Tag: Personal Finance Blog UK

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

Can you live off a Cash Budget for a Week?

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

Have you Found all of Your Dormant Accounts?

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

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During the course of our lives we will move house and change jobs, life can be fairly hectic at times so it can be easy to lose track of some aspect of our financial affairs. It is possible to forget about bank accounts that we opened as children or teenagers, particularly if there was not a lot of money deposited in the account at the time. When a bank account or savings account is inactive for a period of time, financial institutions categorise the account as dormant. The amount of time it takes to be categorised as dormant varies from bank to bank. For some it will be a year, for others it will be 3 years of inactivity. The money in these dormant accounts still belongs to you so you should take steps to retrieve it. I recently became aware of a dormant savings account that I was using up until a few years ago.

Dormant Accounts

What Should you do Next?

If you have the account number and sort code, contact a branch of your bank or building society and explain that you want to re-open a dormant account. If you simply want to withdraw any funds from the account, explain that too. They will have their own procedures for reactivating a dormant account. In my case, I needed to present an accepted form of identification (passport or driver’s license) together with an up to date proof of address. When this was verified, the bank were happy to reunite me with my funds.

If you cannot remember the account details and do not have any old correspondence to help you visit http://www.mylostaccount.org.uk/ . The website will ask you to fill out an enquiry form and then will help you through the process of tracking down your dormant account or that of a deceased family member. Please be aware that the process could take up to three months.

Image credit: https://www.mylostaccount.org.uk/

If the dormant account that you are trying to find is a pension, rather than my lost account you should read this article which will help you find your pensions.

The Government Will Take Your Money

Following the introduction of the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act in 2008, Reclaim Fund Ltd (RFL), the government laid out plans to seize money left in in dormant accounts and untouched for 15 years. This moneywill then be re-directed to good causes across the UK, so far £360 million has been used in this way. If you want to decide for yourself how to spend your money, track down any dormant accounts that you have and reclaim your money.

Have you have success tracking down a dormant account? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

Has the Cryptocurrency Bubble Burst?

Why you Should Drive and Old Car and Pay of Your Mortgage Early

Make Money By Being Part of a Focus Group

Save Hundreds on Rent Per Month By Becoming a Property Guardian

4 Obstacles you Will Face on Your Financial Journey

Make Money Now With These Two Referral Apps

Have you got the Right Money Mindset?

Best regards,

Mike

How to Create a Budget You Can Stick to

Accommodation: 5 Ways to Reduce Your Largest Monthly Expense

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

Image credit: https://www.ukuni.net/

For most people, accommodation remains their largest monthly expense. In earlier posts, I have mentioned this point. If you haven’t read, How to Create a Budget That you can Stick to, please read it today. It naturally follows that if you can reduce your largest monthly expense you will have more freedom within your budget to save more and to invest. These are two activities that will move you closer to financial freedom. The focus of this post is to explore 5 ways that you will be able to achieve this reduction in accommodation costs.

Cutting Accommodation Costs

I have spilt this list of five ways to reduce your accommodation costs into two mini lists. The first is for homeowners and the second is for tenants / lodgers who rent accommodation. The resources that I have linked to are for the United Kingdom because that is where I live. If you are reading this post outside of the United Kingdom, there may be comparable opportunities and resources in your country too.

Homeowners

Take in a Lodger

If you have enough room, take in a lodger to live with you at your main residence. Following a UK government initiative first introduced in 1992, homeowners are permitted to earn up to £7,500 tax free as part of the rent-a-room scheme. Technically this does not reduce your accommodation cost but it does reduce your financial burden because of the additional income that the lodger provides. Click here to read more about the rent-a-room scheme.

Move to a Cheaper Area

If you are living in a desirable area, more than likely that desirability comes with fairly high accommodation costs. One possible solution that most homeowners do not think about is this one; rent out your home and move to a cheaper area.

Let me explain with some sample numbers. You are currently living in area A and your home could be rented out for £2000 per month. This is more than you are paying for your mortgage which is £1500 . If you move out of your home and rent in a cheaper area (area B) for a cost of £1400 per month, you will be reducing your accommodation cost plus receiving £2000 in rent for the house that you still own.

