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Is your daily habit stopping you from saving for a deposit?

Journalist:

ended 08. November 2025

A broker has totted up how much a first-time buyer, getting a family gifted deposit, spent in October on takeaway coffee alone. This was £268 in one month, £3216 over a year, £16080 over 5yrs. A leading supermarket offers free coffee with their loyalty scheme which is a significant saving along. 

What can borrowers and first-buyers do to better their financial position?

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Michelle Lawson
Director at Lawson Financial
The ease of touch and tap payments now is clearly creating a spending haze. That one coffee a day is just an example, how many also buy lunches rather than making and taking to work. How many rely on food delivery takeaway services because it is 'just a few pounds'. This figures are quite astounding when they are monetised and scaled so, if you are wanting to buy property, make overpayments on your mortgage and/or reduce debt, it would be worthwhile reviewing your latest 3mths spend to see where you can cut back and to maximise on your freebies offered and loyalty schemes instead.
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Aaron Strutt
Product and Communications Director at Trinity Financial
There are things aspiring first-time buyers can do to help them put more money aside for a deposit, but for many, their rent swallows up a big percentage of their salary. Adding up how much you spend on what many would class as luxuries is a good place to start. Checking your bank statement regularly to get a better understanding of exactly where your money is going also helps.
There are low deposit mortgages available so buyers do not need a huge deposit any more. There are no deposit mortgages, a 2% deposit deal and £5k deposit deals. Plus many 5% deposit options. Homeonwers often do not spend as much money on coffee, the gym or car payments when they have a property. Especially when buying alone. If you are planning to get on the property ladder, it is well worth logging on to one of the lenders websites and checking their affordability calculators so you can see how much you could borrow based on your salary and current expenses. It maybe the prompt needed to understand the proces.
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Editor
Ross Lacey
Director & Independent Financial Adviser at Fairview Financial Management
Context is everything here.

£268pm is not insignificant but this could be comfortably affordable to this person and also be important enough to them that they feel it's worth it.

There's always stuff we could cut out if we really wanted to, but taken to the extreme, it means living like a pauper today in the hope that we'll benefit in years to come. Life is about balance.

That being said, it's worth looking at where money's being spent, and deciding whether that gives you the value you'd expect, and if not, directing it elsewhere.