Wallet Watcher » Tips

Debt clearance

Mevio — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:49:36 +0000

The amount of spam emails offering debt clearance we’ve been getting at Walletwatcher recently is rather ominous (or perhaps entirely predictable) and very much a sign of the times as Britain heads into recession.

Some of these are extraordinarily polite and plausibly well written (a human hand is at work here, hence them skipping the spam filters) but they are just as worrying. We hardly need to say that we won’t be pointing Walletwatcher readers in the direction of debt clearance companies, for the simple reason that they don’t actually clear your debt at all. Anybody who offers to remove all your liabilities in one easy stroke (often by consolidating existing debts into a new one) isn’t telling you the whole truth.

At some point, needless to say, you have to repay the cash, and this is why you should be looking very carefully at the terms, conditions and interest rates involved (and avoiding secured loans like the plague). I’ll be looking at this in more depth in the podcast in the next couple of weeks.

Free dental treatment

Mevio — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:06:14 +0000

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

Free haircuts and makeovers

Mevio — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:05:24 +0000

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

Free tickets to attend TV recordings

Mevio — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:04:11 +0000

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: TV recordings, studio audience

Local barter schemes

Mevio — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:41:46 +0000

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

Community websites

Mevio — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:40:59 +0000

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

Swap shop

Mevio — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:40:00 +0000

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

Mevio — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:31:41 +0000

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

Only buy things you need

Mevio — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:06:58 +0000

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.

Tags: current u.s. inflation rate, personal finance advice

Avoid the UK stock market

Mevio — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:05:25 +0000

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.

Tags: what is a stock market security, finance tips

Avoid buying property

Mevio — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:04:48 +0000

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

Petrol is more expensive on Fridays

Mevio — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:02:30 +0000

If you’ve ever had a suspicion that your tank filling is more expensive as the weekend approaches, then you weren’t just being paranoid. According to our friends at petrolprices.com, filling stations are playing a very crafty trick of jacking the prices up a notch on Fridays … because that is the day most of us fill up. It allows them to post cheaper prices during the week, then adjust prices a notch just as we all roll on to the forecourt. Yes, it appears petrol is more expensive on Fridays.

This is quite a difficult, if not impossible one to prove, so we’d be interested to hear your observations on this – the big thing is that most of us don’t actually notice how much juice we’re putting in the tank let alone whether it’s 120.1 or 120.3 a litre. Is petrol more expensive on Fridays? Let us know.

Before you fill up by the way, pay a visit to petrolprices.com, which is a terrific little site allowing you to check for the cheapest petrol in your area. There’s no great surprise that the cheapest filling stations tend to be those attached to the supermarkets – the three cheapest filling stations in our area of south London are all Sainsbury’s outlets. The big supermarkets of course use fuel as a loss leader, while the independents struggle to survive … exactly what they do to little local grocers. You save your money and you make your choice.

For more on ‘petrol is more expensive on Fridays’ and other money saving tips, look through the archives at Walletwatcher. Tags: fuel prices, cheap fuel, cheap petrol

Credit cards give free insurance

Mevio — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:39:23 +0000

Use credit cards. We cannot say this often enough – this is effectively free additional insurance. If your travel firm goes bust, the hire car isn’t up to scratch … whatever. A credit card insures your purchases in a way your debit card does not. So THIS policy starts well before you set out for the airport. Need I say, pay the card off in full at the end of the month and DON’T withdraw cash on it. Especially abroad where you don’t know what extra charges are likely to be bumped on.

Tags: free insurance, credit cards, travel advice

Travel health insurance

Mevio — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:38:23 +0000

People do get ill on holiday. They fall off jetskis, eat dodgy oysters and occasionally drink too much and fall asleep in the sun for too long (we’ll call this the British disease). Make sure you are ADEQUATELY covered for holiday health mishaps. You’ve got your travel health insurance right ? Good! Now ensure you have your European Health Insurance Card. You slip it in your wallet like a credit card, and it complements your health cover. It DOESN’T replace insure … don’t skimp on THAT, but it can be handy to have as a shortcut when you’re presenting yourself at a hospital in an EU country.

Tags: travel insurance, health insurance, European Health Insurance Card, finance tips

Holiday insurance

Mevio — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:34:56 +0000

It’s holiday time and we’re all heading off for well deserved downtime in the sun. But are we prepared. Tesco Personal Finance published a recent report on their top three personal holiday insurance claims. 40 per cent of claims were for baggage loss, 30 per cent for medical treatment and 20 per cent for cancellations. All bad enough but … What do you mean you haven’t got holiday insurance? Get it NOW not at the airport (you’ll pay a fortune otherwise) and make sure your policy is appropriate … does it cover the whole family? If you’re going to be skydiving in the Andes does it have special provision for extreme sports? A terrifying half of us travel with no insurance at all, and that’s madness.

Tags: Tesco Personal Finance, holiday insurance claims, travel insurance

Salary sacrifice to minimise your tax bill

Mevio — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:37:28 +0000

Make use of salary sacrifice to minimise your tax bill. Simply put, you forgo salary for certain tax free benefits (childcare vouchers, lunch tokens and the like) and it can add up to hundreds of pounds each year. I’ll be looking at these ideas in greater depth in a future walletwatcher. There’s an HM Govt site dedicated to the Salary Sacrifice scheme, check the site out to help cut tax bills.

Tags: Salary Sacrifice, lower tax bill, minimise tax bill, cut tax bill

How does a Save As You Earn Share scheme work?

Mevio — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:36:40 +0000

Find out if your company runs a Save As You Earn Share scheme. These government approved schemes encourage workers to buy shares in their employer’s company. You pay in to a savings account each month for five years. At the end of the term, you have an option to buy the shares (usually at a price set at the beginning of the term). at a reduced price. It’s a no lose situation, as you’ll be getting a bargain if the shares have risen in price. If they’ve fallen in price you’re under no obligation to buy … a superb gift of free money in our opinion.

Tags: share schemes, save as you earn

Company pension advice

Mevio — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:35:27 +0000

Pay into your company pension. Pensions often get a bad press because of the necessity of purchasing an annuity at retirement, and as soon as the stockmarkets plunge (and share’s aren’t doing too well just now of course), everyone gets very nervy about the value of their pension. But they are a GREAT way to reclaim income tax you would otherwise have paid. If higher rate taxpayers put £60 into a pension, the government makes it up to £100 … and that’s before your employer has made THEIR contribution. So find out about your company scheme and how much they will put into the pot.

Tags: Company pension, pensions, annuity

Set up monthly savings

Mevio — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:04:03 +0000

Save and forget. Set up a monthly payment into your savings account, into your share ISA, and into your pension. Short term pain (as you have less to spend) will soon be forgotten and long term gain will kick in. You soon won’t miss the money and it will be accruing and compounding nicely. Now beyond this we’re going to get a LOT more active and creative with your finances, showing ways to real growth. But if you do nothing else (and many of you won’t!) then saving and forgetting 20 per cent of your take home each month will give you a solid financial starter.

Tags: monthly savings, savings, personal finance advice

Pay every purchase with your credit card

Mevio — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:03:05 +0000

Put EVERY PURCHASE YOU CAN on YOUR one and only credit card. Set up a direct debit to pay it off in full each month, ideally just after your salary goes into your bank account. It’s much easier to keep track with one big payment going out, rather than dozens of little ones. When your itemised bill comes in you can check, in one go, where your money is going each month. Make this your monthly budgeting day – it will focus your attention on cutting outgoings and getting spending back below earnings!

Tags: credit cards, budgeting, purchases, finance tips

Paying regular payments on direct debit

Mevio — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:02:12 +0000

Many of us spend too much time worrying about our finances. That’s not to say you shouldn’t sort them out, but you want a financial plan that serves you – not the other way round. Get organised and forget it, so you can get on with the serious business of enjoying your life.

I’ve hammered this one before, and it CANNOT be said too often. Get all your regular payments on direct debit. You won’t risk missing a payment and getting penalised, you’ll get discounts from certain suppliers (such as gas and electricity companies) and your intray and paperwork will be a lot lighter every week. Periodically you should do an audit of your direct debits and ensure you cancel any that are no longer needed.

Links: Direct debits

Tags: direct debit, regular payments, personal finance tips

Getting the best mortgage deals

Mevio — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:13:54 +0000

Getting the best mortgage deals has never been harder, or more pressing. There’s a blizzard of economic data at the moment, and much of it apparently contradictory – the UK is simultaneously suffering inflation and deflation, Bank of England base lending rate has come down (though it was left unchanged on 5 June 2008) while the rates at which banks lend each other money (LIBOR) has been rising. And commentators are divided (because they really have no idea as yet) whether we are at the beginning of a recession or a more orderly adjustment as the bad debt junk, sub prime mortgages and the like are cleared from the system.

For what it’s worth, I’d put my money, were I able to borrow some for a bet right now, on the more pessimistic analysis. UK plc, as it used bullishly to be dubbed, is in a parlous financial state, with the country’s wealth (both of its citizens and of the Exchequer) being largely based on heavily leveraged and increasingly unsustainable debt. And the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has predicted a very gloomy economic outlook for Britain. Okay – so much for the bad news, what can you do to make your personal finances more comfortable? Even in the good times, most of us are guilty of appalling financial inertia – we allow our home loans to languish on high rate variable deals when we could easily fix at lower rates, we run up debt on credit cards. Getting a great mortgage deal isn’t that likely, as money is more expensive … but logic dictates that you can still get the best mortgage deal, and that it’s very unlikely that you are currently on it.

Many fixed rate mortgage deals are set to expire this autumn, and that’s where the pain will really start for borrowers – I can guarantee that a large percentage haven’t even thought about what’s coming up. Before you know it you can be arbitrarily plonked from a fix at 4.5% to a variable rate of 7% or above – horrific. Start researching figures on getting the best mortgage deals now, with moneyfacts.co.uk and moneysupermarket.com top places to start looking.

Tags: UK mortgage, Mortgage deals, Remortgaging UK

Start early and make a financial plan

Mevio — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:06:30 +0000

This of course underpins everything you do. It may sound glib, but there’s a lot of truth in the phrase fail to plan and you plan to fail. Make financial and life plans of where you want to be at 25, 30 or 35. Life will intervene and trip you up. An unexpected job offer here, an unanticipated child there, and you can’t run a life on rails. But if you have a plan, you are far less likely to be pushed this way and that by the winds of chance.

Links: How to construct a monthly budget, Make a financial plan

Tags: financial plan, financial planning advice, personal finance advice

Buying property at 18

Mevio — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:00:16 +0000

Impossible you cry… haven’t you heard about the credit crunch and the death of the first time buyer? To which I’d reply that people told me it was impossible to buy a property at 18 when I was 18… and mortgages were MUCH harder to come by back then in the early eighties. Building societies then typically demanded that you save up your 10% deposit with them and then had to take out a mortgage with them – and they STILL might not give it to you. There are ways, and I’ll be covering creative ways to get mortgage finance in full in the Walletwatcher podcast episode 30.

Links: Why’s my mortgage so expensive?

Tags: property, mortgage finance, finance tips

Think about retirement at an early age

Mevio — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:59:26 +0000

Yes I know that’s 40 something years away and you just want to party, but I’m serious. You probably don’t have spare cash to dripfeed into investments… so create some. If it means taking an evening job to create £50 a month to put into a pension, then do it. A little now could mean millions later. Compound interest, the savings habit and more time to ride out dips in the market. Start money working for you now.

Links: Pension choice advice

Tags: retirement, pensions, compound interest, pension, personal finance tips

Charges for using credit cards abroad

Mevio — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:16:13 +0000

I’m a big fan of credit cards used the right way. Pay them off every month and you get around 56 days free credit. Get a zero per cent card and you can get months of interest free purchases. And a credit card of course gives you additional protection, insurance on your purchases and against getting ripped off. All the above can make them especially useful for when you’re away on holiday – much better than travellers’ cheques, and with an automatic receipt courtesy of your credit card bill when you get home. But charges for using credit cards abroad can make things look very different.

There is a BIG coda here – you must check out your terms and conditions before you use your credit card abroad. I know, I know … who does that? We all get used to just whipping the plastic out to pay for stuff. But terms and conditions (and thus charges for using credit cards abroad) vary wildly between different credit card lenders. There is a very useful article on foreign usage credit cards on the Moneyfacts.co.uk site which compares and contrasts the costs and charges for using credit cards abroad.

Differences are dramatic. It’s the little phrase ‘Foreign usage loading’, which is an additional charge levied by your credit card issuer for transactions outside the UK (and it can be up to 2.99% currently). In fact there were only three cards listed at Moneyfacts which didn’t have foreign usage loading when I looked (a Nationwide, a Post Office and an Abbey card). Check this handy table on charges for using credit cards abroad, and don’t return home to a nasty shock.

Read more on zero percent credit cards and low APR credit cards here.