Five hacks to save you over €6,000 without making yourself miserable

By Mark Coan

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If the cost of living has you to the pin of your collar, these five tips from money expert Mark Coan of moneysherpa might help.

Saving money doesn’t have to mean giving up your morning latte. What it does mean though is making sure you get bang for your buck, by claiming what you are owed and spending savilly.

Get Your Tax Back – €1,800+

There are more reliefs than you can count with your fingers and toes combined, but the big hitters are:

Mortgage Tax Relief up to €1,250 or Rent Relief up to €500 per tenant
Working from Home Relief – 10% of broadband, electric and heating costs
Medical Expenses – 20% of eligible medical expenses

The average saving by claiming all your reliefs is a whopping €1,880.

The even better news is there are lots of online services out there, with the biggest being taxback.com, that will file the tax paperwork for you in return for a cut of the refund.

Cut Up the Credit Card – €1,200+

The best way to avoid temptation? Don’t put yourself in the way of it in the first place.

Why do companies offer you easy credit and buy now pay later options? Yep, so you will spend more. Analysts Dun & Bradstreet found we are 12-18% more likely to purchase using credit over cash.

Around €11,000 per household per year is spent on credit cards in Ireland, switching to cash would save you around €1,200 a year on average. Delete your cards from your phone so you can’t tap and move your money to a separate savings account where you can’t get at it easily.

Sorting Your Mortgage or Rent – €2,000+

According to the Irish bank’s industry body the BPFI, the average value of mortgage switched in Ireland last year was €272,000. So a typical mortgage switch right now saves over €2,000 a year according to the moneysherpa mortgage calculator.

Renters though are paying an average of €3,500 a year more than buyers are for a mortgage for the same property, according to the latest analysis. So you could save a packet, by getting on the property ladder.

If you’re renting you might think buying isn’t an option, but up to 30% of the price of a new home can be covered by new government backed schemes so it might actually be on the table.

Get a mortgage broker to run the numbers, they are usually free to use, so it makes sense to talk to them to see if it is worth your while to switch or buy.

Switch Your Energy Provider – €500+

Your electricity or gas service is the same no matter who you buy it from, the key thing then is to get the best price. Lots of new providers have entered the market tempting switching with some great deals.

The average home in Ireland uses 11K kWh of gas (at an average of 12.7c per kWh) and 4.2K kWh electricity (at an average of 37c per kWh) per year. The good news though is much cheaper rates are now available, with gas as low as 10.9c kWh and electricity as low as 28.2c kWh.

Switching to these lower rates would bring your gas bill down to €1,199 and your electricity bill down to €1,184, saving you almost €500 on current rates.

Drop the Debt – €900+

Outside of your mortgage or student loans which are typically low interest, debt is to be avoided. Irish households owe €8,000 on average in credit card and loan debt, paying the 4th highest rate of interest in Europe at 10.3%.

With help from some of the tips above, you should try to pay off a good chunk of your high interest credit card and consumer loans starting with the most expensive first. This is known as the ‘snowball‘ effect, where the savings from reducing the interest on one loan can help pay off the next and so on.

At the average interest rate of 10.3% that’s a money saving of over €900 a year. Plus a big weight off the shoulders.

All these money savings are based on Irish household averages, but no household is average so moneysherpa have built an inflation savings buster tool to help you work out your own potential savings.