Expert Savings Advice

We recently had the opportunity to attend a session at work on managing personal finances. The session was very helpful and covered lot of useful topics such as restructuring debts and keeping a record of all your outgoings for a month. One of the other things they suggested was to go through all your insurance premiums and utility bills and see if any savings could be made using comparison websites. I have since ventured online and saved myself an absolute fortune each month. By far the biggest saving I have made has been on my life insurance premiums, I visited a life insurance comparison website and reduced my premiums by over 20 percent. I have since been on all the utility and car insurance comparison sites and saved myself loads more money. I can’t believe it took a session like this to open my eyes. I wish I had done all this ages ago, I can’t bear to think of all the money I have wasted by not being more organised and proactive. With all the money I have been able to save, there is a chance I may even be able to afford a holiday next year. Fingers crossed.

I have always been quite careful with my money, probably something I inherited from my parents. Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves used to be my fathers mantra when I was growing up. I do try to watch my outgoings, but have never thought about insuring myself against hardship until a friend of mine was made redundant recently after a long illness. I decided to look into an income protection policy to ensure my essential outgoings would be covered every month if something happened to me. After visiting the Permanent Health Insurance website I was able to get myself very generous cover for a much lower premium than I was expecting. I have also got myself some life cover, so I can now sleep soundly at night, safe in the knowledge that me and my loved ones won’t lose the roof over our heads no matter what happens to me. Saving money is all well and good but if you were off long term sick how long would that last?  Not as long as my income protection policy would continue to pay me out for. I am trying to spread the word, so that no other members of my friends or family are left at risk.

Recently my mother was talking about her potential inheritance tax liability as she is worried that when she passes away there would be a bill of almost £200,000 which we would have to pay within 6 months. She had heard that probate can take longer than 6 months so was concerned that we would not have enough money to pay the bill. As she got divorced she was left the family home which is worth around £700,000 and she also has a further £150,000 in investments. Although she is considering taking out Life Cover which would pay £200,000 when she passes away, I have heard that there may be a way she can hold her investments so that they would not form part of her estate when she passes away. If she can hold the £150,000 in such a way that it would not be considered as part of her estate then it would mean we wouldn’t need as much life cover, which would reduce her monthly payments. I’d like to know what would be the best way to hold this money so that it would reduce her potential inheritance tax bill.

I have been a free spirit for quite a few years now, the gap year after university turned into several years and I have been lucky enough to visit many beautiful places whilst travelling the world. Money was always tight whilst I was travelling, so I became very good at not wasting any and making the most of what I had. I have now settled down and started to think about having a family. Now I have finally got my own place, the last thing I would ever want was to risk losing it for whatever reason. And for the first time in my life, it is not just me that I have got to think about. I have wider responsibilities now. And if, as planned, we were to start a family that would make it even more important that it is now . To be on the safe side I recently visited the mortgage protection insurance website and was able to source myself very comprehensive and reasonably priced insurance to ensure my mortgage premiums are covered. Many people worry about things going wrong but don’t do anything about it. With a few simple clicks I found the added security of an insurance that covers most eventualities.

The best credit card deals online is offered to you by various popular companies. People often choose the low interest rate cards or 0% introductory on balance transfers and purchases. Most people prefer the cards to offer cardholders’ points, miles, or rewards.

The best credit cards offer you reward miles, or points, and 0% interest rates. Many of the vendors online offer 1 percent cash back on all purchases. Some vendors offer additional 2% cash back on grocery purchases. You earn more rewards when you buy gasoline at selected gas stations. Some card providers offer you 3% bonuses. You can receive other bonuses when you redeem your reward points at certain locations.

In some cases, you must qualify to receive cash back rewards on restricted purchases. Once you add up your points, you can redeem by setting up an automatic redemption account online. You don’t have to worry about losing points because most vendors offer unlimited rewards, meaning your rewards never expire.

Card providers that do not charge annual fees are usually considered some of the best credit cards. Currently the rates are going up, but you can find rates as low as 10.73 percent by shopping around. Capital One offers you the Prestige card. This card provides you with the best benefits, but you must have excellent credit scores to apply. (more…)

My girlfriend and I have been together for approaching 4 years now and we have lived together for nearly half that time in rented accommodation as the cost of buying a property has been out of range. It has also had a lot to do with the fact that we both felt that we wanted to be sure that our relationship would last having both come from families where our parents had been divorced. We were keen to do what we could to avoid this happening to us. Six months ago we decided that we would like to make a more long term commitment to one another and started to look around for properties in our price range. The four years of getting to know each other has provided the ideal time for us both to save and we have built up a reasonable deposit to enable us to get our foot on the first rung of the housing ladder in an area that would be best described as up and coming. We arranged a mortgage through a financial adviser, got a range of life cover quotes from the internet and put in a speculative offer on a small house. We were completely taken aback when it was accepted straight away by the sellers. Eight weeks later we moved in and we have spent the past three months armed with a paintbrush and roller as we have gradually worked our way around the house putting our mark on it.

