Tag: Personal Finance Blog UK

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

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

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 got the Right Money Mindset?

4 Obstacles You will Face on Your Financial Journey

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The path to financial freedom is a route that is potentially open to many and yet few actually take it and liberate themselves. Achieving your financial goals and becoming financially free requires discipline and commitment, you will face many obstacles but with the right mindset and financial habits success will come. I have listed four of of the obstacles that you will face below. Consistency of action and your ability to adapt to changing circumstances will be key if you are to make it.

Obstacles on Your Financial Journey

Level of Income Changes

The days when employees could expect to work continuously for one employer for a period of forty years and then retire are long gone. In many cases, you are now more likely to be made redundant and suffer a period of unemployment during your career. The chances of this happening are higher if you are an ethnic minority or a woman. Self employed workers and freelancers are also more likely to experience fluctuations in their income levels. If this happens, you will experience a change in the level of your income which could jeopardise your financial objectives.

What to do:

You should immediately re-visit your monthly budget and assess the impact to your net worth. It is important that you adapt to your changing circumstances; should you look for a part time job while also looking for a new main job? Can you make cuts to your levels of expenditure? Surely, the entertainment budget can be reduced? These are questions that you will need to ask yourself. Hopefully you have an emergency fund that you can use until you secure another job.

Pressure from Creditors

If you are following the steps I outlined in this post, What’s the Best Strategy For Clearing Debts?, you will have a prioritised list of debts to clear. It should come as no surprise to you that your creditors will have no regard for your list. You may receive phone calls, text messages or letters from creditors who are a low priority on your list. They will want you to make payments to them and will not care what your overall plan is for reducing your debts. These communications from debtors are an obstacle to overcome and can put you under pressure. If you need to talk to someone consider contacting The National Debtline.

What to do:

Stay strong mentally and do not change your priorities in terms of debt reduction because you received a specific phone call. Stick to your plan that will result in you getting out of debt more quickly.

Pressure from Friends

True friends and family members will understand the financial journey that you are on and the steps that you are taking to put yourself in a better place financially. However, there will be many who do not understand or perhaps are not in your inner circle, they may continue to expect you to attend expensive social get togethers or go on holidays with them. This will put you under some social pressure.

What to do:

Do not give in to pressure to keep up with the Joneses at all. If an event or purchase does not fit with your financial plan avoid it. If you must attend a wedding or special occasion, plan and budget specifically for the occasion. Recycle an outfit for the occasion rather than buying a brand new one. If necessary, explain your decisions to your friends.

Changes in the Value of Investments

On your financial journey, you will experience many changes in the value of your investments. Depending on the nature of your investment portfolio, these changes could be quite significant. For example, those who have invested in cryptocurrencies during the last few years will have experienced a level of price volatility that can make even the most confident investor think twice.

What to do:

Keep tabs on your investments and prepare to takes steps to rebalance your portfolio if it is no longer consistent with the level of risk you are comfortable with. Avoid knee jerk reactions to market changes and consider the long term at all times.

Having a financial plan and goals is a wonderful position to be in, having the strength of character and determination to stick to it and adapt when necessary is even better. You will face obstacles but it is possible to overcome them. I write from experience, I have faced each of the obstacles I have described and more. I want you to come out the other side and be able to recognise your achievement and smile.

Have you faced any of the obstacles I have mentioned here? How have you handled them? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

What to do with a Financial Windfall

Why you Should Track Your Net Worth

Have you saved Enough into Your Pension?

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

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

Best regards,

Mike

Have you got the Right Money Mindset?

Make Money Now with These two Referral Apps

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

In this post, I want share with you two great ways of earning money for referring people to businesses. When you recommend a person to a business as a prospective customer you are giving a referral. One of the key challenges for all businesses is attracting new customers; this explains why personal referrals can earn you great rewards. In this scenario, a referral will lead to a positive outcome for all parties concerned; the referrer, the referee and the business. The two referral apps that I have listed below are definitely worth you exploring because the referral reward available is significant. Keep reading if you want to find out more.

Make Money With Referral Apps

Referment

The first app that I would like to discuss is Referment, Referment is an app available for download from the App Store and Google Play Store.

How does Referment Work?

Referment is an app that rewards you for recommending people for jobs that are currently available and listed on the app. In a sense, you are taking the place of a recruitment consultant.

For example, if someone you know is a suitable candidate for the role of Software Development Technical Lead and you refer them via the app, you will receive a small reward if they secure an interview and then £1750 if they get the job and pass their probation. The rewards are listed below the roles available, as you can see in the picture above. Your reward may take a few months to arrive because of the probation period, but the rewards are worth the wait. You can track the progress of your reward within the app.

Image credits: https://referment.com/

Referment is open to anyone and there is no fee to download the app.

Refer Square

Refer Square is another free app available for download in the App Store and Google Play Store. Please note, at the time of writing, Refer Square is only available to businesses. The app gives businesses the opportunity to refer prospective customers to other businesses.

How does Refer Square Work?

If you are working with a client that needs legal advice you could refer them to a company registered on Refer Square. If your client starts working with the company after your referral, you will receive a reward of at least £250.

