Cut your spending on coffee, transport and unnecessary holidays, and you’ll have more for merry-making.

Where does all the money go? It’s a question that invites a lot of sighing and staring into the void. But rather than merely wondering, we’ve done a bit of digging and can now tell you exactly what we’re all spending our money on. This should help with our noble aim: spending less, and freeing up more time for gazing out of the window and topping up the bird feeder.

What follows are the latest UK average household spending figures from the Office for National Statistics, covering April 2022 to March 2023. The average weekly spend was £567.70, sliced up as follows:

• Housing, fuel and power: £105.70
• Transport (cars, trains, travel): £79.20
• Other expenditure (including mortgage interest and council tax): £75.70
• Recreation and culture: £65.40
• Food and non-alcoholic drinks: £63.50
• Restaurants and hotels: £40.50
• Miscellaneous goods and services: £40.30
• Household goods and services: £35.50
• Communication: £20.30
• Clothing and footwear: £16.80
• Alcoholic drinks, tobacco and narcotics: £10.70
• Health: £8.90
• Education: £5.20

So where, realistically, can we save some cash? Everyone will have their own ideas, but let’s start by setting aside housing and mortgage costs, which are largely non-negotiable unless you fancy living in a shed.

What did surprise us was the mere £10 a week spent on “alcoholic drinks, tobacco and narcotics” consumed at home. In the current state of the world, that feels like heroic restraint. We Money-Saving Amateurs manage closer to £50 a week on booze. It’s not indulgence, we tell ourselves – it’s maintenance.

“Recreation and culture” is a broad church, covering holidays, sports clubs, cinemas, TV, books and pets. We’d be reluctant to give up pets, books or sport. Holidays, though, are another matter: they’re eye-wateringly expensive, and many of us could probably do without them. Unless, of course, you’re Idler reader Mark Boyle, who would happily do without the lot.

Food spending is another obvious target. The biggest culprits are meat, coffee and fizzy drinks. Going vegetarian, ditching sugary drinks and cutting back on coffee will make a noticeable dent. In our household of four, we spend a modest £2 a week on coffee. We buy a £3 pack and brew it each morning in mini Bialettis. That’s £3.50 less than the national average, or nearly £200 a year – proof that small habits add up.

Transport is the real monster, at more than £4,000 a year. Enter the bicycle: capable of lasting five years and saving a small fortune on buses and tubes. If you can get rid of the car altogether, so much the better. And, of course, staying at home helps enormously.

Finally, there’s “restaurants and hotels”, which at £40.50 a week feels rather generous. The Stoic philosophers would class these as “indifferents” – pleasant, but entirely optional. We manage on about £20 a week, and sleep just as soundly.

In short, the money does go somewhere. The trick is deciding whether we really want it to go there at all.