It is not rocket science-We all know that having a savings accounts ensures you are a set for these unforeseen circumstances. anything you can put aside will make you more secure in coming months and year- keep in mind that saving just rs 50 a week is also 2600 by the end of a year.
1. Clear your credit card debt
One of the golden rules of financial
planning is to clear your most expensive debts first, in other words
your credit cards. OK, credit cards offer a
convenient way to pay for goods and services but if you can't clear the
balance every month, consider a low-cost loan as an alternative. Do the
sums: a
credit card debt (APR 16.8%) of £2,500 over five years will cost £1,212
in interest. A loan at 7.8% will cost £527. A saving of £685.
2. Cut the cost of your fuel
bill.
Because official
inflation calculations don’t include the price of things that go up,
energy companies are allowed to increase bills
by 10.4% whenever
they feel like it. They try to do it every time you blink. Average gas
and electricity bills now stand at around £1,500 a year. In exchange for
one
fifth of a state pension, you get completely incomprehensible bills and
guff from the chief executive about how everyone else is to blame. But
that
doesn't mean you need to be ripped off. If you’ve never dumped your
original supplier you can still save more than £300 a year. If you have
switched
before, you can, as a result of this flawed privatisation, switch again
to any number of companies that will charge you about the same. If you
believe
that gas and electricity prices won't fall in the near future, you can
fix your bills for up to four years. It is very easy to switch. You can
do so with a few clicks
of the mouse. Your new supplier will take care of the formalities.
3.Cut your home phone bills
BT used to be called British Telecommunications but shortened it after a
survey found that only 4% of school leavers could spell
telecommunications,
while 6% could spell BT - even if they believed
it was a sandwich without the lettuce. It was also shortened to reflect
its habit of charging more and more for less and less. It owned the
infrastructure it could do what it liked. If you must use your phone
there are scores of cheaper alternatives that package your telephone,
television
and broadband access, some that offer low-cost alternatives using your
existing BT line.
Have a look. You may be in for a surprise.
4. Make a shopping list
If you’re not
organised or haven’t got a pen, this one is
really hard. But stick with it and you can eat well and save enough for a
holiday without
thinking about it. Part of the problem is the power of the supermarkets.
These giant museums of food have spent millions on tricks to make you
put stuff
you don’t want in giant trolleys, keep in the fridge for a week and then
throw away. We each chuck out nearly £500 of food each a year. That’s
moronic
but that’s the supermarket business model. Make a shopping list. Dig out
the cookery books, plan a few meals and only buy what you need.
Saving: £20 a week =
£1,040 a year
5.
Consider own-brand goodsNot
all own-brand supermarket products these days come with a
health warning and a stomach pump. They don’t need to. Some
are quite good. Obviously, the modern supermarket trick of reducing the
size of the packaging and the weight of the contents means you can buy a
24-pack, multi-sack of crisps that between them only contain
the shavings of one potato but you can still buy a tin of Sainsbury’s
own-brand baked beans
for 25p and a loaf bread containing grams of protein at Asda,
Sainsbury's or Aldi for 50p. Enough said.
Saving: £100
6.
Don't buy designer labels
Celebrities are given expensive clothes to wear. You're not. Thankfully,
millions of people have woken up to this and buy copycat fashions from
the
likes of Asos, which is now massive;
bigger in fact
than many of the logos slapped on the clothes at High Street designer
jumble sale TK Maxx. If you’re still tempted, face up to
the fact that you may only wear the outfit once. Can you justify paying
hundreds of pounds for a name? And can you honestly say you can tell the
difference at a distance between a £600 designer bag and a £9.99 one
from the market? Think about it.
Saving: £100s
7.Use your talent to earn extra cash
If you're not a pop star by the time you reach your 20s you're probably
never going to be. That’s probably just as well as the only way to pop
stardom
in 2013 is if Simon Cowell wants to marry you.
But you may be able to use your talent as a guitarist to teach other
wannabes the rudiments of the 12-bar blues.
Income: It's not unreasonable to charge £20+ an
hour
8.
Do DIYWe're
a nation of obsessive DIYers and for around £100 you can take a course
at your local adult education college to improve the skills needed to
tackle most household repairs. If the college runs plumbing courses you
could soon be on track to wiping out costly call-out charges and extra
insurance
policies once and for all. Remember to film yourself at work so that if
it goes wrong you can sell the footage to Harry Hill (see link).
Saving: £100+
9.
Book early
Low-cost airlines are growing up.
Easyjet lets you choose a seat. Norwegian is planning transatlantic flights for £300.
Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, has even promised to be nice.
