Cooking the Books podcast: Budgeting success comes from ditching your car, not your coffee

Your car has such a big impact on your finances. Photo / 123RF

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's why your big expenses often slip under the radar. Hosted by Frances Cook.

You'll often hear the saying, to watch your pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

Well, I disagree entirely.

Little expenses like takeaway coffees are easy to target because it's an expense that's right in front of your nose.

But it's the bigger expenses that we take for granted, often assuming we can't change them, that have the most potential for being cut back.

Cars are a notorious one, especially in New Zealand.

It's not just the cost of first buying the car. It's then the cost of fuelling it, keeping it registered, insurance, your WOF, maintenance and replacing your tyres, car parks.

This is what's called the true cost of your car, and it's much bigger than any small treat like a coffee.

In fact, a conservative estimate from the AA is that even a small car is costing you more than $7500 each year.

For the latest Cooking the Books I talked to John Bolton from Squirrel.

We discussed why a car has such a big impact on your finances, what you can do to reduce it, and what a bank looks at when they look at your ability to save for a mortgage.

For the interview, watch the video podcast above, or play the audio here.

If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here and Twitter here.

You can subscribe to this podcast on iHeartRadio, Apple podcasts app, or Spotify, to make sure you never miss an episode.