An added bonus is the increase in equity associated with your property during the period it is being rented out. Please note, you will need to take all necessary steps to comply with the terms of your mortgage and to ensure that your property is in suitable condition to be rented.

Tenants/ Lodgers

House Shares

Renting a self contained flat or apartment can prove expensive, particularly in desirable areas. One surefire way to reduce your accommodation cost is to move into a house share. Sharing amenities brings the costs down. This website, spareroom.co.uk caters exactly for the house share market. Once settled into a house share, you can look forward to the positive impact that it will have on your finances.

Team up and Rent

Team up with a friend also looking for accommodation and rent a place that caters to both of your needs. This opportunity is not only available for twenty-somethings, an increasing amount of people find themselves heading one parent households and this is a good opportunity for them to reduce costs too. This website provides a forum for potential flatmates to meet each other with a view to finding a place together.

Move Back Home

This is not an option that is available for everyone for a number of reasons. It could a good temporary solution for some millennials. Moving back in with your parents could allow you time to reduce your accommodation cost and to recover financially. It should not be considered as a permanent solution.

Have you managed to reduce your accommodation costs recently? Which method did you use? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

Can You Live off a Cash Budget For a Week?

4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score

Cryptocurrency Exchange: This is Why I Recommend DSX

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Best regards,

Mike

4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score

Personal Finance: How Should You Prepare for Brexit?

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

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For those of you not living in the UK, Brexit is a word coined to mark the Great Britain’s intention to leave the European Union. This decision was the result of a national referendum in July 2016 in which the electorate voted to ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain.’ The United Kingdom was very divided; 52% voted in favour of leaving and 48% voted to remain. Those who voted to leave did so without any real understanding of the repercussions of such a decision; they were encouraged by politicians who were economical with the truth. Now in December 2018, UK inhabitants find themselves heading towards Brexit and what looks like a self-inflicted recession.

Businesses and consumers have been heavily impacted; consumers are not spending as much as they used to and business people lack of confidence about the future. Businesses are currently less likely to invest in new equipment or staff and according to the GFK consumer confidence Index the current score for the UK is – 13. To give that some context, in December 2015 the confidence index score was +2. Significantly 2015 was the first time the index had remained positive for an entire calendar year since records began in 1974.

Prepare For Brexit

From a personal finance perspective, how can you better prepare yourself for the reality of Brexit? Below I have listed 4 practical steps you can take that will help.

Revisit Your Budget

Take a look at your current monthly budget and re-evaluate all of your expenditure. If there are opportunities to cut back – take them. For example, a lot of people have unmetered water bills even though in many cases a metered water bill will work out cheaper; read this post for information, Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money Down the Plughole? There may be other opportunities for you to cutback.

Assess Your Employer & Job Stability

In financially challenging circumstances many companies suffer and some go into administration. In the UK, we have seen this with the demise of Maplin and Toy R Us.

The task for you is to dispassionately assess how well your employer is doing and how likely/unlikely it is that you be made redundant. Do not rely on any assurances from the management team at your company; do your own independent research. If you think that you could be made redundant save more money into your emergency fund.

Reduce Discretionary Expenditure

In personal finance circles, there is a lot of discussion around how much impact cutting out daily Lattes will have on the path toward better financial health. That’s a choice that you are best placed to make. However, what is sensible is to rein the dining out occasions and perhaps replace them with entertaining friends at home. Beyond entertaining, holidays are another area that you should review. Choosing a more cost effective destination or changing an international holiday to a UK based ‘staycation’ will give you greater financial comfort. Also, do not go overboard at Christmas.

Review All of Your Financial Products

Review all of your financial products including savings, mortgages, investments and pensions. Assess the impact on Brexit in each case and evaluate whether you should continue with your current provider. If appropriate, change to better performing products with other providers to maximise your returns.

How are you preparing financially for Brexit? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

Cryptocurrency Exchange: This is Why I Recommend DSX

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Best regards,

Mike

How Long Affiliate Marketing Takes – Affiliate Marketer Training

Is Affiliate Marketing Easy to do?

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

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Affiliate Marketing is the process of earning commission by promoting a company’s good or services. In most cases, this commission is earned when a web visitor is sent from one website through to a retailer’s website and goes onto to make a purchase.

