With the week ahead forecast to be fine and dry for most of the south and the recent record temperatures you might be forgiven for thinking summer has already arrived.

With the sun comes a shift in UK spending trends and people generally spend less on their household bills. Heating can be reduced or turned off, water temperature for baths and showers can be lowered without noticing a difference and lighting isn’t turned on until much later in the day.

This does not necessarily mean people will save money during the summer months because alternative spending habits emerge.

I conducted a brief survey of friends and family to find out what they thought people in the UK spend more money on in the summer and it’s quite obvious the sun brings out the child in many of us (an association with long summer holidays as a child?) because almost everyone’s first response was ice cream!

10 Things People Spend More on in Summer:

1/ Ice Cream

2/ Beer/Wine/Cider (alcohol)

3/ Holidays

4/ BBQ’s

5/ Summer Clothes

6/ Gardens (furniture/plants/tools)

7/ Sun Cream (factor 40!)

8/ Home Improvements

9/ Bottled/Canned Drinks

10/ Motorbikes