Just
remember, only a few seats on each flight are sold at bargain-basement
prices and once they're sold, the prices rise. So book early.
Saving: £100
10.
Learn to say 'no'It's
easy to give in to the demands of a screaming child in a packed
Poundland on a Saturday afternoon. ‘Get me that bottle opener! I want a
bottle
opener. I know it’s poorly made and won’t last more than seventeen and
three-quarter minutes. But I’m six! I want one. It’s only a pound!’
Similarly, how
often does a 'swift half' after work turn into a £151.12 drinking
session? Saying 'no' a few times a year will do wonders for your bank
account.
Saving: £100
11. Avoid expensive days / evenings out
Plenty of museums are free. For those that aren’t, join Artfund,
which offers access to 200-odd museums, historic houses, galleries and
castles for a
small annual fee.
Theatres aren’t free. But if you live in London you can get half-price
tickets to the West End theatres every day at tkts.
Better still, if you regularly go out in London join one of the theatre
clubs that fills empty theatres and concert halls on the QT from about
£3 a
ticket.
Saving: £100s
12.
Walk/cycle to the station/workIt maybe a bit of hippie notion to many people but it's free. Der.
Saving: £100
13. Cut down your
drinking & Smoking
A few beers/wines or cigarette after work a few nights a week is a financially debilitating state of affairs.
You no (sic) that. Hic.
Saving: £100s
14. Use your library
'The whatrary?' I hear the cries from behind iPads across the country.
And by the time this article is updated again, number 33 may well need
replacing. But for now, the local library is still a mecca for the
money saver. It's like the best of the free bits of the internet under
one roof - only really well organised. Your library means you'll never
need to buy a cookbook, guidebook or lifestyle manual and if you
can bear to
wait a few weeks in the queue for the latest blockbuster, you never need
to buy books. CDs and DVDs are great value too.
Saving: £100
Link:
15.How saving £50 a month now can save you £120 next year
Do you pay your insurance premiums by monthly instalments? If you do,
then consider this: you are probably being charged a premium of between
15% and
20% for the privilege. In other words, if your home and car insurance
bill for the year is £600, you're paying up to £120 a year in interest
by paying
monthly. If you are in a position this year to save up for next year's
premiums in advance, you can save money by paying the whole lot in one
go.
Saving: £100+
16. Do you need all those TV channels?Britain has
gone digital. If you haven't - that's not a telly you're watching but a
very dull, repetitive documentary called Reflections In The Oven
Door. Good news: there's a world of shows better than a mirror image of
your own head to choose from. But choose wisely. Before you know it, you
could find yourself with a package of
movies, sports, more sports you've never heard of, or a whole year's contract to watch one football match. Freeview is free. You can buy pay-as-you-go Premier League football online. Saving: £100+
17. Take up a money-saving hobby
Hobbies not only open your mind to new experiences but
they also take up your time - important if you would otherwise spend it
in the pub drinking away
your hard-earned money. If a painting takes 200 hours to complete, and
you normally get through a pint an hour. That's a saving of a least 700
quid a
picture. Think about it. Get painting. Go fishing. Make quiche.
Saving: £100+
18.
Avoid extended warranties
Electrical goods are more reliable than ever. If your new radio won't
last three years perhaps it's not worth buying in the first place. Think
about it:
how many times has your fridge broken down in the last five years? And
do you really need the hassle of claiming for repairs to a £10 toaster?
Saving:
£100
19.
Shop online
The internet is gradually taking over. It's a slow process. Britain's
fourth largest supermarket, Morrisions, didn't launch its online grocery
service until... ah it still hasn't. It will get better, if
only because there's nothing left to buy in the High Street apart from
hand-me-down toys, ornaments and belts in charity shops. For newcomers,
there are plenty of comparison websites to help find
the best prices for bigger items. Go on, give it a try, it's more fun
than queuing up for half-an-hour at the supermarket checkout -
especially if you can't find your blummin' Nectar Card at the end of
it.
Saving: Your sanity
20.
Make lunch - get free car
You
spend a conservative £5 a day on lunch plus the luxury of £1.50 on a
coffee and £1 on snacks, it's nothing. It's only £7.50 a day. Or £1,800 a
year. Or, for the hard of understanding, the cost of a brand new
£10,000 car after a mere five years. Over your working life you can
easily chomp away more than £100,000. And you know what? An awful lot of
people spend considerably more than £7.50 a day. While making your own
lunch isn't free, remember: a sandwich is just some bread with
some stuff in between. And for the price of a small pension, does the
coffee really taste that good?
Saving: £100s
21.
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