Beat the post bank holiday blues!

Bacs reveals a "smart" way to create more holiday time per year

Following the last summer bank holiday of the year, Bacs has uncovered a smart way to create more free time - latest research suggests that up to seven hours a year can be saved just by using Direct Debit to pay for regular bills.

That works out at more than half an hour's extra free time a month - and that equates to almost a working day over the year.

The calculation was formulated by Direct Debit expert, Payments Professor Terry Smart who can be found with the rest of The Smarts family at www.thesmartwaytopay.co.uk. They use Direct Debit to help them save time and money. Terry has devised his timesaving calculation as follows:

(AxB) + (C+D) x E - F= Time saved by Direct Debit
A = Number of individual bills per year	5*
B = Time taken to complete a bill slip/write cheque	2.7
C = Length of time to find cheque book	10***
D = Length of time to walk to postbox	20****
E = Average frequency of payment per year per bill	11*****
F = Five minutes a month to check Direct Debit payment	60
Total = 418.5 mins or 6.97 hrs

This is an annual survey sponsored by Bacs. The survey, which began in 1988, provides a consumer based measure of financial behaviour and includes attitudes to money, banking behaviour, and Direct Debit. The fieldwork, which is representative of the UK population, is carried out by IPSOS-MORI.

In the time you save using Direct Debit over a year you could do the following: Travel to Paris and back! Have an extra day's worth of leisure time i.e.the national average is 5.25 hrs a day! Read a book (average readers read 200 wpm) which is 84,000 words in 7 hrs! Cook a 14lb turkey Fly to New York Enjoy a spa day Watch at least four extra football matches

** Based on feedback from a cross section of consumers who were timed filling in a cheque and the supporting bill payment slip
*** Based on feedback from a cross section of consumers
**** Based on Post Office information there are 116,000 post boxes in the UK. The UK is 241,590 sq km which equates to 1 post box every 2 sq km on average. With the average person walking at just under 5 km per hour, it takes around 20 minutes to walk the 2 km
***** Taken from the Bacs Consumer Payments Survey (CPS)

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