The truth about 'Cheaper Train Season Tickets' + Smarter Savings

Chris649

An MSE article on 'Cheaper Train Season Tickets' (sorry, I can't post links... even to MSE articles!) is based on flawed logic.

Many people, including this article, compare the annual season ticket cost against twelve monthly tickets - yet this is so rarely appropriate and the savings may be far less than you think. There's still savings in an annual ticket, but the magnitude matters if you're taking on debt, using a commercial commuter scheme or committing a large chunk of savings / emergency funds. If on the other hand you've got a practically free work-place scheme then take it!

So, why not twelve months?

When you buy a monthly ticket one month is simply the minimum to get monthly pricing. You can add any number of days to this on a pro-rated basis. By carefully timing extensions to our monthly tickets and skipping non-work days we'll pay for less than 12 monthly tickets in a year.

You have three opportunities to consider extensions:

• Weekends. Who wants to pay for Sat/Sun when they work Mon-Fri? It sounds obvious, but if you ignore this it is like walking in on a Monday and asking for three tickets. Madness. Round up your month to the next Friday to avoid paying for a weekend.
• Bank holidays. Much like weekends but slightly harder to time.
• Annual leave. If you know you're going to be away then plan in advance to extend your monthly ticket.

Always take extensions to the monthly over buying a weekly ticket to fill in gaps. Weekly tickets have a much higher daily rate. Some sites use comparisons based on 8 months + 14 weeklies to 'account for 4 weeks annual leave' yet still come up with a figure close to 12 monthly tickets. Rubbish!

Play this right and you can hit close to annual prices whilst still buying monthly. I highly recommend you plan the year in advance to find the most effective arrangement based on your personal circumstances - it makes a big difference - please do not blindly follow my example!

Here's a worked example - I intend to take some time off at Christmas to New Year, and a few days just ahead of Easter for a longer break. In reality I'd take more leave than this, but for the example, taking time on the front side of Easter (or early February) is a particularly effective time to reduce the cost of monthly travel.

• January 5th: 1M 1D
  1M means a monthly ticket. 1D denotes that I'll extend my monthly ticket by an extra day. I'll avoid buying a new month ticket on Friday February 5th, and thus avoid paying for Feb 6th-7th which is a weekend. That's already saved me £27.
• Feburary 8th: 1M 11D
  I've added eleven days to my monthly here because I plan to take off the last week of March, into Easter weekend. Note that I'm not buying weekly tickets but pro-rated extensions to the monthly.
• March 29th: 1M 1D
  We skip the 28th as its Easter Monday. The 1D means our ticket covers Friday 29th April and we can skip the weekend.
• May 3rd: 1M 1D
  We've skipped another bank holiday on May 2nd. Good planning!
• June 6th: 1M 3D
  Extend to a Friday and skip the next weekend.
• July 11th: 1M 2D
  Extend to a Friday and skip the next weekend.
• August 15th: 1M 2D
  Extend to a Friday and skip the next weekend.
• September 19th: 1M 3D
  Extend to a Friday and skip the next weekend.
• October 24th: 1M
  Extend to a Friday and skip the next weekend.
• November 24th: 1M
  Extend to a Friday and skip the next weekend.
• December 24th: Off for Christmas!

Total: 10M 24D. Days are all pro-rated based on a 30 day month, so each day extension costs 1/30th of the monthly.

For my personal journey this will cost £4359 vs the proclaimed twelve monthly tickets at £4843 (at this year's rates).
My example 'saves' £484 over the year just by careful planning, whilst still only using monthly tickets.


My annual ticket would cost £4204 - which is still £155 cheaper than my best plan with monthly tickets - so I agree that an annual ticket is still the cheapest option... but it is not necessarily the best option for all circumstances given the relatively small savings.

Finally, the annual ticket is of course more convenient, but did you know that an annual ticket becomes 'worthless' after 10 months? If you need to cancel an annual ticket for any reason (changing job? new contract? moving house? etc) then it will effectively be converted to 10 monthly tickets, any time used deducted from that and remaining time refunded (so your annual price savings will effectively be removed from journeys already taken on the annual ticket).


TLDR: Don't compare annual tickets to 12 monthly tickets unless you plan to work weekends, bank holidays and take no annual leave. Compare to 11 monthly tickets for a closer representation of what you'll actually spend or save in a year. Very careful planning can bring your costs down even further whilst still buying monthly. It's particularly relevant if you need to use interest-bearing debt to fund an annual ticket, don't want to commit such a chunk of savings, or think you may need to cancel your annual ticket at some point in the year.