All the big dental schools offer free dental treatment as part of training for their students. Don’t flinch, they are scrupulously supervised. This is particularly good for expensive reconstructive work, which can run into the thousands. So if you live near a large university or teaching hospital, check it out.
Tags: free dental work, free dentistry, free dental treatment
Many department stores provide free make up makeovers, and hair salons free haircuts, to help train their staff. A good free way to a new look … and if it goes wrong you can always wear a hat.
Tags: haircuts, makeovers, salons, training, finance tips
A night out the theatre costs a fortune, but an evening as part of the studio audience at a TV show costs nothing at all. Start with the BBC and ITV websites and search for recording dates.
Related: BBC tickets
Tags:Â TV recordings, studio audience
Using a free blog platform such as wordpress.com is the perfect way to start your own barter system, but word of mouth is essential, so start talking to people in your area.
In the barter economy one person may have produced too many peas or potatoes this year, another may have plumbing skills going underused, or be an expert typist.
With money tight, and people increasingly wanting to shop local, community swap schemes and barter economies are going to become big economic news in the next few years.
Related: Wordpress
Tags: barter economies, barter, barter economy
Go to your local community websites, these are typically on platforms such as Gumtree and Yahoo Groups. Alternatively go into Google and type your town name plus the word ‘swap‘ or ‘barter‘. You’ll almost certainly find local forums with local people looking to trade goods or services.
Related: www.gumtree.com, Yahoo Groups
Tags: community websites
There are big advantages to bartering. It’s fun, as anyone raised on Swap shop will attest. It clears your shelves, as your rubbish becomes somebody else’s treasure. It’s also a green way to reuse products… we throw away an awful lot of stuff that’s still perfectly serviceable. And it costs nothing - you don’t need to put in hours of work to earn stuff (and pay tax in the process). You simply trade what you already have.
Check out swapz, the UK’s largest and best established swap site. Crucially with these sites you need critical mass - lots of people swapping in other words, as that way you’re more likely to find the stuff you want. Swapz has everything from Beanie Babies to laptop computers.
Related: www.swapz.co.uk
Tags: Swap shop, personal finance tips
How to lose money on spread betting. This would be under reverse tips rather than tips right? I’ve read twice in the last week that 90 per cent of spread betting accounts lose money. Twice the information has come from insiders, people who work for the dealing firms who run spread betting accounts. Most spread betting accounts are with retail customers, individuals trying to game the markets. These are people who presumably are interested in shares, who think they know something about shares. Also, bear in mind that spread betting, while a very risky business, isn’t the same as doing the lottery or betting on the dogs or the horses. The first we can say is strictly luck, nobody’s going to argue with that; the second is so difficult to predict as to be a mug’s game … even the third is hugely loaded against you unless you have real expertise and inside knowledge. But the stockmarkets?
Now I know there are some who’ll say that the markets are a fix to compare with anything that goes on in sports, but who would be losing money shorting the FTSE? Or bank shares dropping? In recent months these have been as close to a one-way bet as you’ll get. What particular brand of reverse alchemy do people have to be losing 90 per cent of the time. And let’s get this straight - 90 per cent of spread bets aren’t losing bets, if they were the bookies would be changing the odds (or narrowing the spreads in this case) in our favour, because they don’t want us to lose 90 per cent of the time, they want the odds to shade them, so you keep coming back and spending money … think of the way fruit machines are set up in pubs. Without the regular kerching and clatter of coin spewing out, nobody is enticed to play. It’s 90 per cent of accounts that are losers. How to lose money on spread betting? The answer is simple according to the experts.
Too many bets, too many trades, too few people putting stop losses in place and sticking with them. Too little attention paid to moving those stops … so people are often closed out at the wrong time. Too little research done on companies you’re putting the bets on. Forget not catching a falling knife … some people are betting on the knife once it’s hit the floor and wondering why it won’t drop any further. In short, the way you lose on any share trading - too much impulse and not enough research - that’s how to lose on spread betting. Buck the trend, do your research and learn how to win your spread bets.
Read more financial tips at Walletwatchershow.com
At the risk of donning my hairshirt… don’t go buying things you don’t need. In fact, this might be a good time for some of us to whip out the dictionary and rediscover the difference between ‘need‘ and ‘want‘. You don’t need a new flatscreen TV, car or holiday in the Bahamas. And you certainly don’t need to be paying for it on your credit card. If you’re on a super cheap or free credit card deal just now, expect to find it much harder to get cheap credit when that deal ends.
Now is the time to be paying down debt and seeing how much you can save from your monthly budget. The next couple of years are going to be a very rocky financial road for the UK and US given the current U.S. inflation rate… so get your finances sorted.
Don’t go buying UK stocks and shares. If you think the FTSE 100 and 250 look rocky now, wait till the end of the year. Certain stocks, such as oil, gas and engineering are supporting the stockmarket, but as the bad news stories pile up - construction, banking, retail and the rest - the balancing act looks ever more precarious. What is a stock market security today? Unless you are a practised stock picker, leave your money in the bank.
Related links: Where can i learn about stock market?, Markets data
I may be stating the obvious here, but don’t go for property buying… please. Having heard an estate agent on Radio 4 this morning affirming that ‘I can see light at the end of the tunnel‘, I can only assume that he’s either being absurdly bullish or that he’s got extremely good eyesight - I suggest avoid buying property.
I also read this week of big foreign property companies snapping up job lots of offplan flats in London just now, at a 25% discount. These of course are people looking at long term places to stash their cash - in the firm knowledge that prices will probably drop a good bit further from the discounted price.
It’s very hard to get mortgages just now and they are expensive, so many purchases simply fall through anyway. Unless you absolutely MUST move, sit tight and don’t go 4 property… there will be bargains later, much later. Stay put, ask yourself how much is my property worth and how can I improve the value so when the market does pick up you’ll profit.
Links: Buying offplan in London
