Are YOU a Financial Statistic? (UK Money Reality Check)

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hello, there frugal friends.

[00:00:02]What if I told you you might already be a financial statistic?

[00:00:08]And not in a good way.

[00:00:11]So, today I'm going to go through 10 UK-based financial statistics that I had and explore on the internet for. And we're going to find out if you and I are one of those financial statistics.

[00:00:25]So, let's have a look.

[00:00:28]But before we have a look, if you've not already got a drink, get yourself a drink, get yourself settled, get yourself a cup of tea. I've got my lemon juice.

[00:00:36]Um got it cold today. Sometimes have it hot, but it's quite sunny, so have one. So, I'll just wait for a second.

[00:00:45]Okay, you got yourself a drink?

[00:00:47]Brilliant. Let me take mine first.

[00:00:52]Okay, this first statistic is quite scary, I thought.

[00:00:56]That something like one in four people in the UK only have £100.

[00:01:06]Yeah, £100 in savings.

[00:01:10]That is That's not even going to cover at the even the most basic of emergencies.

[00:01:16]What do you do if, you know, a tire blows on your car? That's I mean, for some people that tire can be over £100.

[00:01:23]That's wiped out most of that emergency fund already. I don't know how people can do that. Your washing machine breaks.

[00:01:31]Your dishwasher goes.

[00:01:33]The sink cracks. We had a crack in our sink and it broke.

[00:01:36]I can't imagine not being able to afford to pay for something simple as that.

[00:01:42]So, [snorts] that's the first statistic.

[00:01:44]If that's you, that's one. And for me, that's one of the scariest ones.

[00:01:50]Second one.

[00:01:51]Not including mortgages, about half the population of the adults in the UK have some kind of debt.

[00:02:03]Now, the I think the thing is that debt's become so normal.

[00:02:09]It's like, "Oh, well, I'll just I'll just pay it on my credit card." That's why the £100 from before is quite scary, because what's the next thing you do if you can't afford it? You take out some kind of debt to pay for that emergency.

[00:02:20]And then you're paying for that emergency for however many months. And then another emergency crops up, and because you've been paying for those emergencies, you've not got any money put aside in savings ready to pay for the next emergency. So, then you're paying for it on the credit card, or you pay it taking it out in a loan, or you're doing Oh my gosh, I hate these, paying three.

[00:02:39]Just to spread it out a little bit. But the problem is is if you have the washing machine break, and then a tire goes on your car, and then something else happens, you've got a paying three, a paying three, a paying three. And then you've got three payments of paying three that are just going to pile on top of each other.

[00:02:54]Ooh, no, thank you.

[00:02:57]Now, this one probably isn't talked about very much, but about based on surveys, about 60% of people are feeling financially stressed. And we know that stress is one of those things that doesn't just stay in its lane. It starts to affect all the rest of your life as well. And financial stress is awful, because it just puts you in that position where you're constantly worried about what happens if, what happens if, what happens if. Again, this roots back to having that emergency fund, making sure that you're prepared. It's having contingency plans put in place.

[00:03:33]I personally, I don't feel too stressed about money. I worry about price rises, but I think everybody does that, even if you are not financially stressed in other ways. We're getting a visitor over my shoulder, I think, in a minute.

[00:03:50]Tinkerbell's just jumped up on the back, if you can't see. I'm not sure if she's in shot.

[00:03:54]Um so, I say it just it affects more than just your bank account. It starts to affect your relationships and the way you communicate with each other. And then the blame game starts coming. Why did you spend on that? What did you spend on that for?

[00:04:09]It's scary.

[00:04:13]This one hurts the most, in a way, because I'm such a frugal shopper. And if you've watched my shopping videos, you know what I'm like. I don't like to spend money a lot a lot on food. We're very careful with what we spend, how we spend it, how we use our money in our grocery budget.

[00:04:31]And based on last year's money, in fact, let me check my book.

[00:04:38]So, last year on my grocery budget, overall, in a year, I spent £998.48, which averages out at £83.21, which was a very good year. We had some really good vouchers and different things like that. But thinking that I spent less than £1,000 on food, but an average family wastes £700 [snorts] of food every year.

