The UK Insurance Blog

In the article “How to get the most from your household budget”  resources were pooled to produce some handy tips on how to stretch our money just that little further.

Moneynet.co.uk adviser Andrew Hagger says “It’s been a tough six months for our bank balances and things won’t get much easier unless we act now.”

How to make considerable savings as well as to get the best value for money that we can by reassessing our household expenditure.

How much do you spend on contents and home insurance? Could it be that another policy would provide cheaper premiums or if not at least provide better value for money?

The cost of borrowing is going through the roof, our fixed-rate mortgages are coming to an end this year and we are all trying to remain optimistic that we are going to make ends meet. Nobody seems prepared for the recent downturn in our economy. From the UK’s biggest companies like Marks & Spencer, Barclays and Taylor Wimpey to the person next door, everybody is having a difficult time of it. The article rightly points out that the person next door only has his wits about him to get through the rough times whereas the big companies can go cap in hand to their city fundraisers.

What it is necessary to do is to look close to home to discover new ways to spend our money more wisely and give our spending a bit of a boost. Begin, Andrew Hagger suggests, by seeing if your mortgage lender will allow you to change to paying interest only for a period. If you could use some breathing space from paying a £140,000 mortgage on 6% then £200 per month will be freed up towards your payments.

A gem of an idea that works instantly, is to avoid daily shopping trips. Instead, do your food shopping once a week. All those ‘in-between’ shopping trips can be costly by the end of the week!

If you plan to make any considerable purchases at all, first of all, check out a price comparison website like kelkoo.co.uk to get the best value for money.

Borrowing on your credit card can result in high interest, so do try to get the best interest rates on the market or consider switching over to a life balance transfer card.

When buying petrol or food, the adviser suggests you should use a credit card with a cash back offer such as the American Express platinum money back card. With this facility you could earn yourself an extra £25 every month for three months if your monthly food and petrol bill is £500.

Why not work out the yearly cost of your car and put the money by every month. Add to this your annual expenditure for birthdays and Christmas and you save yourself the strain of a big bill. This way you can even earn a bit of interest too!

Take a look at your energy suppliers and see if you can’t get a better deal on energy prices somewhere else. Online tariffs or dual fuel tariffs for example may prove somewhat cheaper.

Earn some extra money by sorting through unwanted items and setting up your own stand at a local car boot sale. You could make an easy £100 or so. Or if you prefer to work online then try selling unwanted items on Ebay.

More ideas include organising a work car share instead of forking out for petrol as well as removing your savings out of a minimum interest savings account so you can earn some extra on it in a high interest yield.

The last word is that if we make an effort, looking at our current household expenditure patterns some simple changes can effectively see us riding out the tough times.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!