It found that everyday purchases such as magazines, sandwiches and drinks add up to a small fortune, costing as much as expensive items such as holidays, household appliances and electronic gadgetry. According to Egg, the average Brit spends £1,134 ( 1,670) a year on holidays but blows even more on cigarettes, soft drinks, snacks and newspapers.

The pattern will be familiar to anyone who followed the advice of TV money man Eddie Hobbs to keep a cash diary, tracking where their money goes each month. In his book Short Hands, Long Pockets, Hobbs writes that 10 a day on lunch adds up to more than 2,300 over a year.

Smoking 20 cigarettes a day works out at 4,000.

Jumping in a taxi instead of joining a bus queue can easily match your lunch spending. And a social life can land you with a booze bill of 3,000- 6,000 a year.

SSAVE Tracker bonds were the traditional way of investing in the stock market without risking your capital. But they have fallen out of favour because of rigid caps that robbed you of growth potential and because of the failure to include any dividend income in the return paid to investors.

Ulster Bank has tried to tackle these handicaps with its new Secure Portfolio Investment Bond, which is open to lump sums of 10,000 or more until 28 April.

Like a tracker bond, it guarantees at least to return your capital at maturity in 2012. But there is no limit on growth and, because the bond tracks a range of funds rather than stock market indices, investors should have access to income as well as capital gains.

The bond also attempts to lock in some of the growth along the way.

"Our experience shows that investors are looking for that strong growth potential that investments can provide but without risk to their capital, " said Brendan O'Hora, head of retail marketing at Ulster Bank. "This product delivers on both fronts."

But of course no investment ticks all boxes.

The price of the capital guarantee is a hefty annual fee that will siphon off 1.6% of your money each year.

Another big drawback is that you cannot touch your money before the bond matures.

Investors may also be uncomfortable with the mixed bag of assets in which the bond invests, spanning equity, bond, commodity and hedge funds but with no exposure to property.

The bond will start off with an equal four-way split between the four funds, but this will change over time as money is shifted away from the worst performers and into the funds that have delivered the best returns.

ONE TO WATCH Less than a year after taking out their bumpersized loans, the nerves of 100% mortgage borrowers are being tested by rising interest rates.

First Active led the way last summer, and most lenders are now willing to give first-time buyers the full cost of getting a start on the property ladder. But these borrowers are likely to be hardest hit by the steady creep in interest rates since December.

Mary O'Dea, consumer director at the Financial Regulator, has warned house-hunters to avoid the lure of easy credit, adding that it can cost 100,000 in interest to repay a 200,000 mortgage over 25 years.

"It can be tempting to overstretch yourself and borrow as much money as you can, but you really need to look at what you can afford each month and work from there, " she says.

"Remember that your circumstances could change and if interest rates were to rise or you or your partner had to stop working for some reason, you could find it difficult to make your mortgage repayments."

This advice is of little use to first-time buyers who need all the money they can get their hands on for a place of their own.

According to the latest Permanent TSB house price index issued last week, the average price paid by first-time buyers exceeded 250,000 for the first time in January.