason to, saving goes out of the window and you live day-to-day again.
HOW TO SAVE: Try using the 50:30:20 method.
This is where 50 per cent of your income is left in your account to pay your bills, 30 per cent is used for spending on food, travel and eating out, and 20 per cent is saved.
It might help to move the 20 per cent straight into an online saving account on pay day.
If that is too much for you, then go down to ten or five per cent. Even little increments add up.
Lavish Lucy
DESPITE having the intention to save, you buy on impulse. When you do manage to put some money away for a rainy day, you always dip into your savings.
You tend to pay for things that make you feel good in the moment, like clothes in a sale, and you justify it by telling yourself you work hard for your money.
HOW TO SAVE: Use cash where you can, and become a round-up saver.
For everything you buy that falls beneath the 50p mark, squirrel the rest away.
So if your supermarket shop comes to £60.75, put that 25p in a separate part of your wallet or see if your banking app lets you do this automatically.
Over a year these small penny amounts will add up to a substantial saving.
Yolo Yasmin
YOU don’t save, as you firmly believe you only live once and do not want to miss out by being frugal.
Money goes out just as quickly as it comes in as you live day to day and never see the merit of doing things like a big supermarket shop.
HOW TO SAVE: To start your foray into saving, try a weekday saving challenge.
Budget your spending over a month and split what is left after bills and important outgoings into how much you should spend daily.
Try taking out in cash the most you would like to spend that day.
On Monday, from your day’s spending money put £1 in a saving jar, Tuesday £2, Wednesday £3 and so on.
By Friday you will have saved £15, and £60 over the month.