I find that with the start of a new year comes a sense of starting over on a clean slate. Whether that means clearing out your closets. Doing a general Spring clean. Working on goals you’ve set yourself. Generally being healthier. Or trying to save money where you can, especially when it comes to the boring things like bills! Here are some of our top money saving tips…
You might start out the year with the best of intentions. You’ve started a fresh new year and are ready to smash them all! However, mid way through the year this mentality has generally gone, without you even realising! Life events can so easily get in the way. Maybe your boiler or washing machine broke which meant having to take out a small loan to cover the unexpected cost. Even if you went on a bit of a spending spree, spending more than you should’ve done. This is OK and happens to the best of us. It’s how you deal with it afterwards that counts. It’s not all lost and you can still reign it back in. You just have to get smart and get organised!
Research
If you do some proper research into your bills and other out goings, you can save a huge mount every year. Yes, this actually means being an adult for a bit. There are also online tools to help you work out exactly how much you’re spending. This will help you gauge your income versus your outgoings.
Knowing what is due to go out each month will really help you to understand your spending habits. To see if there are areas you can cut back on. We could all do with budgeting a bit more sometimes. You can check out a really good budget calculator tool.
Here are some tips to help you put more of your money in to your pocket…
Change Suppliers
Make sure you annually check and change things like your energy suppliers, internet/broadband and car insurance often. When your renewal letter comes through, don’t just go with what they are offering you. It’s more likely you can get a better price elsewhere as a new customer. Do your research before signing up to any new contracts.
Car Insurance
Just like with your energy supplier, changing your car insurance every year will SAVE you so much money. For example, my renewal this year with the same company was going to be £259.
However, after checking the rates through Confused, i managed to find exactly the same package for £145! Again, just by taking the time to research my options and not agreeing to stay with my old insurance company.
Mortgage Rates
One year we managed to get our mortgage rate down by going to another bank instead of renewing. With a simple phone call we saved around £100 each month.
That’s a saving every year of £1,200 alone! Something that might not seem like much each month or each week, adds up over the year. We ended up going on an amazing holiday to San Francisco with what we saved last year.
Mortgage Repayments
Talking of mortgages, another way to really help you save large sums of money is to pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible. Most mortgage companies will allow you to pay up to around 10% per year without getting any penalty fees. We do this as often as we can and recently were able to pay off around £2k. We decided to reduce the term of the mortgage instead of reducing the payments each month.
Obviously you want to pay off as much as you can, as fast as you can. This reduced our term length by 8 months which alone has saved us £980 in interest over those 8 months. Although a mortgage advisor isn’t allowed to advise you to either reduce the monthly payment or reduce the term. Reducing the term will help you more in the long run. Get it paid as fast as you can! If you pay £100 per month just in interest and your term is 30 years, that’s £36,000 just in interest you’re giving away!
Broadband & Packages
We have actually switched broadband providers every year – Sky to BT and back to Sky…etc. It has saved us hundreds of pounds over the years and although may be annoying to keep changing. It is just one phone call a year which will save you so much money.
When you get your renewal reminder, call them up and tell them you’re planning on leaving. It’s common that they’ll give you some kind of discount to keep you as a customer. My father-in-law did this once and ended up getting 2 months free broadband and access to the movies channel for free for 6 months. So it really is worth giving it a try! It’s good to keep in mind that you want the customer service person you speak to, to like you. So be polite and chatty, ask how their day is going…etc. Going in there all guns blazing won’t get you anywhere!
Sky Packages
I actually called up Sky the other day to remove some items from our Sky package. I was going through what we had with them when he actually said to me we were paying far too much for this package. It was something like £150 for pretty much everything. He said this was their old pricing and we just hadn’t been priced down. We only got rid of the movies channels (we can get them all through Netflix) and the kids channels (we don’t have kids). However, just by calling up and having a conversation with them, they managed to save us £100 per month! We now only pay £50 per month, just from calling them up.
It really is worth taking the time to look at what you’re spending your money on in all these different packages.
Sell Old Items
This works great for not only helping you de-clutter your home but also makes you a little extra pocket money. There are the obvious places like eBay but you can also use local Facebook groups to sell your goods.
These groups won’t have the fees to pay either. Plus you won’t have to post anything out if they’re local to you. It’s unlikely you’ll make much money from doing this but its better than nothing.
Buying Used Items
This also works the other way around as well. Instead of buying something brand new, check out your local Facebook groups for used items. Some things just don’t need to be brand new and can actually look better a little worn – vintage chic!
As soon as you take something new out of the store it depreciates in value immediately. You can often find things in a like new condition, especially just after Christmas when people are looking to get rid of unwanted gifts. We managed to get a beautiful, solid oak dresser for about £25 once…best bargain ever!!
Barter
Don’t be afraid to barter when it comes to getting quotes for work being done. For example, perhaps you want to get new carpets put in your lounge. Firstly, make sure you get a couple of quotes to make sure you aren’t being taken for a ride. Once you have your quotes, you can play them off against each other a little. Don’t go over board with it and I would advise you don’t do this more than once. However, say one is £100 cheaper than the other. You could ask the other company to match their quote or go a little lower. Perhaps they could include the underlay free to make up the difference.
If you don’t ask you won’t get but be respectful and don’t keep on asking. Likelihood is they’ll refuse altogether if you annoy them. It may end up only being a saving of £50 or so but it all adds up and something is better than nothing!
We recently got our fence replaced which cost around £2,000 ( we have a lot of fencing). We asked a few different companies in our area and the quotes we got back ranged from £2,000 – £6,000 for the same piece of work! Some companies might try to price themselves out if they don’t want to give you the job. Say you only went to that one company offering £6k though. You could’ve been fleeced out of £4k!!
What are some of your favourite money saving tips? How do you go about saving money?
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