Guest post by Ellie Hayes
Due to the coronavirus, 2020 has brought about a huge change in working patterns. Whereas commuters used to pack London’s trains and offices, travelling from the capital and beyond, the advice to work from home has changed everything. Many workers have praised the new work-life balance this mode of working has brought them, while others have raised mental health concerns – compounded by the isolation and anxiety brought about by COVID-19 more widely.
But aside from its main benefits and drawbacks, there’s another aspect of working from home that isn’t talked about quite as much: its impact on our wallet. This has been a financially difficult year for many of us, and the economic outlook still looks bleak. Whether you’re financially planning for a new family, a house, or to simply cut costs, here’s why working from home could bring a financial silver lining.
Commuting costs
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It may sound obvious, but commuting to work is a costly business. The cost of commuting to London’s offices can be staggering, but this is only the beginning. As well as the main cost of petrol or public transport tickets, there are a host of smaller expenses that can all add up throughout the year. Whether it’s takeaway coffee or an overpriced lunch, leaving the house for the day can be surprisingly expensive.
Although some of us might start with good intentions, and plan to bring our own lunch and coffee with us to work, it’s easy to see how these plans can fall by the wayside when our busy schedules catch up with us. Working from home, however, gives us the time to make our own food and coffee without worrying about rushing out the door to catch the train. As the average price of a regular takeaway coffee costs around £2.40, it’s no surprise that these indulgences can quickly stack up.
Shopping
It might sound strange to associate shopping with working in an office, but that’s exactly what many people do – either before work, after work, or in their lunch break. Working in the vicinity of shops, or passing them during your commute, can make impulse purchases very tempting indeed. Although some of these purchases may be ones you’d make anyway, there are certainly others that you might never have thought of making unless they caught your eye in a shop window, or during your habitual browse at lunchtimes.
It’s easy to see how a stressful day at work can make us more likely to seek the quick serotonin hit that retail therapy can give us. And although this certainly isn’t a bad thing, if we’re looking to make savings this is certainly one area of our spending that we could look at. By limiting our exposure to temptation, working from home helps us to keep these impulse purchases at arms length.
Time
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They say time is the greatest commodity, and it could be that the extra time we gain from cutting out our commute could help us to save money each month. Although this is less of a tangible saving than the two points mentioned above, working from home allows us to dedicate more time to all of the everyday household administration that we need to do outside of work hours. This means we may be more likely to ensure that we have the greatest deal on our various range of monthly subscriptions and bills – or it could allow us to see that we may be able to cut some bills out altogether. Do we really need subscriptions to four or five different streaming services? When we’re consumed by the commuting lifestyle, it could be that we simply never have the time to find out.
It can be difficult to budget at the best of times, never mind during a global pandemic. But it’s certainly fair to say that the new working from home patterns that many London workers have adopted will have helped them to save some money. Research suggests, in fact, that UK workers can expect to save as much as £500 a month. And in a city as expensive as London, this kind of saving can make a real difference!