I work in a media office in the centre of one of the most thriving and bustling cities in Europe. My job is extremely varied and one day never seems to be repeated as we move from project to project; all of which have different requirements, different venues and they will almost inevitably demand huge amounts of time and long hours. I travel everywhere with my computer. It provides everything I need to make a living, from mobile office to communication device and it’s also my accountant and bank manager. It allows me to do all the things that most other people might do during the day at a time that’s convenient for me. I can log on and pay bills, buy a DVD or even get a life cover comparison. As technology evolves to become more and more user friendly, the opportunities it will open up for us all will mean that all our lives will embrace the computer and the net. Computers were once the preserve of the mathematically brilliant few. Now most people have a smart phone capable of communicating with satellites whilst simultaneously booking a table in a restaurant in Tokyo. With the advent of the next generation of computers, ultra fast broadband and 4G telephones all of which will arrive in our shops in the next few years those trying to anticipate the likely impact on the normal person in the street will be hard placed to comfortably predict where we will all be in just 5 years time.

My wife and I needed to reduce our overall monthly expenditure due to a change in our personal circumstances. We sat down with a list of our monthly outgoings and a clean sheet of paper and tried to come up with ways that we could achieve the savings required to live within our means. Ideally our plan would save us three hundred pounds a month and we would aim to renegotiate all of our policies plans and utilities and any shortfall would be made up by cutting back on our holiday plans and social lives. We started with our direct debits and logged onto the internet to compare life cover prices, mortgage costs and utilities. The savings it’s possible to make were substantial although we weren’t able to save the entire amount. We are virtually there, though and our lifestyle will not suffer tremendously, so we’ll be able to enjoy our lives as much as we did before. With hindsight  it’s clear that those who put off  carrying out such an exercise are being stupid and wasting money unnecessarily. This is money that most people can ill afford to give away. It’s not as if there isn’t enough adverts on the television telling us to log onto our computers to compare the price of our car insurance, home insurance and so on.

The debt management plan is important because many of us become trapped in the vicious cycle of taking on more debt in order to cover the debt repayments we already have.

The reason that the debt management plan is such a popular solution to complicated debt repayments is because it allows us to bring our expenditure and income back into line without any further borrowing. While this is an attractive proposition, it is not actually suitable for everybody. Could a Debt Management Plan be the right plan of action for you?

Take a glance at the main characteristics of a debt management plan and find out.

• The debt management plan is for debtors who are unable to afford all of the full monthly payments on their debts.
• A debt management plan does not write off your debts. Instead it allows the debtor to make a reduced monthly payment at an agreed rate until the debt is cleared.
• Your debts will be listed in full and in order of priority, starting with outstanding debts which could result in the loss of a home, an essential utility or item such as a car for commuting to work, then the maximum amount of expendable monthly finances that you can dedicate to the debt is also calculated.
• This maximum payment is divided among your creditors each month.
• Debtors can cancel their debt management plan at any point because it is not legally binding.
• If you arrange your debt management plan with a third party, you may still be contacted by your creditors but are not obligated to increase your payments to them.
• Once agreed debtors make just one monthly debt repayment which is divided among their creditors which makes your debt easier to manage.

A young couple living in their shed in Hampshire have been ordered to move out by their local authority.

While the garden shed is usually employed to store shovels, rakes and lawnmowers, one NHS worker and her partner used their garden shed as a place to live.

Victoria Campbell, 20, and her 26-year-old boyfriend, senior care assistant Bill Warden, had lived in her parents’ outbuilding whilst saving money which they intended to use for a deposit on a real house. That plan, however, has been scuppered by their local authority which has told them that they must leave the shed.

The council’s planning committee claimed the structure was “not appropriate for primary living accommodation” and “created an undesirable precedent, which would make it difficult to refuse similar further applications”.

The garden shed had no running water and just one oil radiator to supply heating. Electricity was sourced from the main house and the 15ft by 15ft building contained one fold out bed which the couple shared.

Miss Campbell will now seek legal advice from consultants in order to obtain temporary permission to stay in the shed.
The UK’s Shed of the Year 2011 is owned by Somerset resident Jon Earl, who allows local music groups to record their songs in the building.

Whilst it is a growing trend to work and earn a living out of a renovated garden shed, it seems that the opportunities to create living environment within them without sufficient planning permission might not be so straightforward.