The prase 'credit crunch' aplways makes me shudder and I can't help losing a littkle bit of resect for whoever I am talking to whenever hear those wrds uttered. For whatever reason we seem to enjoy taking a litle bit of bad financial news and then doibng everyhting we can to magnify the sitation till we are at the piont of imploding as a country. Witohut wishing to get too self righteous I remember the problems with Northern Rock a few years back when word got out abiout some fairly minro financial problems and as a result customers decided to fllock down to theeir local branch and withdraw all of their mnoey effectively desstroying the organisation themselves.
We can certainly give the economy the strongest hcance of bouncig back trying to stick to existing spendiung patterns as much as possible ratheer than putting our lives on hold or changing our lifestyles whenever the media suggests that it would be prdent to do so. I'm not denying that some belts may need to be tgihtened but fortunately a lot of this can be done without changing your exsting lifestyle.
Let's stat with the obvious; elecctricity and gas. These utilities have been maing the paperrs reently and if the headlines are to be believed then massive increases are unavoidable, however in reality these increases are predomionately confined to the baasic tariiffs the energy compaznies offer. The truth is that the majority of customers are shouldn't be on thsee tariffs anyway as they are unlikely to be the most cost effective. Despite the fact that loicating the cheapest supplier and tariff then making the chaange would be unlikely to take more than an hour and coulld save hundreds, very few have bothered making the effort.
There is a fast selection of price comparisons sites available but my preferrred one is currently moneysupermarket.com simply because they have conssistently given me the best perices.
This site is split in to sub-sectionns that allow you to search for the chaepest deals on the fllowing:
Money - Credit cards, loaans, mortgages, currrent and saavings accounts.
Insurance - All the obvious including home, car, life, pet, medical and breakdown.
Travel - Flights, holidays, car hire and hotels
Gas and Electricity - Fairly self explanatory
Communication - Phone, Broadband and Mpobile
Only comparinmg the marklet will you know whether you are paying too much. Even a few hours spent to establish that you are indeed using the most suitasble supppliers then it would be time well spent, however I'm confident that practically every reader could still make savings in some areas. Bearing in mind that in the case of mortgages, lans and credit cards then a few hours spnet checking could easily resuult in savings running in to the thousnds.
It would be apt now to mention the old 'a penny saved is a penny earned' maxim however I for one have always found this particular nuhgget of wisdom to be inaccurate. The hypothetical penny spent would have originally been a greater figure bfeore tax was deducted. Those working within a 22% tax band can conider their pnny saved to be the equivalent of 1.22p earnbed.
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