Save a few quid on Monthly season tickets...

rxbishop

I haven't tested this out personally, but my Dad assures me it saved him a few quid over the years commuting to London. If you buy a monthly ticket for say £300/month and you want it to start on say Monday 9th May then it will expire on Wednesday 8 June. Now pro-rata this will cost £10/day, but you can add an extra 2 days to the ticket for just £20, then you're not paying for the sat/sunday (presuming you don't need it then) and you then buy another monthly with a couple of days extension for the next 5 week period. so it is costing you £320 for 5 weeks, which pro rata works out as £3328/year. If you were just to buy 12 monthly tickets it'd cost you £3600/year. So a handy little saving. A similar thing can be done when you know you have a holiday coming up. Say you have a 2 week holiday coming up in say 6 weeks - don't buy a monthly and then 2 weeklys but buy a monthly with a 2 week extension - which'd be less than £450, where as (i'm guessing) a monthly with 2 weeklys would be closer to £500.

Perhaps i'm teaching you to suck eggs, but my Dad said he mentioned it to a few workmates a few years back (and they'd been commuting for yonks) and they didn't know it.

bb21

This is correct. The pricing formula for season tickets is based on the weekly season ticket price. The monthly season is 3.84 times the weekly season price and the annual season is 40 times the weekly season. This is why you see some TOC's advertising the fact that you can have 12 weeks free travel if you buy an annual season ticket, amongst other benefits. There are no reduced formula for durations between one month and one year, so a season ticket for three months will be 3 times the monthly season ticket price.

Apart from the ones above, you can also request a season ticket lasting for any period between one month and one year. The odd days will be priced pro-rata to approximately 1/30 of a monthly. So a season ticket lasting two months and seven days will be cheaper than buying two monthlies plus a weekly. Odd-period season tickets are not sold normally for durations over 10 months and 12 days as the price will then overtake the annual season.

If you can cleverly plan ahead to have your annual leaves bunched together and utilising the odd days over one month, you could save money over an annual ticket, as like the OP mentioned, you don't pay for the weekends between your two season tickets.

rxbishop

Unfortunately I've never been confident enough in the longevity of any job I've ever had to buy a yearly ticket, so've always gone with monthlies. I suspect a lot of people are the same and I bet a lot don't realise that they can save a few quid by adding a few days on.