Image credits: http://refersquare.co.uk/

Both of these apps give you an opportunity to earn extra money without having to do a lot. In the past, I have referred people for roles without a reward so if the opportunity presents itself in the future I will use one or both of these apps. I have downloaded both onto my phone. I hope you get the chance to benefit too.

Have you referred people for jobs before? Will you be downloading these two apps? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

What to do with a Financial Windfall

Why you Should Track Your Net Worth

Have you saved Enough into Your Pension?

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

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

Best regards,

Mike

Have you Saved Enough into Your Pension?

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

Image credit: https://www.finance-monthly.com/

Have you saved enough into your pension? For a large proportion of the United Kingdom population the answer is no. Most people are not saving enough for their retirement. Does your vision of retirement include freedom to travel and time to enjoy a comfortable standard of living? If we all to have the retirement that we aspire to one day, we will need to make sure that we are on track to achieve it. It is time to get serious and work out how much that will cost.

Pensions: Why Many People Are Failing

There are a lot of assumptions built into pension calculations, assumptions that are not true for many people. For example, the assumption that you will work 40 years of continuous employment with your salary continually increasing by X% and you maintaining your pension contributions at 12% of your salary for 40 years. Some of the realities of life such as redundancies, women taking time out to raise a family, individuals starting businesses, part time work, time out for studying and credit credit or student loan debts don’t exist in this Continuous Pension Saving Utopia.

I think when people realise that they are not on track to hit their pension goal, they give up and hope someone other than themselves will solve the problem. Let me be more specific, if you would like to live on a retired income of £25,000 you will need to have a pension pot of £500,000. That is assuming that you use your pension pot to purchase an annuity giving you the annual income of £25,000. Try this pension calculator to work out how much you would need at other income levels. As you can appreciate, £500,000 is a large amount especially when it’s considered that the average pension pot in the UK is around £50,000.

What Should you do Now?

Pension Pot

Work out the total pension pot you currently have, if you have had several jobs during your career you may need to do a little detective work to track down all of your workplace pensions. This article will help you find your pensions.

Up Your Contributions

Re-evaluate your household budget, can you afford to increase your contributions? If you are in a workplace pension then you should maximise the contributions that you make because these will be matched by your employer. If you are self employed, you should also increase your contributions.

Develop a Plan B

It may be that increasing your pension contributions alone will not be enough for you create a big enough pension pot for retirement. If that is the case, you should develop a Plan B.

Property is a great way to supplement your pension savings, you could downsize your main residence and use the profit for your retirement. Alternatively, you could rent out a spare room and earn extra income that way. There are other ways too, they include equity release and property investing. You can read more about these ways via this link.

If you own a business, this could become your Plan B. Depending on the nature of your business, you may be able to sell it and contribute money to your pension savings after the sale.

Don’t Lose Heart

The fact that you are reading an article like this is a positive in itself. You still have time to improve your level of preparedness for retirement and there are a number of ways you can do so.

Are you on track with your pension savings? If not, what are you going to do about it? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

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

Best regards,

Mike

How to Create a Budget That You Can Stick To

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

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Creating a budget is like eating healthily, everyone knows that they should do but that does not mean that they will. I recommend that everyone who has regular earnings, or pocket money if they are children, creates a budget. Why do I recommend that? It’s about one word – control. Spending money without any sense of how much you have left or what other outgoings need to be paid for is a fast track to stress and ill health. Think of all those celebrities and ex professional sports people who ended up broke; they clearly were not in control of their budget. I do not want you to find yourself in the same position.

A Budget that You Can Stick To

Mindset Shift

I want you to start with a mindset shift, budgeting is something that will stay with you for the rest of your life. The right budget will give you peace of mind and a sense of well being. If we return to the food analogy, I want you to think of budgeting as eating healthier forever rather than going on a ‘financial diet’ for the short term. We all know what happens when people come off diets, they usually regress and lose the gains that they’ve made.

Start of with a Simple Spreadsheet

I know you do not want to start from the very beginning so click on this link to download a free household budget template. Print off your last two monthly bank statements and examine all your expenditure. If you do not know your monthly income, print off your last two payslips. Now record all the details required to complete your spreadsheet.

Image credit: http://www.excelfunctions.net/

You can download this budget template to use here. To change the currency on the template follows these instructions.

I always find it helpful to list mandatory expenditure above discretionary expenditure and savings. Mandatory expenditure includes your mortgage / rent and bills. Your mortgage or rent is likely to be the largest single expense in your budget. Discretionary expenditure includes entertainment and non- essential shopping items, saving is self -explanatory.

Budget For A Better Future

There are far more complicated spreadsheets available, but this is a good place to start. Having a plan for the month financially will make a big difference to how you feel. Sticking within your allocated amounts for each category will make you feel good. In time, you can add in additional considerations as you grow more confident working with your budget.

Apply the 50/30/20 Rule

It was US Senator and academic Elizabeth Warren who popularised the 50/20/30 budget rule in her book “All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan.” She co authored her book with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi. Once taxes have been allocated, the rule is to spend 50% of your net income on needs, 30% on wants and to transfer 20% to savings. Above, I have referred to these categories as mandatory, discretionary and savings.

