Saturday, January 26, 2008
Cash Saving: Limit your food spend at work
It might seem a simple one but I recently totted up exactly how much I could save by cutting out my daily work food spend and taking food from home instead. Here's how it goes:
Usual Way - Buy Breakfast, Lunch, Snacks & Drinks
Monday - Canteen Toast (£0.80), Sandwich, crisps, drink (£3.05)
Tuesday - No breakfast (£0.00), Pie, crisps, drink (£2.98)
Wednesday - Bacon Butty (£1.85), Sandwich (£2.05), Chocolate (£0.50)
Thursday - Canteen Toast (£0.80), Baked potato, crisps, chocolate, drink (£3.55)
Friday - McMuffin Meal (£2.59), Pub lunch (£7.00)
Total cost: £25.17
New Way
Take breakfast - toasted teacakes (£1.00)
Make sandwiches - loaf & ham & cheese (£3.95)
Take crisps - (£1.99)
Bag of apples - (£0.99)
Drink work water - (£0.00)
Total cost: £7.93
Just by doing that I've saved £17.24 on one week. Multiply that by your working year and you could save a grand total of £827.52 per year!!!
You can go on holiday for that.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Managing merriness: how did you spend Christmas?
An article by Melanie Taylor of Gregory Pennington, a leading UK Debt Managemant solutions company:
After a cautious start to December,
Children aren't the only ones who have a hard time waiting for Christmas. For retailers everywhere, it's the most important time of year – the time when shoppers are most likely to throw caution to the wind and really splash out. In 2006, for example, December's credit card borrowing accounted for 60% of the annual total.
Now that the party's over…
Poor start to a New Year
For some, a penny-pinching New Year is a price worth paying for all the festive celebrations. Others find that a few days of fun simply cost too much, and promise themselves they'll cut back this year – the Christmas season can be a valuable wake-up call, emphasising the need to stop living beyond our means and get our debts under control.
For increasing numbers of people, paying for Christmas is more serious than a few hefty repayments. Fees for unauthorised overdrafts, charges for bounced payments, maxed-out store cards with interest rates of 25% or more – it can all add up to a lot of money and a lot of hassle. A MoneyExpert report found that 10% of almost 2,000 respondents were still paying off credit card debts from Christmas 2006 as they entered December 2007!
Why do we do it?
Why do so many of us feel compelled to blow our budgets at Christmas? Advertising? Experts reckon that marketing during the festive season cost around half a billion pounds. Peer pressure? 47% of CreditExpert's respondents felt there is social pressure to buy expensive presents. Or is it simply a feeling that we owe it to our partners, to our kids, or to ourselves?
Article Credits:
Melanie Taylor is associated with Gregory Pennington. For more information about debt management, debt advice, Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs), basic bank accounts with a debit card facility, loans and remortgages, please visit http://www.gregorypennington.com/
Friday, January 11, 2008
Delicious Debt Resources
Online Debt Information
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Debt Terminology
Advanced Investment: Forex Trading
I've always been intrigued by the world of online trading, and after reading this excellent introduction post over on Financial Independence I'm even more intrigued.
OK, so Forex Trading offers some serious risk, and it's not something that would suite everyone, but if you're intrigued like I am - pop over and have a look at the post:
How to Trade Forex