Tag: Mike Pitt

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only. This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010.

I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

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How to Teach Your Children About Money

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Few adults have truly mastered money and yet it is incumbent on adults who are also parents to teach their children about money. Parents are the number one influence on children’s future financial behaviour. If parents always seemed to be concerned about money or the lack of it, this is what their children will learn. However, by being proactive and intentional about the lessons we teach our children, we can set them up for future financial success. Below I have listed six key points that you can teach your children that will help them understand money. They have certainly helped me explain money to my son, I hope those of you who have children find them useful too.

Teaching Children About Money

Making a Choice

Explain to your child that you have a limited amount of money, it could be £10 or $10. The next step is for you and your child to decide to buy product x or product y, because you cannot afford to buy both.Those of you who have studied microeconomics, will recognise this as the ‘opportunity cost’ attached to the decision. This is a great way to introduce needs and wants too.

It’ is good for children of all ages to understand the need to make a choice between the two. Use it with real world examples when you are out and about. This website is great resource for explaining money to your children. Please make use of it.

Now or Later

Slightly more difficult to explain to many children is the concept of delayed gratification. Instead of buying something now, why not save your pocket money/ birthday money and save up to buy a larger item in a few weeks’ time? If a look of incredulity comes onto your child’s face, do not worry, you’re not alone. Once again, demonstrate with practical examples from their daily life.

Managing Pocket Money and Expenditure

Another great financial lesson is encouraging your children to have some financial freedom to make their own choices. If you are able, allow them to ‘earn’ pocket money by keeping their room tidy and helping out with chores. The money they earn is theirs and they should budget, save and donate; the remainder can be spend as they see fit. Please explain that if they deposit their money into a savings account it has a chance to grow because of the interest. Money stored in a piggy bank will not of course.

Financial Rationale & Commentary

I provide my son with a financial rationale for financial choices to build up his knowledge and help him to understand concepts such as value for money. For example, I have explained why I filled up the car with fuel at the local petrol station ahead of a long journey instead of at motorway services. Today, he told me that he would buy a Ferrari if he had the money so I’m not sure if everything I’ve said has been taken on board. 🙂

Regular Saving and Compound Interest

This website is a great resource that will help you explain to you child how compound interest works over time. The great amounts that can be created by regular saving and compound interest, as demonstrated by the website’s calculator tool should excite them.

As your children get older, over 14 years of age from example, there will be many opportunities to have specific discussions around money. Some may relate to the costs of higher education or how to sensibly use credit and debit cards. I will not be able to cover them all in this post.

How have your discussions with your children about money been? Were there any areas they struggled with? Let me know how in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

Save up to £500 Per Year With a Sim Only Mobile Phone Deal

Save up to £500 Per Year With a Sim Only Mobile Phone Deal

I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

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How to get Value For Money When Buying Foreign Currency

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Many of you will have realised at one point or another that you have not received a good deal when exchanging your hard earned Sterling for foreign currency.

In many cases, a zero percent commission might be accompanied by a transaction charge that you were unaware of. There may have been hidden fees that you only realised when you received your credit card or bank statements a few weeks later.

This experience is very common, I have been through it myself. It’s not a great feeling. If you are still buying foreign currency from your bank, the post office or worst of all, at the airport, you should stop now. The same applies for expensive travellers cheques.

via GIPHY

Exchanging your currency at the airport will result in a less than favourable exchange rate and fees. It’s similar to buying fuel for your car at motorway services instead of at your local supermarket prior to starting your journey.

Value For Money Foreign Currency

So, how should you buy foreign currency? Lets start with a slight mind-shift, shall we? You don’t actually need lots of foreign currency before you travel.

Instead buy a minimal amount of foreign currency for taxis from the airport and light snacks. Buy this minimal amount from the best currency exchange you can find. This is a good place to search.

A month or so before you travel, apply for and receive a specialist credit card that allows you to spend in your required currency without fees.

This Revolut card is a great example. The card allows you to spend fee free with the real exchange rate in over 130 currencies.

It’s not the only option, The Halifax Clarity Card is similar. Please ensure you research them and apply for the one that best suits your needs.

These two steps should ensure that you get value for money when buying foreign currency and spending abroad. Feel free to let me know how you get on in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that financial education is largely absent from the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only. This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010.