[00:05:09]That's like I could feed my family nearly on that amount of food that's just being thrown in the bin. This is why I'm so positive about things like Olio, where you can get food waste from supermarkets, where the dates are very short, and they're or they've gone by best by date on that particular day, and you can buy it not buy it, you get it for free. You bring it home, and then you utilize it.

[00:05:36]That has saved us so much money, and we do not waste that food. I get bags and bags and bags of stir-fry mix, they go in the freezer. Bags of salad are pretty decent. If you use them within a day or two of you getting them, they last perfectly fine. Give them a wash, give them a refresh, get them going again. There's been loads of food that we've had, bread.

[00:06:01]I have hardly bought bread in the past, I'm going to say 3 and 1/2 years I've been using Olio, roughly. And I've probably bought spent less than £20 on bread in those 2 and 1/2 years. I have a freezer full of different kinds of bread.

[00:06:19]And bread is one of those things that people throw away so easily. Breads and salad bags.

[00:06:27]Because people think that bread can go off so quickly, which it can do. But you can store it in your freezer, and it saves so much money.

[00:06:37]And I personally don't find that the bread is any different once it's been in the freezer. I have absolutely no issues with it whatsoever. I know some people feel that they do, but I personally don't.

[00:06:50]Now, this one's pretty relevant at the moment with everything that's going on in the world, energy prices.

[00:06:55]They are going up, but hopefully sometime over the summer, um I think the off whatever, you know, the com the overhanging thing that decides what they um off what, something like that it's called, are talking about capping the prices again so that we're not feeling it as much. But have you noticed how they cap the prices in the summer when we're not using as much of it, and don't cap the prices as much over the winter when we all need it?

[00:07:25]It is what it is. The way we get around that is we do like what the energy companies do is that they average it out over the year.

[00:07:32]So, we put more money away in the we put the same amount of money away every month including during the summer, where we know we're not going to be utilizing our electricity and our gas as much. And then we put that So, that gives us that buffer for when we're in the winter. And even when we're in the winter, put on a jumper.

[00:07:52]Put on some thick socks with your slippers. Have a hot drink.

[00:07:56]We don't have our heating that high.

[00:07:58]I've been watching um some videos about um a city in Russia called Yakuts, which is the coldest city in the world, where temperatures can go down to like minus 55 to minus 60. And they have their heating on constantly at about 25 in the winter, just to maintain the heat in their house. Now, we don't need it at that temperature. We put ours at probably 18. So, in the winter, the temperature in the house is 18, and that's warm enough for us. We don't sit here in shorts and t-shirt in the winter.

[00:08:34]You know, we put on a sweater, we put on our slippers, we put on our thick socks.

[00:08:38]But 18 is quite a comfortable temperature when you're used to it. If you're used to higher temperatures, try knocking it down just a little bit and a little bit and a little bit until you get to that comfortable temperature.

[00:08:51]So, that's number six. That's something we can't control completely, um obviously, because the prices are set by the companies and off what, if that's the right name. But we can control how much we use in our homes.

[00:09:07]Number seven is a bit mad, because takeaways. Takeaways are lovely, don't get me wrong.

[00:09:13]I like a takeaway every now and again.

[00:09:16]And I like to eat out every now and again. It's nice when I'm not having to do the cooking.

[00:09:22]But this is why I plan and have meals in the freezer, because when I can't be bothered, we can just get something out and chuck it in the microwave, and we're sorted. I'll put a link at the end of the video to my bulk cooking meals um videos, so you can have a look at those.

[00:09:38]But it says the average amount that people spend, and this is the average person, not family, person, £1,200 on takeaways a year. That's a holiday.

[00:09:53]You imagine if you add that all up within your family, that's your family holiday, and you could go and put somewhere pretty decent on that.

[00:10:02]I think so many people, it's it's thinking it's oh, it's it's just going to save some time. Well, by the time you've ordered it, maybe gone to the shop to pick it up, waited for it in the shop, and then come back home again, you could have made something.

[00:10:15]You know, jacket potato and salad.

[00:10:17]Jacket potato doesn't take that long in a microwave.

