Was it easier for you to save money BEFORE or AFTER the advent of home internet?

kuratowski

MSE_James said:

Being able to see the impact of my spending (and saving) reflected immediately, rather than waiting for a monthly statement in the post, makes all the difference.

Absolutely agree for daily spending and banking, online (and mobile) account management is a lot better, it reduces friction on monitoring and managing your money.  Looking back, it was incredibly tedious keeping a record of all transactions in the front of my chequebook!

For long-term money management, though - i.e., investments - I actually feel it goes the other way.  Ability to continuously check the latest fund values and buy/sell/switch at any time can be too tempting for some, and we know that churning your portfolio is detrimental to returns.  In that sense, I rather miss the days of receiving an annual statement in the post (accompanied by a projection using dubious assumptions, but that's another matter...)

Eco_Miser

The process of depositing money in a bank or buying an investment fund (and the reverse) is much easier and faster with home internet. The desire to deposit or invest hasn't changed. Neither has the (lack of) desire to buy unnecessary goods. 

diystarter7

100% the net.

SuzeQStan

We’ve always been in store shoppers but during pandemic we moved exclusively to ordering our food shop online and having it delivered. For our household of 2 adults we averaged £52 spend per week during the 18 months we had our food shop delivered. Since we started shopping in store again we now average £100 plus per week. 

athol49

The internet and online shopping did not make me save more, but enabled me to reduce my shopping bill by enabling 'bulk' buying techniques.
By buying the larger package online, even including delivery costs, I was able to use the 'savings' to gradually increase the number of bulk bought items and help reduce my outgoings to a manageable level..
Still prefer to shop instore for groceries, but using smaller top-up trips and only occasional large shops but use several web stores for non-grocery (household) items.
Now using the 'savings' to pay down existing loans to finish them early.

Westie983

Apart from having to actually go into a branch which nowadays isn't necessary for many accounts, I feel like the world it at the end of a keyboard.

I was thinking this a few days ago, we had one computer in the house, which we had to use by unplugging the phone line to get on via a modem, this meant that you couldn't have phone calls, (which annoyed my sister lots) and that the phone wasn't mobile, how the world has changed with computers in phones that are now mobile, and laptops and other devices mean you don't have fight with siblings for whose turn it is next to use the computer. 

Most of my school projects were done down the library using the leather bound encyclopaedias or using Encarta 95 from CD in the home computer...

How times have changed.

Westie983