Then there is the issue of the up front payment.  Some companies require this to be two months premium together, others will let you spread the full payment over the 12 months pretty evenly.  For me, the first months payment was about 7p higher than the others.  It is easy to see that the best option is to pay it off in full if you can when you come to take out the insurance, which will probably mean putting a little money aside every month so you can do this.  The trouble is, if you are currently making payments each month to your car insurance, then the chances are you don’t have much free to put towards next years insurance.

After you have figured out what your most likely route for insurance is, it then comes down to searching for the cheapest quote which gives you all you need.  If you have watched TV at all in the recent times, then you are most likely aware that “you could save money with confused.com“, or that finding the best insurance is simples, just go to comparethemarket.com (that’s market, not meerkat).  There are a a wide number of comparison websites out there which will search a plethora of insurance companies on your behalf.  They will all compare the different features of the car insurance and let you know if legal cover, breakdown cover and other extras are required, and let you know the different excesses on the policy.  But is all that enough?

Once you have all that data, you still might want to do some shopping round and see what other offers you can get on there.  Some people will simply choose to stay with their current insurance company, but this could cost you a lot of money on offers which are out there.  Take, for example, Barbara Wakerell who has a record low insurance premium of £0.96.  No, that’s not a typing error, she did pay ninety six pence for her annual insurance premium.  That is a prime example that shopping round at renewal time is a good idea, even if it is a hassle.

Now there is no way we will all be able to get insurance at that price, but if claims from different comparison websites are to be believed, you really can save hundreds of pounds a year.  Confused advertises possible savings of £205, whilst compare the market has stories of people saving up to £600 on their renewal quote.  Another major comparison site, gocompare.com boast that over half of the people who used their site made a saving, and it was a £201.11 average saving.  They are the sorts of savings you need if you want to break out of the cycle of paying for insurance on a monthly basis as you can put that away and use it as part of next years premium.

So using the comparison websites can save you a lot of money, but there are other things you can do to keep your insurance premium:

• Check your type of use.  If you only use your car for running to and from the shops then you don’t need to ramp up your insurance premium by being covered for commuting or business use.  If you have your insurance to cover you and other named drivers for business use, then think “do they really need business coverage?”.  If they aren’t using the vehicle for business but you do, then downgrade cover to business class 1.
• Correctly value your vehicle.  If your vehicle is worth £5000, but you tell your insurance company that it is worth £7000, then you will most likely pay a higher premium.  Remember, in the event of a claim the insurance company will only pay out the market value of the vehicle, not necessarily what you tell them it is worth.
• Add a voluntary excess.  Most policies will have a compulsory excess on the policy, so you will want to check what that is.  If you can afford to, then add a voluntary excess onto your policy to help reduce it.  Insurance companies like knowing that in the event of a claim they can pay out less.
• Take advantage of multi-car discounts.  If you have more than one car in your household, have a look into insurers who will offer you a multi-car discount.  Admiral offer discounts for not only a second car in the household, but subsequent cars after that.  Each car is given its own policy, but they benefit from the extra discount.
• Try specialist providers.  Are you over 50?  Perhaps you have a modified car, a high performance car, or maybe even a classic car?  Mainstream providers don’t always offer the best deals for driver or car.  Bell direct specialise in drivers with low or no no claims bonus, making them ideal for younger drivers.  Sheila’s Wheels and Diamond specialise in insuring female drivers, whilst Adrian Flux are useful if you have a modified car.
• Drive less.  If you have a low average annual mileage then set the mileage low when you look for your quote.  The idea being the less you drive, the less chance you have of being in an accident and the less likely the insurance company are of having to pay out.  However, don’t try setting your mileage low knowing you are going to be driving lots more than you say.  In the event of an accident or claim your insurance company suspect that you willingly lied on your insurance application, you may find your insurance invalid and them not paying out.
• Downsize.  If you are driving round a large car with an equally large engine when you really don’t need to be, why not change it for something smaller.  The more powerful the car, the higher the insurance will be on it.  If you change to a smaller car, or even one with a smaller, less powerful engine, you will undoubtedly find yourself paying less for insurance, and probably fuel too.  Double bonus.
• Add a named driver.  By adding a named driver it is possible to lower your insurance premium too.  If they have a good driving history and have access to another car, then you may benefit from adding them to your policy for occasional use.
• Add security.  If it is possible, add a Thatcham approved security device to your car.  Not only could it reduce the appeal to thieves, but it may also it will most likely reduce your insurance premium as thieves will be put off by a car with added security measures.  It may cost more in the first year than the savings you make, but the savings will make themselves given a short amount of time.
• Slow down.  If you speed then you risk getting points on your licence.  Some insurers may not punish you for having 3 points on your licence because we are all guilty of slipping fractionally over the speed limit at times, but knock that up to 6 points or more and you will see a substantial hike in your premium.
• It’s not good to talk.  Despite what the BT adverts of old used to say, talking is not a good thing to do when driving.  If you are caught driving whilst holding a phone to your ear, you will face an automatic £60 fine and 3 points on your licence.  Studies have shown that drivers who are talking on the phone are more likely to have an accident, which would ruin your no claims bonus if it isnt protected.  Couple that with the points you would get, and you will not be pleased when you look for insurance next time.