[00:10:21]Do you spend much on takeaways, or are they like a once in a while treat that you maybe save for, put money away for, or have in your budget? That's the one thing that's good is if you plan it in your budget, then you know where the money is going and what you're you know, what you are using it for, and it's not just put it on the card cuz I spent it, put it on the card. Oh, I forgot my lunch, put it on the card.

[00:10:46]Now, this one is more to do with future you.

[00:10:51]30% of adults have no pension savings, possibly other than what we hope, uh in inverted commas, hope we will eventually get, potentially, from the government in our national in what we've paid in our national insurance. But, in terms of private pensions, um 30% of people don't have them.

[00:11:13]Now, what you get from the state pension isn't that much.

[00:11:19]It's not going to cover, necessarily, everything that you want it to cover.

[00:11:24]So, you need to top it up with some other kind of savings or other kind of pension or investments that you might have.

[00:11:31]Ooh, that's quite scary. And it's easy to not think about it until you're knocking on the door of, you know, your 60s and you're like, oh, crumbs, I'm retiring in the next X years, >> [snorts] >> and I've not got enough money. I've not got enough a plan.

[00:11:50]Plan now. If you are one of my younger viewers, and I've got to admit, most of my viewers are we are the 40-plus category.

[00:11:59]If you are younger than that and are watching, pension pension, put something away. Do it now.

[00:12:06]Compound interest is what makes the difference. This is the best day to start investing [clears throat] is when you're young. The second best day to start investing is today.

[00:12:15]>> [clears throat] >> Have a think about that and think about what you could end up with, or maybe go and have a look on the pension calculator online and see what your pension prediction is going to be, and think about is that going to be enough for you?

[00:12:29]Do you live off a budget?

[00:12:31]We do.

[00:12:34]But, 40% of spending for those people who don't live on budgets [clears throat] is implying.

[00:12:41]It's just the Oh, sorry, Stinks having a bit of a cough. You all right, Ellen?

[00:12:47]There we go. Did you hear that? She has a bit of a It's a thing. This is a complete aside. She's cuz she's an older dog and small dog, and they can start to suffer with suffer with what's called a collapsed trachea, where the basically her windpipe is a bit soft and sticky, so every now and again it gets a bit clogged up and doesn't function as well as it should.

[00:13:07]Um the vet said it's something that little dogs, particularly Yorkies, so if you've got a Yorkie, be aware of that.

[00:13:13]No collars.

[00:13:14]No collars for little dogs cuz it's it's sensitive for them. Anyway, that was an aside. What were we talking about?

[00:13:19]Impulse spending. Right, plan what you are going to spend. It's too easy just to tap and to tap, or like that, and like that. Oh, I'm just out, I'll buy that. I've been watching, oh, Disney adults.

[00:13:34]Disney adults going to Disney I'm a Disney adult. We went to Disney for our honeymoon, no judgment there. But, when you go to Disney, and actually even Disney parents, when you go to Disney and you say, oh, we're only going to spend £40 on X, and then you you come out and the children are there, or you're there going, oh, that's nice.

[00:13:52]Ooh, I really like that, and then you tap.

[00:13:54]And the next thing you know, you've spent £250 on your Disney souvenirs.

[00:13:59]Too easy to do. Think about it, plan it, budget it, keep a record of what you are spending.

[00:14:07]And the last one is a bit different. The average household has about £1,000 worth of stuff in it that they're not using.

[00:14:20]What have you got in your house that's maybe stuffed in a cupboard, something you're not using, something that's in the shed?

[00:14:27]Maybe that bike that you bought and you said, oh, yeah, I'm going out, I'm going to go and exercise on it, and it's been in the shed for the past 2 years and you've not actually got it out.

[00:14:38]You're not going to use it. That it kind of sits there with you with the thought of you potentially being virtuous because I have a bike.

[00:14:46]But, are you using that bike? Get rid of the bike.

[00:14:49]Put the money aside for something else.

[00:14:50]Maybe put it towards that emergency fund that you need to start if you haven't already started one. That'll help you with those unforeseen expenses, like we talked about in point one.

[00:15:00]Have a think. What have you got? We've probably got some things in here. We have had sold things in the past.