I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

Image credit: https://www.prestwick-airport-guide.co.uk/

Save up to £500 per year with a Sim Only Mobile Phone Deal

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

The lure of a new shiny mobile phone is very effective at keeping many people overpaying mobile phone companies. In most cases, customers upgrade to a new handset because they want to have the latest iPhone or Samsung handset. This is more to do with ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ rather than any new technical need. I have discussed this with friends and colleagues and have asked them the question, ‘What is it that your new phone can do that your current phone can’t?’ Most are stumped and cannot think of anything.

Rather than upgrading your phone for the sake of it when your contract runs out, why not consider a sim only mobile phone deal ? This means that you keep your existing phone and pay only for the text, call and data allowance that you select.

How to Select a Sim Only Deal

The process I went through to achieve this saving started with me calling my existing mobile phone company and asking them to review my recent call, text and data usage over the last 3 to 4 months. This only took a few minutes, once I’ d reviewed my actual usage it was clear that the most appropriate sim card only deal would cost me around £15 per month.

Please note, most of my work is online and because of that I probably need more data than you. It is likely that you will be able to follow the same process that I did and find an appropriate Sim conly deal for around £10 per month; there are even some available for £5 per month. When I switched to a sim only deal, I started saving £40 per month which equates to £480 per year. You can start searching for sim card only deals here via this link.

The money that you save could go towards paying off a debt or into one of one of your savings accounts. That choice is up to to you.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Image credit: http://www.smarttouchpro.com/

10 Ways to Make Money Now

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Image credit: Getty Images/Peter Cade/The Image Bank

Planning how to save money and considering how much to save are important topics to consider but sometimes on our financial journey we need to make money in a short space of time. Below I have listed 10 ways that you can do this in a fairly short time span. The quickest are at the top. I have not included surveys that will take you hours to complete or anything that feels like a scam or is misleading. I hope that if you find yourself needing extra cash (we’ve all been there), one of these suggestions helps you out.

Make Money Now

1. Sell Unwanted Items

Sell unwanted items on Gumtree or Ebay. My preference is for Gumtree because of its local focus. You are less likely to get ‘tyre kickers’ who are not really interested in buying. I have used Gumtree many times and it’s a great way to declutter your house and earn extra cash at the same time.

2. Sell Unwanted CDs and Books

There is a company called Music Magpie who will buy your CDs, books, games and DVDs. First of all, you scan all of your items using your mobile phone and then receive confirmation of the amount you will receive for each item. Next you pack all of your items and send off to them for free. They pay when they have received your items and processed.

3. User Testing

Some websites will pay you money to review comapny websites and give your feedback in the form of a short video. UserTesting is probably the most well known of these but there are others. Enroll is an example of one of the others.

4. Get Paid to Switch Bank Account

The introduction of the Current Account Switching Service in 2013 has made switching between banks very simple. Over 4 million accounts have been switched since then . Banks are offering incentives for account holders to switch to them. Fed up with how your bank has been treating you? Make a switch; even if you’re not fed up make a switch to pocket up to £150 just by moving your current account.

5. Ad Hoc Gardening Help

This is a great suggestion for Spring and Summertime. Create a flyer offering your services as a garden labourer and post through local letterboxes of homes with gardens that need a little TLC. You will not need to be an expert gardener. Often these will be gardens of those who are either too busy or unable to complete garden maintenance work for some other reason. Most will be appreciative of your flyer and you are likely to earn money for a couple of hours work for every person that agrees.

6. Hire Out Your Car

If you have a car that is not too old and you are not using it all the time, you may be able to hire it out on an hourly or daily rate. Easycar offer this service nationally in the UK ; it enables car owner to earn money from their car by renting it out.

7. Rent out Your Parking Space

If you are a homeowner and you have a parking space that you don’t use you could rent it to motorists looking for a guaranteed place to park. There are lots of companies catering to this niche. You could advertise your space on YourParkingSpace, JustPark or Parklet to name but three and go on to make between £50 and £300 per month.

8. Hire Out Your Spare Room

The Rent a Room scheme was introduced in 1993 and because of it homeowners can earn up to £7,500 a year tax free by getting a lodger. You can register your room for free on Spareroom or Easyroommate. Your room will need to be furnished and you will need a tenancy agreement.

