please empty your brain below
If you have more convincing evidence, let me know. If I've missed out anything obvious, let me know. But if this doesn't perfectly match your lifestyle, sssh, that's not important.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 13.02.13 - 7:12 a.m. | #

You're giving away all my secret money-saving ideas here (ie things I don't do) ;)

RT often have offers. Long-standing customers often stay on the one they're on for years and years. Current full subscription price is £76.50 (Google "radio times subscription offer") online - phone up and it can be a lot cheaper. I think we're still paying £42.60 for 51 issues. And it always arrives on a Tuesday.

Blue Witch | Homepage | 13.02.13 - 7:43 a.m. | #

Shouldn't you have a disclaimer after the Radio Times bit stating "Other TV listings magazines are available". :)

Barry | 13.02.13 - 7:48 a.m. | #

Wouldn't 95% of your readership consider home broadband an essential these days? Trying to live only with mobile broadband is the dream of some marketing graduate, but still not practical for most of us.

IslandDweller | 13.02.13 - 7:54 a.m. | #

And perhaps most astonishing of all ...

Diamond Geezer's blog each day: £0

Nightmale | 13.02.13 - 7:57 a.m. | #

You've neglected to include depreciation in the value of the kettle you use to make your tea. Standard accounting practice would use a straight-line depreciation from purchase price to zero over five years.

Gavin | 13.02.13 - 8:22 a.m. | #

@Nightmale

Nooo... it's:

Diamond Geezer's blog each day: PRICELESS

John | 13.02.13 - 8:27 a.m. | #

It's surprising how much it costs to drive 5000 miles a year - rough maths makes that a 22 mile round trip commute for 5 days a week, 45 weeks a year.

Relatively speaking it makes the cost of a train ticket seems a little more reasonable although, as your numbers show, once you have paid the sunk cost of a car + insurance + tax the additional per-mile cost is pretty small. I guess that explains why we depend so much on cars these days.

Rob | 13.02.13 - 9:26 a.m. | #

"Passport" !!! Well, I guess you'll be needing it to get to the Edinburgh Festival soon enough.

B | 13.02.13 - 9:40 a.m. | #

Independent subscription is £260 p.a. for 7 days a week.

I always reckon a litre of petrol will take you 10 miles on average, whatever the size of the vehicle. And sorry for the mix of units.

Dave | 13.02.13 - 10:03 a.m. | #

As one who is about to change from an immersion heater to a new gas boiler I'm muchly liking the difference in savings indicated!!

CornishCockney | 13.02.13 - 10:36 a.m. | #

Actually, I've just recently had to renew my passport, and - once you count in the cost of the photos and the special delivery charges - it comes out a whole lot more than seventy-two quid :(
I'm also guessing that the cost of those drinks is also going to be higher, if you're the type of person who usually leaves a tip.
However, as others have said, one of the best things is seeing that a year of DG still costs 0 :)

RogerW | 13.02.13 - 10:50 a.m. | #

@B you joke about needing a passport to get to the Edinburgh Festival but the only time I flew was for work to Edinburgh and I had to get a passport as I needed photo ID. This was in 2002, so not long after 9/11, I don't know if this has been relaxed since.

Barry | 13.02.13 - 11:07 a.m. | #

You need photo id for domestic flights but it need not be a passport - driver's licence, corporate id and so on are often accepted too.

Another Andrew | 13.02.13 - 12:43 p.m. | #

For a car driver like myself who only needs a car for occasional round trips, and not for commuting, it might be better to use hire cars, or join a car club.

Bob Lindsay-Smith | 13.02.13 - 2:33 p.m. | #

@ Another Andrew, what you say is true but I don't drive so no drivers licence. Also even though we have corporate ID cards my company was unsure if that was acceptable. On the plus side because I had to have it for work my company paid fot it.

Barry | 13.02.13 - 2:37 p.m. | #

Would be interested to know what the cost of driving 5000 miles a year as a member of a car club would be. Less than the train for the equivalent distance, I would predict.