[00:15:05]Chris, when we first started um living together before when we got married, he had a massive Scalextric set that every now and again he would get out and um take to a room where they've got some space and things, and would go and do Scalextrics with his uh nieces and nephews. But, his nieces and nephews are all grown up now. They're all a lot older. They're not really that interested.

[00:15:30]And we sold it. He was gutted, and every now and again if we go somewhere and he's and we see a Scalextric, he's like, oh, my Scalextric.

[00:15:38]But, overall, he didn't use it.

[00:15:41]And we sold it, and it went to a granddad who got it for his who was going to use it with his grandson, and so we know that people were going to enjoy it. Other thing we sold was Chris had an Xbox 360 and a load of 360 games that he wasn't using.

[00:15:56]And we sold it online, and it was funny cuz we met this young lad who was buying it in the car park at the Trafford Centre, and we gave him this big bag with the Xbox in it and all these games, and we didn't sell it for a massive amount. It was, you know, we were happy with the price. He was ecstatic. You could see his face was so so >> [snorts] >> It made us feel good that we'd given and, you know, given the opportunity for it to be passed on to someone else. So, have a look around.

[00:16:30]Sell those little things that you don't really need. Do we need so much stuff?

[00:16:34][snorts] Think about it. All that stuff is doing is clogging up your cupboards, sitting on a work surface somewhere that you're wiping round and you're constantly having to dust it. I hate dusting. Dusting's one of my worst.

[00:16:47]Dusting and wiping down, I hate. So, if there's less stuff for me to dust, I am more than happy.

[00:16:55]Anyway, those are the 10 things. How many did you get?

[00:16:59]I've had some of these in the past. I occasionally do slip into an impulse spend. I try not to. But, the good news is, out of all these things, they are things you can change.

[00:17:14]It's all about mindset and thinking about what you can do. Change one thing at a time. If you were going out and buying those coffees, maybe knock it down to twice a week instead of every day.

[00:17:26]Make your own, take it with you, buy yourself a nice curry cup, or what No, what not cake cup, or whatever they're called.

[00:17:32]You know, not a Stanley cup cuz they're way too expensive. But, you know, a nice coffee cup that you can keep to keep your drink nice and hot. Make it at home.

[00:17:41]Buy your syrups. It's going to be cheaper. You're probably paying less for a bottle of syrup than you are for three pumps when you get to Starbucks or Costa or wherever you go.

[00:17:50]>> [snorts] >> Make it at home. Take it with you.

[00:17:54]Just do those little little things.

[00:17:56]Knock the heating down a tiny bit.

[00:17:58]Investigate. Are you on the cheapest electricity and gas tariff?

[00:18:02]What have you thrown away this past week? Have a think. Look through your fridge. What I have done in my fridge that has saved us from throwing things away, when I've got something that needs using up, I have a separate container in the fridge where the things that are near the day, or just after, you know, that kind of thing, or the pepper's starting to look a little bit wrinkly, the onion's starting to get a little bit of growth in it, I chuck it in a container in my fridge, and that's where I go first to decide what I'm I'm making.

[00:18:36]I need to use that onion. I need to use that pepper. I need to use that bag of salad. Right, okay, let's chuck them all together, make a big salad. We'll eat that for tea tonight with whatever else we're having.

[00:18:47]>> [snorts] >> So, like I say, let me know in the comments below how many of these are you?

[00:18:55]How many are not you? What have you done to get yourself out of these kind of things? Well, now I'm getting visited by Sky. If you've not seen Sky dog before, Sky, Sky, come here.

[00:19:06]Come here. Hello. Hello, this is Sky.

[00:19:09]This was my sister's dog.

[00:19:11]Um but, she lives with us now. She's lived with us for nearly a year.

[00:19:15]So, she's gorgeous. She's absolutely mad as a box of frogs, but she's gorgeous.

[00:19:20]Anyway, let me know in those comments below, do the liking and subscribing. I will put a link to my batch cooking videos over here, and YouTube will pick you something cool to watch over here.

[00:19:31]Thanks for watching. Thanks for joining me.

[00:19:34]Cheers, and I'll see you next time.