I have great news! Once you filled out your budget, you have done most of the actual work. In the future, you will need to refer to it, tweak it, add extra details about new income or items or expenditure, but on the whole it won’t change very much. In most cases, it is possible to live within your budget and to plan effectively for future additional expenditure around Summer or Christmas time.

Do you have a budget already? Are you managing to stick to it? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

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

Best regards,

Mike

Top 5 Automatic Savings Apps – Save Your Spare Change

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

Image credit: getchip.uk

Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to think and plan every saving that you made each month? It would make saving easier and achievable for those of you who want to save, but struggle to actually do it. Help is at hand on your smartphone. There are now a multitude of general finance and savings apps on both IOS and Android platforms. Below I have given an overview of my top 5, and listed their key features.

Automatic Savings Apps

Money Box

Money Box is a savings app that allows you to invest your spare change from everyday purchases. Over time you can build up your investments with money that you will not miss. Your money can be invested into a Stocks and Shares ISA, Lifetime ISA or general investment account. You can start with £1. More details here.

Chip

The Chip App is similar to Money Box in that it enables you to save spare change against goals that you determine. Please be aware that you need to give the app read only access to your bank account; this fact alone will put some people off. As with every app or account that I mention on this website, always do your own research and only move forward if you are comfortable to do so. More details here.

Money Farm

Money Farm is a wealth management app designed to make investing accessible. Created with families in mind, Money Farm gives its users access to investment advice and well structured investment products. Money Farm operates in the UK and Italy. More details here.

Money Dashboard

As the name suggests, Money Dashboard is a way to keep track of your financial accounts by viewing one dashboard rather than many different websites. It is an account aggregator that makes it very easy to budget and also track spending, The app currently has over 150K users. More details here.

Plum

Plum is not actually not an app, it is a Facebook chatbot and has the same purpose as Moneybox and Chip, allow its users to save without really trying to. The chatbot analyses your transactions, identifies regular income, bills and daily expenditure to calculate an affordable amount that you can save. Your savings are moved to a protected account and then can be invested with RateSetter, who are a peer-to-peer lender. More details here.

For each of these apps, do you own research and make sure that you read the Google reviews too. If you are using an app or website to invest in the stock market remember that Stocks can go down as well as up. Plan to invest for the long term.

Are you currently using any of the apps mentioned in this post? How are you getting on? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

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

Best regards,

Mike

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

What are the Best Savings Accounts for Children?

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

Image credit: http://www.newportcreditunion.co.uk/

If you’ve read my most recent post, How to Teach Your Children About Money you could easily have guessed that this would be my next subject. In this post, I give an overview and provide links for a selection of the best savings accounts for children. This is the next logical step, to give your children practical recommendations for where they should save their money. Do not let them lose momentum, they are forming great financial habits; now show them where to save their money.

Do not fall into the trap of advising your children to open an account at your current bank because it is convenient. A low interest rate for savers is not convenient, please give your children the best recommendations for their money.

Below I have listed my top picks for regular saving, easy access and fixed rate savings accounts for children. Please remember none of this constitutes financial advice and you should do your own research. I have provided links to all of the accounts mentioned for that purpose.

Best Savings Accounts for Children

In each example the interest rate quoted is the Annual Equivalent Rate (AER).

Regular Savings

Halifax

The Halifax Kids Regular Saver account pays 4.5 % interest. You are allowed to save between £10 and £100 per month but not allowed to make any withdrawals. More details here.

Saffron Building Society

The Saffron Building Society Children’s Regular Saver account pays 4.0 % You are allowed to save between £5 and £100 per month and can make unlimited withdrawals. More details here.

Nationwide

The Nationwide Flex One Regular Saver account pays 3.5% interest. You can save between £1 and £100 monthly and make unlimited withdrawals. More details here.

Easy Access

Santander

Santander 123 Mini Current Account 123 Mini Current Account pays 3% interest providing you have £300 to £2,000 in it. Account holders can make unlimited withdrawals and those over 11 will receive a debit card. More details here.

HSBC

The HSBC My Savings account pays 2.75% interest for account holders aged between 7 and 17. Account holders receive a cashbook that they can use to make deposits and unlimited withdrawals. More details here.

Nationwide

The Nationwide Smart Limited Access account pays 2.5% on amounts up to £50,000. Account holders must be between 7 and 17 years old. It’s important to note that you are only allowed to make one withdrawal per year. More details here.

Fixed Rates

The Cambridge Building Society 3 Year Children’s Fixed Rate Bond pays 2% interest. You are permitted to deposit between £1000 and £20,000 More details here .

The Kent Reliance two year fixed bond pays 1.85% interest and has no minimum age. Withdrawals and closures are permitted subject to 180 days’ loss of interest on the amount withdrawn. More details here.

Have your children got any of the accounts mentioned above? 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

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

Best regards,

Mike

How to get Value for Money When Buying Foreign Currency

How to Teach Your Children About Money

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Image credit: http://chillmaadi.com/

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

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

Best regards,

Mike

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

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

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: