Name: Angela Finocchiaro

Age: 43

Income: £26,500

Occupation: Reception manager

I was born in Catania in Sicily, but I moved to London almost 10 years ago. I first started working in the hospitality industry when I arrived in the UK, as a receptionist, and I was only paid £14,500 a year then. I now work as a reception manager in a central London hotel.

My salary is £26,500 a year, and I have savings of £10,000. I pay rent of £600 a month including bills for my double room, which has remained constant. I often travel to see my family who live in Sicily – I’d say about four times a year. I love to travel and will go abroad for leisure another four more times in a year. I can spend £6,000 a year on travelling. This is why it’s hard to save my money.

Other things I have to pay out for are a monthly travelcard, which costs me £140, and £50 for my mobile phone. I pay out £15 each month for my wifi. It sounds strange, but I probably spent more when I was earning less. I think this is due to the lack of time with work commitments.

I don’t really go clubbing much, but once a week I’ll go along to a swing jazz class, and that costs me £12. Occasionally I’ll go to a swing jazz ball, which is really expensive, and for this special event once in a while, it can cost up to about £50 or more. As I don’t drink, transportation is what costs me, as I’ll take a cab, and this could be maybe £100 a month.

I’m lucky that I don’t go to my hairdresser at the moment, as I’m growing my hair, so it is just beauty products that I buy, and I’ll spend about £50 a month. The amount of money that I spend on clothes, jewellery and shoes can vary, as sometimes I’ll buy nothing, and if there are sales I could spend £200 to £300 in a month, but this is very occasionally.

Since I work in central London, I find that I now spend more on eating out, and I would say that costs me about £100 a month. For my weekly supermarket and food shopping, I spend at least about £50 to £60 on my groceries. My main food luxury is fish, as I just love eating it.

My pension comes with my job, but I don’t save in a private scheme. The system for bank accounts is a much better system in the UK than in Italy, because here you have bank accounts where you don’t have to pay anything to have your money in one. In Italy you have to pay a minimum of £7 to £10 a month to have a bank account and keep your money there. I find the bank accounts in the UK very convenient, as when I moved to London, if there was any fraud on your account, they would – and do – block your card. It’s a safer system, and I feel much more comfortable with this in place.

I’m not a big saver at the moment, so I use an Isa account to keep my savings in so I don’t have to look around for the top accounts.

The best financial advice I was given by friends and family was to save, save, save. I am aiming to buy a house in Tenerife as part of my future financial plans. I’d love living in a warm place by the sea, as I grew up in that type of climate.

As told to Amanda Hall-Davis