Considering cashback with every purchase could earn your family £1,155 cashback per year on utilities, phones and insurance

It’s common knowledge that savings can be made on food and clothing by using vouchers and cashback sites.  However, less well known is the fact that the mediocre things such as renewing insurance, sorting a phone contract and getting the cheapest utilities provider on board can also earn you a bundle.  A couple with two children should earn over £1,100 a year in fact.

Assuming the average family has four mobile phones, owns two cars, and requires home insurance, life insurance, pet insurance, utilities, broadband and tv, they should earn £1,155 in a year if all is purchased via cashback site Quidco.

• Mobile phone: 4x £130 with Vodafone = £520
• Car insurance: 2x £75 RAC = £150
• Home insurance: £75 RAC
• Life insurance: 2x £75 Adviser Financial = £150
• Pet insurance: £50 Sainsbury’s
• Utilities: £80 npower
• Broadband, phone and tv: £130 O2

Total = £1,155.

You don’t have to go shopping and spend money to take advantage of a discount or cashback offer.  Every household needs insurance, utilities, phone and TV and by reviewing your providers each year on Quidco.com, you could end up with an extra £1,100 in your bank account.

Instead of going directly to a retailer’s website, visit http://www.quidco.comand look for the retailer there.  For each merchant, all of the cashback offers and voucher codes available are displayed and by selecting one, you are then taken to the retailer’s website to shop as normal.

Because the merchant sees that you have bought something after clicking through from a cashback site, it pays them a commission which they pass on to you as cashback.  Users can also benefit from instant discounts using voucher codes and printable vouchers for use in stores.

But some costs are inevitable and, once you’ve parted with your cash, losing money by not getting what you’ve paid for can be incredibly frustrating.

That’s why it’s worthwhile knowing about the basic protection available to credit cardholders under law. It could just help you get what you paid for.

How did you pay?

The Consumer Credit Act protects any form of borrowing relationship so that includes credit cards and store cards even when you paid off the whole balance in full (i.e. didn’t actually pay for the borrowing at all).

How much did you pay?

The act only applies to purchases over £100 and under £30,000 (although the Consumer Credit Directive should protect up to £60,260).

A ‘purchase’ is defined as one item or a group of linked items. A shopping basket of different goods that comes to £100 altogether won’t cut it but if you buy, say, a pack of ten tickets at £10 each you could claim the whole amount back.

What happened?

Section 75 is designed to protect consumers when goods or services are not delivered or are sold with a pre-existing fault.

In theory, Section 75 means that the credit card provider and the retailer have equal liability when a problem arises. However, there’s a good reason that the archetypal Section 75 claim is made when a company goes bust.

Having a claim accepted is a long process, often made longer by uncooperative or poorly trained bank staff. Attempting to sort the problem out with the retailer or service provider first is much more pragmatic.

Were there any other costs?

Be aware that section 75 allows you to claim for extra costs you had to incur as a result of the faults.

Recently, for example, the Financial Ombudsman Service revealed that it had ordered a credit card provider to pay for a whole new laptop after a consumer found that the one they had recently bought was faulty.

The classic example is that when an airline goes bust while you’re on holiday and you need to buy an extra flight to get home, the credit card provider should cover that flight.

This post was bought to you by Choose.net, a news, reviews and credit card comparison site. Choose.net has a full guide to section 75.

Car Share Schemes

A car share scheme is one of the easiest ways businesses and employees can save on the daily cost of running a vehicle. This is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint, encourage working relationships and save money. The principle is one company car is available to use by a number of employees for company use when needed. If you have a number of employees that only occassionally use their vehicle for company trips then this could be the ideal situation. Businesses must ensure that they have the right insurance to cover employees and the car schedule is monitored closely to make sure that it does’t get double booked.

Another side to Car Sharing is where employees that live close to one another all use the same vehicle to get to and from work. Businesses usually offer salary incentives and flexible working hours to employees utilising this opton.

Salary Sacrificing

This can work out as a great benefit to both the business and the employee. The plus for businesses: There has recently been a reduction in the tax charged to businesses on company vehciles with low emissions (below 120g/km). The plus for employees: When an employee takes a salary reduction because of a car allowance the deduction is taken from their gross earnings. This means the total salary is taken minus the car allowance and the balance is then what PAYE and NI tax is deducted on, ultimately meaning less tax is paid.

The Leasing Option

If your company provides a number of employees with company vehicles then utilising a car leasing option could save you a significant amount of money. When compared to the cost of buying and hire purchase savings can be as high as 50% as well as the added benefit of trading in for a new car every few years meaning you always have cars in great condition. There is also a fantastic VAT tax saving on leasing.

If you are tired of having no money, even just after you have just been paid, then it might be time for you to introduce a budget into your lifestyle. There is software that you can make use of to help you implicate this, but you will have to do some research and decide what the best personal finance software is for you to use for your situation. So what is the definition of personal finance you ask? Financial decisions as well as activities you make, including things like savings, insurance, budgeting, mortgages and just analyzing your financial situation and what you can do about it. This is where personal finance and budgeting comes to your rescue.

There are a few budget systems that you should look into, some of which include a credit card budget, shopping budget, household budget and vehicle insurance budget. Also, you have to look into making important lifestyle changes and getting your mortgage payment down. Once you have sorted out budgets for all of the above mentioned items, you need to take a close look at your lifestyle. First of all, do you have a gym membership that you pay monthly? If so, how often do you use it? If it’s less than twice a week, cancel your member and do some exercise at home if you must.

Planning for your near future can start any time, so if you want to start saving now, it is not too late. There are programs online that offer worksheets for you to make use of when you are busy with your personal finance budgeting. These worksheets really help the situation and make the task easier, making it more enjoyable to do what you keep putting off. Even if it is a time consuming task, it is something that has to be done so whether you do it now or in a month’s time, rather get it over and done with so you can save money, live better and begin your new budgeted life.

The next thing you have to tackle would be your credit card. If you have one, which you probably do, you need to get rid of the debt on it. For the next few months, pay double your installment if possible, just to get it out the way. Once you have fully paid off the card, cut it up into small pieces and toss it, you do not need a credit card! Credit card debt is depressing, and the worst thing about it is that you are always tempted to use it because whatever you are buying you don’t have to pay for now and this is what makes a credit card so dangerous and unnecessary.

Personal finance and budgeting isn’t that difficult to get your head around, especially if you have some help from one of the many programs available online. You will have it cracked in no time and once it is properly in place you will love the idea.

Original

Studies continually show that women and men behave differently about money, whether they’re in debt or not. This has been exacerbated by the current economic situation: fresh rounds of cuts and fears that Britain is hurtling towards a double-dip recession mean plenty of couples are feeling the strain.

So how can they work together to strike a financial balance?

Share the load

Women worry about money more than men but they also do less about it, according to a study by insurer Aviva. The research looked at people over 55, and found that more than two thirds of women, compared to just over half of men, are worried about money, but 58% have not budgeted for major expenses, compared to 52% of men.

Within partnerships, it’s likely that one person is a lot more proactive. “It’s me, rather than my wife, Tracey, who knows how much the interest rate is on our mortgage and how much we pay for everything from the utility bills to our daughter’s ballet classes and our son’s football coaching,” says Matthew Brandon, 39, who lives in Cirencester. “Although we consult each other, I keep the closest eye on it.”

Managing the finances is no mean feat and it can be a steep learning curve. In the last five years, Natalie Murray, 26, has gone from being a student to marrying Edmund, 26, a policeman and having their son, Oliver, now four. Natalie is a stay-at-home mum but also runs a local magazine called Around Rugby.

“I’ve had to get clued up about money faster than my friends,” she says. “At the moment, Edmund’s money pays all the major bills, though I tend to buy the groceries. I can feel bad as Edmund puts so much into the joint account but at least I can help us manage our expenses.”

Double up

Monthly outgoings can be reduced with joint financial products. It’s usually cheaper to get annual travel cover jointly rather than single policies, for example. But there are times when two is better than one. Life insurance will only pay out once, so if a couple have a joint policy and they both die in a car crash, there’s one payment.

Original

Especially in the times like this, many of us find ourselves in a situation when saving money becomes an imperative. Perhaps our job got downgraded. Perhaps we decided to get out of the debt burden. Whatever the reason, here are the three very simple tips on how to save money each month. At the same time, we’ll find how not to become a miser in the process but instead enjoy every minute of it.

There are just three simple steps, Establishing the current financial situation, Reducing the recurring payments, and Routing the remaining payments through a cash back credit card. Let’s put these easy ways to save money in action.

First, establish a complete picture of where the money is going

There are only three ways you can spend money. These are:

• credit cards
• online payments, checks written and debit card money spent from your bank account. Disregard online payments to credit cards here
• cash

Inspect your credit card statements from the past month, your bank account statement, paying a particular attention to cash withdrawals. Categorise all spending into categories such as rent, food, entertainment, transportation, and attack the largest money sinks first.

Second, reduce or remove recurring payments

In the previous step you will find that the recurring monthly payments are the ones most easily trimmed:

• Mobile Phone: If you are paying more than £15/month, switch to a pre paid mobile phone plan. You will save as much as £50/month or £600/year and hardly lose any of the functionality.
• Still using a home phone? Replace it with Skype, the internet phone service, and save as much as £30-£60/month.
• Insurance: Do you feel you must pay so much for your car and health insurance? Think again. I suggest you raise the deductibles on your insurance policies. With the monthly savings start establishing a health savings account that will cover the deductible, and a car savings account that will cover the deductible and contribute toward the next car purchase

Third, reward yourself

Spend some of the money saved and reward yourself with an occasional trip. Or do something you really like with the saved money, like going to the movies or going to a nice restaurant. That way you will really enjoy the fact that you are learning how to save money each month.

You do not have to immediately spend all the money you save each month. But be sure to think about the rewards as you are trimming down your spending.

Last but not least, make sure that you make all the payments through a cash back credit card.

Once you have trimmed down your monthly expenses, make sure that you get maximum cash back on paying for the remaining expenses. By paying your monthly bills through one of the best cash back cards, you will get as much as 1%-2% cash back on all the bills, and as much as 5% off on groceries and petrol.

Original Article