For example, if you are an affiliate partner for Amazon and one of your web visitors clicks through to to make a purchase via your promotional link, you will receive a commission. It is not essential that you have a website; it is possible to achieve the same by posting your links via Social Media, Having said that, if you want to take a more structured approach to Affiliate Marketing, creating a website will help you do this.

Affiliate marketing can boost your household income if you can master it and for that reason it is worth considering.

I answered a question on Quora related to Affiliate Marketing that I have chosen to share here too.

—

Liberty,

Thanks for the question.

If you are thinking about affiliate marketing for your blog, here are some considerations for you.

Affiliate Marketing Considerations

Time

Yes, you could get affiliate income in a few weeks but if you want to be realistic you should allow about a year to create significant income. On reading this, most people will no doubt click away. The article I have linked to below is one you should read.

Choice of Affiliates

Evaluate your niche and pick only the appropriate affiliates for your audience (assuming that you have built an audience for your blog). Don’t just sign up for Bluehost because the commission is quite good and you read that Pat Flynn and Michelle Schroeder-Gardner earn $50,000 per month from Bluehost. Those guys have a massive audience full of newbies. Maybe your audience isn’t people getting started earning money online. There are some great affiliate programs and many of them are not as well known as Bluehost and Amazon.

Be Prepared to Earn Nothing Per Month

For every blogger proclaiming that they earned $15,000 per month from Affiliate marketing there are many more who earned nothing. That is the reality that creators of Affiliate marketing courses do not always tell you. My experience has been in the middle… sporadic earnings but no consistent income. Nice bonuses here and there but not predictable.

Evaluate Your Affiliates and Dump Poor Performers

Even affiliate programs that are strategically aligned with your blog’s purpose and vision might not work with your audience. If that is the case, after testing for a few months, dump that affiliate and replace it with a new one.

Don’t Sign Up To Too Many Affiliate Programs

Avoid signing up to too many programs. You will need to keep track of them and assess click and conversion rates; signing up to 20 programs is not what I would recommend. Think quality over quantity.

I could probably write pages about this topic but I will end it here. I hope my list of considerations/ danger signs has been useful to you.

Good luck!

—

Are you an affiliate marketer? Is it a side hustle that you will investigate? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score

Cryptocurrency Exchange: This is Why I Recommend DSX

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Best regards,

Mike

https://www.quora.com/What-danger-signs-should-I-look-for-when-looking-to-start-affiliate-marketing-on-my-blog/answer/Mike-Pitt-1

Take This Free Financial Literacy Course Today

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

Image credit: https://vdc.edu.au/

One of the goals I set for myself for this blog was to help people improve their level of financial literacy.

What is Financial Literacy?

‘Financial literacy is the confluence of financial, credit and debt management and the knowledge that is necessary to make financially responsible decisions – decisions that are integral to our everyday lives.’

Kristina Zucchi, a contributor to www.investopedia.com

With each blog post, I have intended to spread financial awareness and increase the knowledge base of my readership. The feedback I have received suggests that this has been appreciated. Thanks to all of you that took the time to feedback. Another way of spreading financial literacy is by sharing details of a free financial literacy course. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I have been searching for a free resource that I could share with my readers. I have now found a suitable course and this course is the focus for today’s blog post.

Free Financial Literacy Course

This financial literacy course provides a good introduction to personal finance and money management. The course is supplied by Alison.com the free online learning platform set up as a For Profit Social Enterprise in 2007 by Mike Feeric. Alison.com was started in Galway, Ireland and now has over 12 million students from 195 countries. The course that I have selected has been studied by sixty nine thousand students and has a rating of 4.1 stars. The course will take approximately 6-10 hours to complete.

Click here to be taken to the course landing page.

Continual Learning

As we continue on this journey towards financial freedom, I will share other helpful resources with you. I hope that you find this course useful. I believe that it is important for us to continue learning and improving our knowledge base.

Have you taken any financial literacy or money management courses before? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

Cryptocurrency Exchange: This is Why I Recommend DSX

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Best regards,

Mike

4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score

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

It is very unfortunate that the people who most need credit are the least likely to receive it. People with low credit scores are deemed the greatest risk by the bean counters in banks and other financial institutions who determine who’s loan application will be accepted or denied. When you are being considered for any credit agreement, one variable that carries a lot of weight is your credit score. This is expressed as a number; fortunately, it is a variable that you can positively influence over time.

What is a Credit Score?

Definition: As a consumer, your credit score is a number based on information from your credit reports at the three major credit reporting bureaus – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

Definition from Investopedia.com

Your credit score* is based on your performance against a number of factors including, how much credit you are currently using, whether you have missed payments for credit cards and loans, whether you are a home owner or rent the property that you currently live in. According to Experian, a poor credit score is between 300-579, 580-669 is described as fair, 670 -739 is labelled good, 740-799 is very good and 800 to 850 is exceptional. People with poor credit scores are often turned down when they apply for credit.

Image credit: https://www.experian.com/

How can you Improve Your Credit Score?

There are a number of ways of improving your credit score, for the purpose of this blog post, I will focus on one. You can Improve your credit score by applying for a specialist credit card, using it responsibly and building up positive data points and your financial reputation. ‘Using it responsibly’ in this context means paying off your balance each month and making payments on time. Credit cards for people with low credit scores are a niche within the credit card market; providers are more flexible than traditional lenders and charge a higher interest rate for outstanding balances and purchases.

Below are 4 credit cards that you can apply for, if you have a poor credit score and want to improve it.

Which Credit Cards can Help You?

If you do apply for any of these credit cards, please read all the terms and conditions carefully and pay particular attention to the APR that will be applied to your card. Use your new credit card responsibly and in a few short months your credit score will improve. As your credit score improves, you will be able to borrow at much more competitive interest rates. You can find out your credit score for free here.

Do you know your credit score? Have you had to take steps to improve it? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

Cryptocurrency Exchange: This is Why I Recommend DSX

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Best regards,

Mike

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

*If you were wondering about the difference between a credit score and and credit rating, individuals usually have credit scores whereas businesses or governments have credit ratings. Credit ratings are expressed as letters with A being the highest as opposed to the numbers used for credit scores.

Image credit: https://upgradedpoints.com/

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

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

Image credit: https://barterfanatic.com/

In another post on this site I have written about how important it is for you to have a budget for your monthly expenditure. It is also important that you manage your bill payment schedule. Poor management of when bills need to be paid each month can create cash flow headaches, these are times when you have a bill to pay but no available money to pay it. It is worth creating a bill payment schedule as an Excel document and thinking about how dates on the schedule can be altered to create a better cash flow position for yourself.

Good management of bills will enable you to avoid late payment charges or a reliance on credit cards to get you through to the end of the month.

Bill Payment Schedule

Your Action Plan

Go through all your bills and record on your spreadsheet and make a note of when each bill needs to be paid. When you have finished, you should have a list of regular bills and dates covering accommodation, mobile phone and electricity etc.

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Ask yourself, is there a regular time in the month when you seem to have more bills than cash? It may be that by week three of each month your available cash is particularly low. If this is the case, and you get paid once a month it would make sense to move payment dates from week 3 to closer to the start of the month, i.e. just after pay day.

If you get paid weekly, it could be advantageous to alter payment dates so that all bills are paid just after you receive your weekly wages. Individual circumstances will vary of course, the objective is to avoid having no cash left and still having bills to pay.

Simplicity is the key, it’s fairly easy to forget about a bill and then fall behind or miss a payment completely. Once you have altered payment dates, automate them with direct debits and standing orders so you don’t have to spend time thinking about them each month.

Ensure that you check how competitive all of your suppliers are once a quarter. If you can switch to a more cost effective supplier without being penalised, you should do so.

Do you have a schedule of bill payments? Have you created your own system? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

Does Your Choice of Supermarket Matter?

Have you Found all of Your Dormant Accounts?

Can you live off a Cash Budget for a Week?

Best regards,

Mike

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job : 4 Examples

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

Image credit: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/

If you have spent any time researching ‘making money online’ as I have for this website, you will soon realise that there are lots of articles and videos pointing you towards websites that help you make money. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but when you dig a little deeper you soon find that the opportunity isn’t as appealing as it often presented in videos on YouTube. Let me give you just a couple of examples; survey sites that inform that you are not eligible only after you have been through 50 minutes of screening questions or user testing websites where you are competing with a large online community to be picked for one of the few tests that are available each week.

In this post I want to take an old school approach to boosting your income by concentrating on Christmas seasonal jobs rather than anything online. The reason I am focusing on Christmas seasonal jobs is because many people with money concerns have them because they simply do not earn enough money. Their challenges are not because they are compulsive spenders or cannot budget, it is because they need more monthly income.

The ‘Underemployment’ Trend

In the last ten years, an employment trend has emerged in the UK, this is the trend of underemployment. More adults are working part- time roles because they could not find suitable full time work. Sports shop retail workers on zero hours contracts are just one example of this phenomenon. According to ONS data, ‘underemployment’ has actually got worse since 2008. Many adults would be glad of a second job that would allow them to boost their income.

Temporary Christmas Jobs: Examples

In the run up to Christmas, there are always plenty of temporary Christmas jobs available if you know where to look. In the UK, websites including indeed.co.uk. Reed.co.uk and Gumtree.com will be helpful to you if you want to begin your search. Below I have listed 4 examples of temporary Christmas jobs that are currently available.

Temporary Sales Assistant

People are shopping more often because they need to buy presents for Christmas as well as food and other provisions. Large department stores and supermarkets often need additional staff and many temporary positions do not require experience because training is provided.

Temporary Stock Replenishment (Shelf Stacker)

As a natural consequence of more people shopping more often the shelves and stock cupboards need to be re-filled more frequently and there will be jobs available in the Stock Replenishment team at many department stores and large supermarket stores.

Christmas Postal Worker

At Christmas-time, people send more letters, cards and parcels through the post than during other months creating new jobs for temporary postal workers. The roles available will require you to sort and deliver mail during the run up to Christmas.

Delivery Drivers

Not all Christmas mail is delivered by the Post Office, there will also be a requirement for additional delivery drivers for companies including Amazon. In addition, there are also a host of consumer food apps including Deliveroo, Just eat and Uber Eats that have a constant need for new drivers.

I hope you find this information about Christmas jobs useful. Have you applied for temporary Christmas role? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

Does Your Choice of Supermarket Matter?

Have you Found all of Your Dormant Accounts?

Can you live off a Cash Budget for a Week?

Best regards,

Mike

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

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

Image credit: https://www.creditcards.com/

If you have ever had more than credit card and realised that the payments you are making are mostly going to pay off interest only, a balance transfer might be a good solution for you. A balance transfer occurs when you open a new credit card account and transfer the balance from an existing card or cards to the new card. This can work out well for you if the new card offers you a 6 month 0% interest free period. You will then have the opportunity to pay off more of your credit card balance because you have 6 months to make payments without accruing interest.

This is the primary advantage of balance transfers, the interest free period. Before taking out a new balance transfer credit card read the terms and conditions and find out what the interest rate will be after the 6 month period. Financial institutions offer balance transfer credit cards because they know that many people will not be able to clear their balance within 6 months and as a consequence they will then have to pay interest to the financial institution. This is when they are able to make money from you; sometimes there is a fee for balance transfer. Usually financial institutions will also make money if you make any new purchases or cash withdrawals too, so try to avoid any new transactions altogether on the new card.

Make Balance Transfers Work For You

*Use an online comparison tool to find out which are the best balance transfer credit cards for your requirements and check your eligibility. Do not apply for too many cards because your applications will be recorded on your credit record and you do not want to appear desperate.

*Balance transfers are not offered to everyone, if you have a poor credit rating this opportunity might not be open to you. Click on this link to find out more about credit ratings. If you are can get a new balance transfer card, sign up and use it.

* If your application is successful, transfer your balance or balances to the new card and continue to make regular payments to reduce the amount that you owe. It will make your financial life simpler and more manageable.

*Calculate your desired repayment amount and set yourself the goal of clearing your new credit card by a specific date. Ideally this will be within the interest free 6 month period.

*Consider this strategy that I have used personally, when one 6 month period is about to finish it will should still be possible to transfer to another new balance transfer card and in doing so gain another 6 months at 0% interest. More time to clear your balance will help you make faster progress clearing your debts. Read this post for more information on clearing debts, What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?

What Should You do?

If you follow the approach listed above, balance transfers can become an excellent strategy for rapid debt reduction and will move you closer to being debt free

Have you used balance transfer cards to reduce your debts? Would you use them again? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

Does Your Choice of Supermarket Matter?