Following even one of these tips should reduce your insurance premium a little, and any saving you can make is better than none.  If you have any other saving tips, because this list is in no way a comprehensive list of everything you can do, then comment and help others who are looking to save money.

If you are putting pound coins in them, I have been informed that they can hold around £300.  Not bad for a small tin.  I have two of these at he moment.  One is empty because I have just got it to start using.  The other I am going to open soon, not because it is full, but because thats where I have been putting away money for a deposit on a holiday.  The girlfriend and I have decided to go on holiday next summer so I need to put my finances in order, and get some money saved to pay for it.  I have a plan for that, but I digress.

With my tin, I put in around £7 a week usually, sometimes more.  Usually just £7.  I make a point of only putting in notes, £1 coins or £2 coins.  That way I won’t have to sift through too much change to work out how much is in there, and I know that if it did get full then I would have a lot in there.  When I start using my new tin, I am going to expand my denominations allowed in there to include 50ps so there will still be quite a lot in there when that one fills up.

The best part about the tins, they only cost £1 and are available from most pound stores.  They come in a wide variety of designs, including  with the design of currency.  These things are nothing new.  I remember a few years back you could get ones that looked like Heinz beans cans or other top branded things, but they used to cost silly amounts for something you can use only once.  With a tin that costs £1 and can store up to £300, that’s not a bad ratio.

If you are struggling to keep money in a bank account when you want to save, why not give one of these tins a go?  The fact you have to go out of your way to get into them makes them much more effective than a savings jar or other money box.

Shopping round for the best deal always makes sense, especially in the middle of an economic crisis.  More so if you are looking to save some extra money for that extravagant purchase, or to help yourself get out of debt a little easier.  Within these “Simple Smart Savings” I will look at different expenses which are common to have and look at how to save money on them, starting with mobile phones.

There are an estimated 77 million mobile phones in the UK, yet the population is only 61.4 million people.  That’s more mobile phones in use than there are people in the UK.  The easy way to save money, therefore, is to get rid of any old phones which you don’t need as soon as you can.  Remember, you will have to keep the phone for the duration of your contract.  If you are paying the UK average mobile phone bill of £39.27 for more than one phone, then you are wasting £471.24 a year.  You can get a holiday abroad for that, or even pay a months rent with the saving.  If you do need a second phone for work, then they should be paying for it, or at least contributing towards the cost of the line rental so you are not out of pocket every month.

The reason for such high bills is partly down to phone insurance which is sold to you when you take out the phone.  This is often given with a month free, but they know that most people will not cancel their insurance and so this is a good money maker for the insurance companies; and a nice little earner for the salesman who gets commission on the insurance whether you cancel or not.  The other part of the high cost of phone bills?  Your handset.  Mobile phone operators know they can get away with charging you so much every month if they give you the latest and greatest handset for free.  What you need to ask yourself it “do I really need all the features this phone has, or can I get a phone with less features?”.

For example, T-Mobile will let you have a very generous 1000 minutes a month and unlimited texts for £35 a month on their Combi price plan which will let you have a wide selections of phones.  This is a two year contract, and therefore you need to be able to put up with your handset for that length of time.  If, however, you are willing to limit yourself to a small selection of handsets which have most, if not all, of the bells and whistles of the ones available in the £35 tariff, you can get the same number of minutes and texts for £25 a month over the same two year period.  A nice £120 saving over the year.

If you are the type of person who hardly ever uses the phone for talking, but uses it for texting like it was going out of fashion, then why pay for 1000 minutes to get unlimited texts when you can save yourself further money by opting for a price plan which gives you less minutes and still unlimited texts.  The cheapest one from T-Mobile with such a deal is £15 a month, which will get you 100 minutes and unlimited texts.  You still get a nice variety of phones, but some of them require you to pay up front for the phone.  This is where you need to sit and look at what features you need and use, and which ones are simply superfluous.  If you need to pay for a phone because of some of the features it has, then take the cost and divide by the number of months in the contract.  If you can add that figure onto the line rental of the plan you are looking at and it is more than the next price plan up which gives what you need, then look at that price plan and see if you can get the phone you want and need for free on that.  If you can, then you have saved yourself some money over the period of the contract, and also saved having to find the money up front to buy the phone.  It’s win-win for you.

If you are happy with the phone you have but want a great deal for texting, then T-Mobile is at the rescue again with their free SIM offer which will let you have unlimited texts for £10 a month, though the free texts are applied the following month, and you will be breaking the terms and conditions of that offer if you text more than 200 different numbers in a month.  That will lead to them disconecting you from the network.  That said, I text maybe a dozen people a month, possibly as much as 20 individual numbers, but I text them a lot so for someone like me who texts a few people a lot of the time, it would be ideal.