9. Medical Trials

Perhaps the most controversial inclusion on this list. When people think of medical testing they remember horrific cases when things have gone wrong. Most medical tests are nothing like that. Before participating you would need to consult with medical professionals to assess whether you are right for any specific trial. Medical trials that require you to stay on the premises, like the ones organised by FluCamp can earn participants up to £3,500 for a two week trial. There are lots of other companies running similar trials all over the country.

10. Apply for a Job With a High Turnover of Staff

The best example of a job with a high turnover of staff is a nightshift shelf stacker at your local large supermarket. The unsociable hours mean that it is the sort of job that people are often leaving. As a consequence, there is likely to be a vacancy for you. If you can handle the unsociable hours it may help you earn additional cash during your time of need. This link will get you started. I will cover employment opportunities comprehensively in future posts but wanted to mention this opportunity now.

Of course, you will need to assess the tax implications of any additional income that you are able to generate. This article will give you some guidance.

If you have liked this post you will also like the following posts:

Save up to £500 Per Year With a Sim Only Mobile Phone Deal

I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

What are the Different Types of Savings Accounts?

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I hope that you read my last post and you joined me in making a commitment to increasing your level of saving each month. If you have not had time to read it yet, you can read it here, How Much Should you Save?

In this post, I will give an overview of the different types of savings accounts that are available for most adults in the UK.

Bank Savings Accounts

Perhaps the easiest to set up, these are savings accounts that are usually in the same bank that handles your current account. It is very easy to transfer money from your current account into your savings account each month. The transfer can be achieved very quickly via your bank’s app, assuming that you have downloaded and are using your bank’s app. Unfortunately, this ease of access without any penalties can work against you too. It can be a little too easy to transfer money from your savings account back into your current account, more on that in a future post.

Regular Savings Accounts

If are able to commit to a regular savings account you should be able to secure a higher interest rate than a normal savings account. There are limits to the amounts that you can save and also for how long, but they are definitely worth having if you are able to.

Easy Access Cash ISA

If you open a Easy Access Cash ISA, you will be able to save up to £20,000 tax free each year and still have access to it if you need to. Individual Savings Accounts (ISA) were first introduced in 1999, initially with a limit of £7000. Now the amount you can shield in a tax free ISA is £20,000.

Fixed Rate Cash ISA

The Fixed Rate Cash ISA differs from the Easy Access Cash ISA because savers must commit to not accessing their funds for a fixed term. This term could be one, two or three years. If savers access their funds before the fixed term has finished they are penalised with a loss of interest.

Fixed Rate Savings

If you are comfortable locking away your money for a couple of years, you should consider fixed rate savings because you will secure a higher interest rate

Notice Savings Accounts

As the same suggests, notice savings accounts require the account holder to give notice before they withdraw money. This notice period could be 30, 60 or 90 days in advance.

It used to be that you had to consider the tax implications of savings accounts. However, the introduction of the Personal Savings Allowance in 2016 has meant that most people now no longer pay tax on savings interest.

What type of savings account do you use? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have liked this post you will also like the following posts:

I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

How Much Should You Save?

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For many people, saving money is not exciting; when they consider what their savings may allow in the future it can become more exciting. This may mean the chance to have an expensive family holiday or a more comfortable retirement.

Save Money

Whatever your level of salary or wages, you should aim to save 20% of your earnings. Depending on where you currently are in terms of your financial health, this 20% figure could seem insurmountable or very manageable. Please remember this is a guideline.

This guideline is based on the following breakdown of income; 50% on mandatory expenditure including accommodation and associated bills, 30% on discretionary expenditure and 20% on savings.

Is this the Dream versus Reality?

The chart above is from Trading Economics and clearly demonstrates that in the UK most households are not getting anywhere near the 20% figure. My own anecdotal evidence is that there are times when I have been able save above the 20% and other times when no saving has been possible at all.

For our US readers, the situation is actually slightly worse, as you can see from the chart below. There is data from other countries as well on the website, so please explore to find figures for your country if you are not from the UK or US.

I would like everyone who reads this post to take a step forward to a better financial future. We have just started a new month, commit with me to saving 20% of your income, or as close to that as you can. If you comfortable doing so, leave a comment below indicating the percentage of your income that you will save this month, this month being June 2018.

If you have liked this post you will also like the following posts: