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 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

Related: Best mortgage deals are no longer through brokers.

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

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

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

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.

Get the best pension you can and get your unclaimed money. The government announced in November 2007 that more than 2.5bn pounds of pension credit was going unclaimed – and almost half of all pensioners are entitled to the Credit, which tops the weekly pension up to £119.05 for single people and £181.70 for couples. So if your pension is less than this, see about your unclaimed pensions. See this page from the UK Pension Service for how to get

Related: Pension credit

Tags: unclaimed pensions, unclaimed money

You’re trying to eke out your savings for as long as possible, so get the highest possible interest rate account. Don’t be diverted by tax free savings if you’re not a tax payer anyway. And what you’re after in retirement is safety not risk. You don’t want to be moving your money into volatile shares that may trough and take years to regain value. That’s great when you’re 20, but at 70 you want protected, regular income.

Related: Best buy accounts, Best interest rate on savings accounts

Tags: tax free savings, high interest rate accounts

Some tips for older listeners – get everything you’re entitled to. Despite nonsense in the Sun and the Daily Mail about benefits scroungers, the REAL scandal in Britain is that most of us DON’T claim what we’re owed, and pensioners can be very backward at coming forward. But the social security system is a maze of benefits, so go to www.entitledto.co.uk, a clever little site that will work out for you what old age pensioners are entitled to.

Related: www.entitledto.co.uk, Pension choice advice

Tags: entitlement benefits, pensioners, pension credit, social security entitlements

The pricing on the UK rail system has been a mess for years now, with different prices offered at different times on the same routes, the same trains even. British trains are also notoriously expensive – it still seems a travesty to me that when I’m costing a flight from London to Edinburgh or Glasgow that it’s invariably cheaper to fly than to go by rail. But at least we can now search for the cheapest deals online. Generally that’s mean thetrainline.com, but the established leader now has serious competition from megatrain.com for cheap UK rail fares.

The megatrain website is blessedly simple – you can go and sort out your route and travelling times elsewhere (thetrainline.com in fact) then head back here and get the tickets more cheaply. Megatrain is also Megabus, which found fame for selling intercity UK coach tickets for just £1 a pop. Sample comparisons threw up a London-Salisbury fare for £16.50, with thetrainline coming in at £34.50, and London-Chesterfiel at £22 against £39. Further, megatrain appears to include the booking fee in the price, while with thetrainline.com you pay extra. You can’t invariably use megatrain.com for cheap UK rail fares of course. Prices vary greatly, and by the day, so always ensure you try both sites to get a side by side comparison.

I also notice that there’s an input field for voucher codes on the megatrain site, which would bring the price down even further. I’ll be trying to find some of those for you in the next couple of weeks.  As well as megatrain.com for cheap UK rail fares, check out our other tips for loads of ways to save money on your purchases.