I used T-mobile as an example as I have seen some of their offers dotted around and have had to do a double take to make sure I saw it correctly.  I am in no way affiliated with T-Mobile.

There was once a time with mobile phones when a contract would last 12 months and then you could change companies, get a new phone or stick with what you had.  Companies got wise to this and came up with the 18 month contract, and now they have the 24 or even 36 month contracts.  The longer you are willing to stay with a company and not change your phone, the better deal you can get yourself.  By “better deal” I mean the more minutes and texts you can get for a lower price, and the cheaper the cost of the phone.  If you are willing to use the same phone handset for two or three years then that sort of plan would be best for you.  If, like me, you like to have the new phones with all the gadgets and silly features, then you will end up paying a premium for that lifestyle.  It is up to you to decide if it is worth it for you.

If you come to the end of your existing contract and you are willing to keep your phone for another contract term and are happy with the service you have been given from your phone company, then give them a call and see what they can do for you.  There are all of the big companies out there, O2; Orange; T-Mobile; Three and Vodafone all looking for your custom, as well as the non-major operators such as Tesco and Virgin who will all be happy to have you as a customer.  If one operator has the deal you want when your contract comes to an end, give your operator a call and tell them what you want from your phone tariff and what you have found else where.  I will be surprised if they wil not match or beat the offer because of the discounts they are able to give.

I know from experience that O2 are allowed to give up to at least £150 credit to your account if you stay with them for another contract term.  It is going back almost a year since I got this from them so I cannot remember if they said that was the most they could give or not, but £150 credit to your account is not a bad deal.  Especially if you can get the inclusive minutes and texts you want for only £15 a month.  It will give you 10 months of not haing to pay a phone bill, or it can be used against a new phone.

To give an idea of what you can get over the space of of an 18 month contract with the different operators, I have got this table below with their current best offers for that price.

*Tesco pay monthly is a sim only contract where you only need to pay one month at a time and you can cancel.  Unlimited use is subject to £500 fair use limit as defined in their terms and conditions

Obviously this meant I would be hit with an “over credit limit” charge.  Fair enough, I broke the rules, I should be punished.  I don’t plan on ranting about excess charges from banks and card companies because that really isn’t my place.  Especially seeing as this was something of my own doing.  When I then looked at the amount they had added onto the amount I went over I was pretty surprised to find that my minimum payment wouldn’t cover the amount I was over.  This would, in turn, lead me to being hit with another charge next month, which my minimum payment wouldn’t cover and so on.  Seemingly a recursive cycle.  Which, as I have now discovered, is a trap I have fallen into over the last few months.  I’ve paid my minimum payment each month, but didn’t notice I went over my limit a little while back and have therefore been paying the charges each month.

After reading through the full statement I found that they recommend that I pay an extra sum of money which would take me back into my limit.  The trouble is, even if I pay off that amount the interest charges I would be facing next month would take me back beyond my credit card limit, leading to the possibility of the cycle starting all over again.

Of course, if the credit card companies would make the minimum payments in these instances whatever the normal minimum payment would be, plus whatever charges  had been incurred that month, then I wouldn’t be in this mess.  Then again if I had read my statements fully, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

The Lesson: When you get your statements, read them fully and, if you have any fees on there, make sure that when you make your minimum payment you also include the fees which have been applied to the account wherever possible.  If you can’t do so in that particular month, make sure you keep money aside to do it the following month so you don’t end up in the cycle I did.

So here I am, not even half way through the month and I have a lot less money available to me than I usually have, and I am wondering how on earth I am going to get by this month.  My bills are paid, so that’s not a problem, but I do need fuel for my car so I can get to and from work.  It’s going to be interesting.  Looks like I will be borrowing money from mother again.

Anyway, I have some distinct goals to come from all of this over the coming posts, they are:

• Reduce my debt
• Improve my credit rating
• Get rid of my credit cards
• Reduce and get rid of my overdraft
• Have some savings
• Learn to budget

And I am sure some more will come up as I think of them.

As far as my goals go,  it might seem like “reduce my debt” is the same as “get rid of my credit cards” and “get rid of my overdraft”, but they need to be separate.  Why?  Because once the cards are paid off, then by keeping them I have this extra money available to me which isn’t mine.  By keeping them I open myself up to getting back into the same position I am in now.  The same with my overdraft.

“Reduce my debt” is a bit of a non-goal really as this happens every month anyway as a process of course.  I pay back some of the debt, I have less.  Even taking into account the interest on debts each month, I do pay back a lot more than it increases by.  However, this payment is on the 0% interest loan on my car and depreciation pretty much wipes that payment out, more on depreciation another time.

“Learn to budget” may make some of you laugh, but the truth is, despite being good at maths, I still don’t know how to budget effectively.  I am only young, but it is something which is not taught in schools and is, therefore, something I have to learn all by myself.  Scary stuff.

Along the way I aim to pick up a number of hints and tips that I can share with you, as well as pointing people in the right direction of help wherever possible.  Any advice from anyone reading would be greatly appreciated.