Getting a Good Car Insurance Deal

Swapping car insurance can be a great way to save money. many people choose to switch after looking at a price comparison website. However, Aviva have launched a fun campaign where you can play a series of games in order to learn more about their car insurance and how you can save money.

The games feature the main character of the advertisements who is called Ollie. You have the option of creating a personalised song and sending it to your friends, you can play at catching fish, you can view the TV advertising campaign and there is a chance to win prizes.

Of course, it is all about encouraging you to find out more about their Multicar insurance. If you insure more than one car, then you can get up to a third off when you add a second vehicle to your policy. This could save you a lot of money if your household has more than one car, which many do these days and so it is well worth a look and getting a quote to see how much you can save.

Why not take a look at the video below, have ago at the game or find out whether you can save some money.

Post sponsored by Aviva

Massive savings!

Thanks to spending nectar points and printing off a 20% discount vouchers and an in store deal, I managed to save £150 in Homebase this weekend. It was an amazing saving. I purchased 4 5 litre tubs of Dulux paint pod paint. Each 2 tubs came with a free Paint pod compact worth £30.99. We also bought undercoat, gloss, gloves, sandpaper, masking tape and other things for painting. I am always shocked at how dear these things are, but with a 20% saving as well as spending £48 worth of nectar points, we made an amazing saving. It was certainly well worth using our loyalty card (we get points from reading our meters monthly for British gas and buying petrol at Sainsburys) and searching for vouchers on line. The voucher was emailed to my husband from the Money Saving Expert so thank you Martin Lewis!

Another Feed In Tariff Cheque!

I received another feed in tariff cheque today which was for £96.88. This was significantly less than the first but was not surprising considering the shorter winter days and the cloud we have been having. However, it was still great to receive it.

It means that we have now had the solar panels for six months and so I did some calculations to work out how much money we have saved so far:

£364.19 - Feed in Tariff
£83.54 - free electricity generated
£208.91 - reduced electricity used due to being more frugal
£267.20 - reduced gas used due to being more frugal
£923.84 - TOTAL

It is amazing to think that comparing year on year, we have saved so much money in gas and electricity. We have been on a fixed price tariff as well so it is not due to any change in cost of electricity or gas as the price per unit has remained the same. The winter has been warmer than last year which may have had some bearing on it of course.

We could have been frugal without the solar panels but it was having them fitted that made me think so much about how much we were wasting. I started turning the heating off in the day and turned the thermostat down by two degrees. I made sure lights and computers and televisions were switched off in rooms when we were not in them and even started bathing the children less often. Having an electricity meter really helped as I found out things like our kitchen lights cost 50p an hour at the highest tariff of electricity and I often left them on for a few hours each day when I was in. That could have cost me £200 in the six months - almost unbelievable!!

So even if you do not have solar panels, you can make huge savings on your utility bills if you give some thought to where you are spending money. Get a meter if you can, many energy companies are giving them away free and it could help you to save over £500 a year like me!

Frugal Christmas Spending

Last year I managed to get a lot of great deals in the January sales. I had already done some of my Christmas shopping by the time January was over. This year I have just not had the time to go out and do this and I am rather regretting it. I did manage to get some cheap biscuits and chocolate, but that was very naughty as normally I would not have bought them at all. My weekend is booked up again and I suspect that all of the post christmas sale bargains will be gone by next weekend. I will just have to look for other sales to do my shopping, during the course of teh year and help to spread the cost of Christmas.

Utility Savings

My energy supplier has a great function on their website where it is possible to compare your energy usage with that of the previous year. I have had a look at that and it has been interesting. Our gas usage has gone down a bit, which is probably due to me only bathing the children three times a week instead of seven and keeping the heating off during the day. The electric savings are much bigger. We are being more careful with switching off lights and computers and with the addition of the solar panels, even in the winter our spending has halved. The graph is amazing as you can suddenly see when the solar panels for fitted as the usage dips right down. With the drop in tariffs I may not be so keen to fit solar panels now, but it is still worth trying to cut down power usage by improving insulation, switching things off that you do not need and just being more aware of what you are using and whether it is necessary.

Jobs

Seeing figures for unemployment the other day made me think that I am lucky that I am self employed. Although a lot of people seem to think that it is extremely risky. I am lucky that I have been running a business for a very long time and I have adapted to changes in the market and made a success out of it. I can still not believe that the book I write which started it off is still selling and making me money and now I have written many more and lots of other things besides. It seems a long way since my last job and with the lack of Quality Coordinator Jobs out there, I am pleased that I had something to fall back on.

Expenses

Having all the expenses of the loft work has made me think hard about money and earnings as well as spending. I realise that we are very lucky with the fact that we found a great mortgage deal at the right time and we have some safe investments which are paying out. However, I have worked hard at studying finance and we do not over spend. I think that we should give ourselves more credit for being sensible with our money and not just assume that it is coincidence. We got a tracker mortgage because we had learned that trackers were the best investment type and then when interest rates kept dropping our mortgage tracked that and for the last eighteen months we have been paying 0.99% interest which is just £81.50 a month. This is what has allowed us to save up the money to pay for the work on the house. As well as living fairly frugally and working hard.

Making a Million

After reading the book that I reviewed in my last post, it got me thinking again about being a millionaire. To be perfectly honest, I think I may have left it a bit late. I may have a business and my husband a job, but we have children and so I think that even if we earn lots, save lots and spend little, however well we invest, I think that we will still find that we are giving money to them. Of course, if my business was even more successful that would help and if I am not making that much money from it by the time the boys are at secondary school, I may consider getting some employment. However, as there are only manufacturing companies making things like industrial bearings or shops offering jobs in the local area, it may be tricky to find something. I will give it some thought once they reach the age of eleven. A lot can happen in the next five years.

Book Review : Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam

Book Review : Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam

What I particularly liked about this book was that it agreed with several other books with regards to its approach towards investing. I am cautious when investing and do not do things on a whim, but if a selection of sources are giving me the same information, then I am happy to trust them more.

The book is all about investment. I am a firm believer in making money from my money or getting a good passive income. I have made mistakes with my investments and learnt from them and this is exactly what the author of this book has done and he is not afraid to admit it and help his readers learn from his expensive mistakes.

The book is written pretty simply, so you do not need any mathematical or previous investment knowledge to understand it, but on the other hand it is not at all patronising. It explains what the author considers to be the wisest ways of investing and the reasons why. It then goes on to explain other investment methods and why these are not so good.

Each chapter discusses a rule that the author feels we should take note of when we are investing money. He feels strongly that these rules should be taught in school, as do I. His book is therefore a fantastic financial investment for anyone who would not only like to learn more about investing themselves but also who would like to pass that knowledge on to their children.

So if you want to make sure that your money is invested wisely, then this is the book for you. Whether you are young and just starting out with investments or whether you are reaching retirement, there will be some useful information for you. The book does stress the importance of starting investment as young as you can and so if you do want to make lots of money, then it is better to buy this book sooner, rather than later.

Amazon sales

The books are still selling fairly well on Amazon and a few things have sold on ebay as well. It is turniong out to be a good way of raising some extra money. The ebook sales are still good as well and I plan on starting a new book today which should be fun. Just have to post the things I have sold first which means going out in the freezing cold!

Great Amazon Sales!

Selling my husbands books on Amazon, has turned out to be a great project. Not only has it cleared a good selection of boxes, which were cluttering up the attic and would have no space to be stored once the loft is clear, but they are also raising some money. The first batch that I sold raised £11.70 in total for six books, which I was happy with. However, my second batch has raised over £75 although I have not taken out the postage charge for twelve books. I am hoping that the books will continue to sell well and that I can sell some more things on eBay as well. The money is adding up and with Kindle Sale still doing well and some more work coming in thsi afternoon, things are looking very positive this month!

Contactless Payment Technology Gains Popularity

Contactless payments are steadily gaining popularity abroad, particularly in the UK, but can we expect to see this technology stateside anytime soon?

What is meant by Contactless Payment?

A contactless payment system is a new technology set up at the retail point of sale. We already use a similar type of this payment with debit and credit cards, but the new technology on the rise comes in the form of key fobs, smartcards and even your cell phone. The key difference is that contactless payment relies on RFID, or radio-frequency identification.

Smartcards have already become commonplace in Europe. These look like regular credit or debit cards but there is a major difference. Smartcards have integrated technology embedding in them with circuits. These make up a microprocessor that comes fully stocked with volatile memory. They can store data, process applications and provide identification authentication.

What's different about the RFID technology is that radio waves are used to transfer data from one point to another. In the case of contactless payments, the data is being transmitted from the form of payment (a card, cell phone, or key fob) to the point-of-sale (or the cashier).

One form of contactless payment we can expect to see here in the U.S is Google Wallet. This app stores all of your credit cards on your cell phone. Simply tap the phone at a point-of-sale that accepts Google Wallet and your payment goes through as simple as that.

Many chains are already set to implement this technology in their stores this year, so we can expect a lot of changes taking place in 2012. Consumers can even store their loyalty card information on their cell phone app, making it easier than ever to have all of your financial information in one place. But is that a good thing?

Contactless payment is another way of making our money more virtual than before. Some people already struggle with budgeting because whipping out the debit card is now second nature, so what are the repercussions of having virtual credit and debit cards on a cell phone?

It will also be a while before contactless payment becomes mainstream in the U.S, so many stores are not going to have the RFID system at their point-of-sale. You still have to enter a PIN number for purchases over a certain amount, so there's still the chance that someone could steal your PIN number and even your cell phone, giving them full access to all of your accounts.

What's more, not every credit card offers the smartcard or RFID technology. People wanting to get on board early can research which cards are already using the technology by comparing credit cards at moneysupermarket.

With any new technology, there will be kinks to work out, not to mention the fact that people tend to be resistant to change. Regardless of how you feel about storing your wallet on a cell phone app, contactless payment is the wave of the future, so enjoy those plastic loyalty cards and sign those credit card signature strips while you still can. Their days may be numbered.

Credit Card Joy!

How often do you hear those words in a sentence? Seems by bank has messed up my card payment date. Instead of my December credit card having to be paid at the beginning of January, it is now due at the beginning of February. They messed around with the payment dates and we asked for it to be changed back and the inadvertently gave us an extra months free credit. It was a big bill too, with the cost of our new bathroom on it and so it is good to have some extra time to pay!!