Sufficiency Savings Tool
Answer each question and select an action to adopt. Your savings build up in the Your Savings Viewer on the right.
Figures are indicative only and do not constitute financial advice. GoZero and the GoZero Foundation disclaim and exclude all liability for any claim, loss, demand or damages arising from use of this tool or the information included on this or any linked site.
🛡️ Insurance ✓ selected
When did your household last shop around and compare your insurance policies (home, car, contents)?
📱 Mobile phones ✓ selected
How often does your household replace mobile phones?
Could your household switch to cheaper mobile plans without losing what you need?
💻 Other devices ✓ selected
How does your household approach replacing computers, tablets, TVs, and gaming consoles?
🧺 Home appliances ✓ selected
How does your household approach replacing major appliances — fridge, washing machine, dryer, dishwasher?
📺 Streaming & subscriptions ✓ selected
Video streaming services — how many do you pay for but rarely watch?
Which of these do you pay for but rarely use? (tick all that apply)
Does your household pay for a satellite or cable TV package?
🏪 Homewares & general goods ✓ selected
How often does your household buy new homewares, furniture, kitchen items, tools, sports gear or décor?
👕 Clothing ✓ selected
How often does your household buy new clothing, shoes or accessories?
🍔 Chain takeaway ✓ selected
How often does your household order from chain restaurants or food delivery apps?
📦 Online shopping ✓ selected
How often does your household buy items from large international online marketplaces — cheap clothing, gadgets, novelty items — that you probably wouldn’t buy if they weren’t a single click away?
🍽️ Eating ✓ selected
How often does your household eat red meat?
🥬 Food waste ✓ selected
How often does your household throw out food that could have been eaten?
🌡️ Heating ✓ selected
Does your household keep its thermostat at or below 20°C?
Does your household heat only the rooms being used?
⚡ Electrification savings
Transport savings are shown separately in your Savings Viewer. If you reduce your car ownership, consider adding the saving to your Resilience Fund once the change is made.
🚗 Transport ✓ selected
How many vehicles does your household own?
A note on using your savings
For many households, cost-of-living pressure is real and immediate. If your savings from sufficiency actions are needed to cover essentials — food, energy, rent — that is exactly what they are for. The Resilience Fund suggestion is for households with capacity beyond immediate needs. There are many ways to contribute to your community beyond financial means, such as by joining a GoZero Team to help build connection and collective responses to the challenges we face.
© 2026 GoZero Foundation. All rights reserved. This tool is the intellectual property of the GoZero Foundation.
What is Sufficiency?
According to the IPCC, sufficiency is defined as "as avoiding the demand for materials, energy, land, water and other natural resources while delivering a decent living standard for all within the planetary boundaries." For households, this means living well despite a cost of living crisis, by spending wisely on essentials and building resilience. Sufficiency is also a strategy that can be used by communities, as well as local and national governments, in deciding how to make effective use of resources and provide for the wellbeing of all. Sufficiency scales, from small household choices to large-scale infrastructure planning decisions. It is both a planetary harm mitigation strategy and a way to adapt to an uncertain future.
Sufficiency First
According to the science, we should be reducing demand through sufficiency first, before tackling efficiency and deploying renewables, otherwise any gains get swallowed up by increasing demand.
The IPCC states that "decent living standards are a set of essential material preconditions for human well-being, and include shelter, nutrition, basic amenities, health care, transportation, information, education and public space. Sufficiency addresses the issue of a fair consumption of space and resources." (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Working Group III report on the mitigation of climate change, published in 2022)
Sufficiency differs from efficiency, which is about short-term technological improvements that allow doing more with less in relative terms without considering the planetary boundaries. Sufficiency is about long-term actions driven by non-technological solutions, which consume less and are determined by the biophysical processes.
Demand-side sufficiency measures have the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in by 40% to 70% by 2050, yet these are not being implemented effectively. We believe that the reason for this is that market-based solutions, which dominate the climate sector, typically involve selling a technology or service that can be monetised and consumed, whereas sufficiency involves the reduction in consumption, and is therefore being ignored, despite its potential for impact.
