Money Saving Tips

The phrase 'credit crunch' always makes me shudder and I can't help losing a little bit of respect for whoever I am talking to whenever hear those words uttered. For whatever reason we seem to enjoy taking a little bit of bad financial news and then doing everything we can to magnify the situation till we are at the point of imploding as a country. Without wishing to get too self righteous I remember the problems with Northern Rock a few years back when word got out about some fairly minor financial problems and as a result customers decided to flock down to their local branch and withdraw all of their money effectively destroying the organisation themselves.

We can certainly give the economy the strongest chance of bouncing back by trying to stick to existing spending patterns as much as possible rather than putting our lives on hold or changing our lifestyles whenever the media suggests that it would be prudent to do so. I'm not denying that some belts may need to be tightened but fortunately a lot of this can be done without changing your existing lifestyle.

Let's start with the obvious; electricity and gas. These utilities have been making the papers recently and if the headlines are to be believed then massive increases are unavoidable, however in reality these increases are predominately confined to the basic tariffs the energy companies offer. The truth is that the majority of customers are shouldn't be on these tariffs anyway as they are unlikely to be the most cost effective. Despite the fact that locating the cheapest supplier and tariff then making the change would be unlikely to take more than an hour and could save hundreds, very few have bothered making the effort.

There is a fast selection of price comparisons sites available but my preferred one is currently moneysupermarket.com simply because they have consistently given me the best prices.

This site is split in to sub-sections that allow you to search for the cheapest deals on the following:

Money - Credit cards, loans, mortgages, current and savings accounts.

Insurance - All the obvious including home, car, life, pet, medical and breakdown.

Travel - Flights, holidays, car hire and hotels

Gas and Electricity - Fairly self explanatory

Communication - Phone, Broadband and Mobile

Only by comparison can you find whether you could be paying less. In just a couple of hours you can establish if you are actually using the most suitable supplier and I think this is definitely a good way to spend the time. I'm confident that practically every reader could still make savings in some areas. Bearing in mind that when doing such comparisons for mortgages, loans and credit cards then a few hours spent checking could potentially save you several thousand pounds.

It would be apt now to mention the old 'a penny saved is a penny earned' maxim however I for one have always found this particular nugget of wisdom to be inaccurate. The hypothetical penny spent would have originally been a greater figure before tax was deducted. Those working within a 22% tax band can consider their penny saved to be the equivalent of 1.22p earned.