Siwi | 13.02.13 - 5:36 p.m. | #

Boris Bike subscription?

I reckon my own bike costs me c. £100 a year to run on average in servicing and new parts, but you do have to factor in the cost of the fuel...

disgruntled | Homepage | 13.02.13 - 7:02 p.m. | #

Siwi's question is interesting. The cheapest car rate is £5/hour which can include fuel if you don't exceed a daily milage allowance. Assuming an average London crawl of 12mph, 5000 miles could take 417 hours, which would cost a minimum of £2145 including the annual subscription of £60. That's certainly cheaper than the same milage in your own car, but I'm not sure how to compare it to using the train.

Unfortunately you normally have to take the vehicle back to your point of departure. For that reason a car club would not be suitable for commuting, unless you didn't mind paying for a car sitting idle during all your working hours as well - at least £9k a year extra!

Bob Lindsay-Smith | 13.02.13 - 8:52 p.m. | #

An international comparison would be interesting... in Paris an all-zone Navigo pass for the Ile-de-France region is 1170 euros per year (roughly 1000 pounds), and is valid on express trains, so compares favourably with the Guildford to London commute. Furthermore, employers are required to provide a 50% subsidy of costs to discourage driving.

You also have Autolib (Boris bikes but with Ecocars, for 144 euros per year, plus 5 euros per half hour). So there is an option there for occasional car use without the large initial capital expense.

James | 13.02.13 - 9:04 p.m. | #

I agree with John. DG priceless!

Cornishmonkey | 13.02.13 - 9:33 p.m. | #

Get a 'myWaitrose' card and get one free latte etc. every day.....

Flippy | 13.02.13 - 10:06 p.m. | #

@Bob Lindsay-Smith

Car clubs are pretty useless actually. I joined one for one year and used it 5 times, 3 of those being house moves and the other 2 being purely road trips, i.e. didn't get out of the car all day and randomly drove around Surrey and Hertfordshire.

Because the pitiful mileage allowance ranges from 0 to 40 miles a day, these 5 trips ended up costing about £1000 in total. Not sure how much a man+van would cost but we prefer to do these things ourselves.

John | 13.02.13 - 10:07 p.m. | #

Sorry to go slightly off tangent, but the assertion earlier that you need photo ID for a domestic flight is not true. I flew to Glasgow last week, and did not show any ID. Some airlines (eg easyjet) require ID on all flights, but that's a company policy, not a legal requirement.

IslandDweller | 13.02.13 - 10:10 p.m. | #

I'm curious why the Radio Times is cheaper to buy in person than to have a subscription. Is that you're paying extra to take into account delivery costs? That's not how most subscriptions work. Or is it, like Blue Witch says, that people that pay attention don't pay full price for a subscription anyway?

Jim | 14.02.13 - 12:36 a.m. | #

You forgot the water rates, UK average £400 , down here in sunny Devon, average over £1,000. We the residents pay for all your holiday people.

splashy | 14.02.13 - 1:06 a.m. | #

This tells me what the value of the free cafetiere coffee at work is, for the two to four mugs of it I have a day.

The car costs include a £15k car - what about a £2k third-hand car for low-usage scenarios. The baby means I can't use a hire car for those essential car journeys. I can sell the car after three years for £1k.

And the Radio Times is actually quite a pain to use compared to a decent on-screen listings and a PVR that records everything you might be interested in automatically. Then again the baby means there's no time to watch too much TV anyway :-(

sykobee | 14.02.13 - 11:04 a.m. | #

In the days when everyone wore suits to (my kind of) work, we had to have posh black shoes to go with them. I bought mine from an average high-street shoe shop, but was surprised when I did the sum to find that per mile the shoes cost more than my all-zones season ticket.

Peter CS | 14.02.13 - 4:43 p.m. | #

UK passport will cost me: £750 initial visa application, £1000 visa extension, £1000 ILR application, £850 naturalisation application, £50 Life in the UK test. £3,650. Plus half that price for my dependant.

JaneZ | 16.02.13 - 3:44 p.m. | #











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