The secret to saving for your great bicycle getaway is surprisingly simple: live beneath your means.

Charles Dickens expresses this well in his famous novel David Copperfield, when the character Mr. Micawber says:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Even in London, one of the world’s most expensive cities, we saved a surprising amount and put ourselves in good shape for a big trip by following this age-old advice. Some of the techniques we used included:

• Never spending money we didn’t have. We had credit cards but never used them for purchases we couldn’t have bought with cash from our bank account. Instead, we used competitive zero percent interest deals from credit card companies to earn money by stashing the equivalent of what we spent in a savings account. We paid off the card at the end of the zero percent term and collected the interest for ourselves.
• Frequently changing suppliers to keep utility bills as low as possible and using public transport instead of taxis to get around. We didn’t have a car.
• Only renewing our wardrobe during sales, when we could pick up clothes at a fraction of the full price.
• Resisting the temptation to buy the latest gadgets. When we did purchase something like a mobile phone, we went for simpler, less expensive models.
• Saving on food. Friedel brought her lunch to work most days (Andrew had a subsidised canteen) and rarely ate out in restaurants. Instead, we cooked almost all our own meals and tried to reduce expensive meat, focusing on more economical things like lentils. When we did buy meat, we waited until it was reduced in price and then bought a lot at one time to put in the freezer.
• Purposely buying a house that was beneath our means so we wouldn’t feel stretched each month.
• Setting a top balance for our low-interest chequing account and as soon as we exceeded our agreed float we took out the extra and used it to overpay our mortgage by as much as possible. We also transferred some money to more profitable savings accounts and other investments. This way we were never tempted by a big bank balance to buy something we didn’t need.
• Participating in company pension and share purchase schemes and making sure to claim back all eligible work expenses. We found it amazing how many people forgot to claim expenses.

Of course, even when you’re saving for a big goal you need a luxury now and then. It’s no good to stash away heaps of cash while making yourself miserable. We singled out a couple areas which gave us great pleasure and didn’t worry too much about spending when it came to having a drink with friends after work or going on holidays. If we’d been too strict about never enjoying ourselves, we’d have given up on saving altogether before long.