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March 11th, 2008

Following on from the 5 ways to stay in control of your loans I have come up with 5 ways of staying in control of spiralling spending, so that you should not need a loan in the first place.

The first of these is make a budget, and stick to it. This is something that seems so obvious I’m amazed that more people do not do it. It allows the chance for a complete overhaul of personal finances. It makes it clear that we don’t really need to be wasting money on gym memberships we never use, expensive Sky packages we hardly ever watch or rip-off mobile phone and broadband tariffs. Even eating in rather than feasting on take-away food can save you money. This does not mean cutting out all your luxuries. Just be a little more careful with the cash and you can watch the savings begin to stack up.Sticking with the food theme, there are now sites that allow you to enter your typical weekly shop and they will tell you which supermarket locally will allow you to buy your groceries for the lowest price. Mysupermarket.co.uk is the most well known, and it even tells you if there are special offers that will allow you to stretch your money even further.The next area where people may need to save money is on their utility bills. There are a plethora of price comparison sites in this area, many advertised on television and in newspapers, but there are reasons to be wary. Many are in fact glorified middlemen who will take a cut of whatever price at which they snare you. Needless to say there are much cheaper deals to be found. Price comparison sites are a good place to start to get an idea of the market, but since some companies do not let themselves appear on them there is no substitute for shopping around until you find the best deal.Some sources of financial advice preach that in times of hardship a good way to save money is to cancel insurance policies, and then take them out again when times of plenty return. This is BAD advice. The choice is not, however, between keeping overpriced and under serviced insurance policies or going without insurance altogether. Each time an insurance policy comes up for renewal you should check the market, it is likely that there will be a cheaper deal available and you will be able to save money without compromising your cover.Lastly, if you must use a credit card make sure that you are getting the best deal. Get your expenditure down by moving to a 0% balance transfer credit card. Take a look at Virgin’s credit card which will put a freeze on your interest bill for a full 15 months, although there are many good deals to be found.There is a feeling in many that the tips outlines above are a lot of effort and to do all that is just as bad as being in debt. This is both lazy and stupid. Shopping around on the internet is a good way of saving money easily and quickly, and if it means the difference between staying on budget or overspending and going into debt, the effort is very much worth it every time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 11:32 am and is filed under Personal Loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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