The Jones’s may be drowning in more debt than you can imagine.

Trying to keep up appearances is little more than a costly illness. You cannot judge someone by what they have as you don’t know how they got it. Maybe they are financed up to the eyeballs and are in misery worrying about their debts.

Your spending decisions should not compromise either your own or your family’s long term financial security. Do not concern yourself with getting one over on Bob from next door as his television is only 42 inches.

There is no such thing as being materially complete. When you’ve bought everything on your current wish list, you’ll have thought of something else you can’t do without.

Giving into sort term gratification can be the root of long term debt misery.

Maturity is often defined as the ability to delay gratification, so keeping up with the Joneses is very immature.

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This way, your essential bills are paid on time and you can budget for the rest of the month.

Not only does with allow your to make payments on time and to avoid late payment charges and bank charges, you could get benefit from defering payments until your next months wages without any cost to yourself.

If payday lands before the end of the month, and your direct debits etc are paid throughout the month, simply call each company and ask to shift them to the day after you get paid.

Almost all companies work from 1st of the month, and they are still being paid in that month but you are saving a whole months outgoings and you are paying them from your next wage.

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You are charged for water based on one of 2 methods:-

• A fixed fee based on the size of your property
• A part fixed and part usage charge.

If you have a large house, but live on your own, you would be better off on metered water.
If you live in a smaller property, with your family of 9, then you’ll be better off on a fixed charge.
As general rule of thumb is you’re better off on metered water if the number of occupants exceeds then number of bedrooms.
If you are on metered water, then there are many things you can do to reduce your bills with compromising personal hygiene
Some water saving tips:-

• Fix dripping taps.
  This could waste as much as 90 litres a week.
• Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth.
  Bushing your teeth with the tap running wastes almost 9 litres a minute. Rinse out from a tumbler instead.
• Keep cooled water in the fridge.
  You won’t have to run the tap for ages to get a cold drink.
• Wash clothes on a full load
  The average wash needs about 95 litres. A full load uses less water than 2 half loads.
• Shower
  A 5 minute shower uses about 1/3 the water of a bath.
• Boil just the water you need
  The is no need to boil enough water for half the street everytime you make a brew.

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People can still contact you where ever you are, which is the primary benefit of a mobile phone.

Ask yourself this: is your mobile phone absolutely necessary? If the answer is yes, then ask yourself whether you really need all those minutes and texts that come as part of your package. If you hand over £40 a month to your mobile phone company, that’s £480 a year – or around £750 of your gross salary.

But you can buy a pay-as-you-go phone for as little as £30 and only pay for the odd call as and when you need to. Remember that if you pay an expensive tariff with an included, state of the art phone, you are in effect buying that phone over the course of the contract.  When that contract ends, do not for heavens sake, keeps of paying this high monthly tariff. Your mobile phone company gets rich on the backs of their custumers not having the most suitable contract and over paying for the service.

If you are finished your contract, phone the company and tell them you want to go pay as you go. Your mobile phone company will have an army of call centre operators ready to try to talk you out of this.

I was on a £35 per month tariff, I told them I wanted to go pay as you go and they offered me a £15 per month tariff and credited my account with 9 months x £15 = £135.
I did not spend a penny of mobile phone calls for 9 months doing this.When this 9 months expired, called then again and they offer me a revised deal.

Why would Mobile phone companies do this?
One factor is that their share price is influenced by financial statements from saying how many contract customers they have. The more contracted custumers, the better for the share price.

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It’s a mugs game and called by some, a tax on the poor.

The odds of winning the Lotto jackpot are 14,000,000 to 1 against each ticket.

There are not any combinations or strategies that an alter this. Every combination is as equally likely as each other.

Only 45% of the money spent of tickets is give back out in prizes. This is an appalling return.

Go to your local casino if you want to gamble and play the roulette wheel instead, over 97% of the money is given back in winnings. This also is 100% random and without any skill or strategy that can increase your change of winning.

Better still, do not gamble at all, unless you know something that the person setting the odds does not know.

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Know for sure how much is in your bank account at any given time.

Get into the habit of knowing exactly how much you have in your account and when direct debits and other standing orders are due to be made. This is easy to do by online internet banking.

Not only will this reduce costs to you in less charges from your bank and creditors for missed payments, you will be more focused on how much you are spending and how much you need to keep in your account to budget for essential bills.

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Those most actively chasing payments do so as often they have least legal right to your money.

If you fall behind with loan or other repayments, pay your highest priority debts first. For example debt that could eventually result in imprisonment (ie court fines) or repossession (ie secured debts) should be addressed before unsecured creditors.

Unsecured creditors know they can’t legally ask more from you than you can realistically afford each week or month. They also know that if are struggling repaying money owed to them, you’re likely to have other debts to other creditors you are also struggling with. Therefore they are clambering to get you to pay them ahead of everyone else.

Either treat all creditors equally, or make lower payments towards debts with the lowest interest rates while targeting higher interest debts.

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Money saving expert Martin Lewis lists this has his No.1 money saving tip.

If you have completed the introductory period of your mortgage, you should investigate which deals are currently available. Your first port of call is to phone your currently lender and say:- “I’m considering switching mortgage, and would like to give you the opportunity to offer me a better deal before I look elsewhere”.

I’ve tested this with my own mortgage lender as my deal expires in 4 months. They were happy to extend the discount for a further 2 years. If I had not asked , they would have raised my repayments by £170 per month. I saved myself £4000 over the next 2 years by simpley making one phone call.

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Don’t get suckered into thinking you’re the one benefiting from earning points.

Loyalty cards operated by the major supermarkets and other retailers serve 2 purposes:-

Firstly, they perform great market research. They can see exactly what you are spending your money on and where you are doing it. This is far greater invasion of privacy than any current national ID card proposal. They then use this information to target marketing at you.

Secondly, and more importantly, you end up spending more money with them and earning them more profit. If this were not true then such schemes would not exist.

Many people loose sight of the fact that they get back just a couple of percent of what they spend. Am offer of  3% discount would not turn many heads in a high street window display.

People become emotional attached to building up points as if it were on a par to putting money in a saving account.

Of course, there are excellent offers to be had for people who know how to play the system. If you do your weekly food shop in the same place every week, you may as well take advantage so long as it does not make you spend more than you would.

Cash back credit cards
The above also applies to cash back credit cards. Typically you may get a few percent back on purchases for 3 months, then 1% thereafter on a card with an APR of 15%. So, you only profit from such an offer if you settle your card balance in full each month and are not seduced into spending more by the effective 1% discount.

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The is no such thing as credit repair – other than by prompt and continious credit repayments.

Credit reports contain only factual information about you, credit you have applied for and payments you have missed. There is no way of removing information that is unfortunately correct - It stays there for 6 years.

It can be true that you have a damaged credit file due to incorrect information; therefore you are advised to obtain a copy of your credit report to make sure this is not the case.

You may also may want to make sure that entries that should be there are not missing, for example notification of satisfactory payment of a debt relating to a CCJ.

See the link for advice on fixing incorrect information on your credit report > Correcting Credit Reports

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