Money Saving And Budgeting Tips 2020

Hi folks, Helen here from It's Funtime Bouncy Castle Hire Bourne. Now whilst I am best known for running It's Funtime, the premier bouncy castle hire company in Bourne, Spalding and Peterborough in my spare time I'm I have a slightly odd hobby which I'm going to tell you all about today. I'm on the receiving end of lots of jokes from friends, family and my husband about this but I personally love money saving! This can be anything from using cashback websites and receipt apps to make a little extra, to making sure we don't pay anything more than we have to for our day-to-day expenses. So if you've stumbled across this blog, looking for ways to reduce your expenses and cut the amount you're spending then I will briefly take you through everything we do and hopefully might give you some good ideas.

Always Get Paper Bank Statements.

I know it really isn't the eco-friendly option these days but I always request paper bank statements for my current accounts. This is because each month I can go through the statements and and see exactly what incomings and outgoings we have. I suspect if you have a look through your bank statement right now you might be surprised by a few direct debits normally for smallish amounts that go out for items that you no longer have or no longer need such as insurance policies for appliances you no longer own or fees for clubs or associations you no longer use. So obviously the first step is the cancel any payments that you no longer need to make. This the really easy way of reducing your spend without even noticing any cuts.

Switch your utility suppliers

Another really easy way to cut your costs without even noticing, is to go through your utility suppliers - these are the companies you use for your gas, electric, telephone and broadband. If you go on a comparison website such as comparethemarket.com or Martin Lewis' Money Saving Expert has their own comparison engine you can can enter the specifics of a previous bill so that the engine knows exactly what you're usage is and it will recommend the cheapest suppliers for you. From that list you can go for the cheapest, although this may be a small company who you haven't heard of or if you prefer you can quite often cut your bill a lot and stay with the exact same company you're with right now by simply changing to a different plan. Standard variable plans are nearly always the most expensive so if you haven't switched in the last 12 to 24 months then there's probably quite a lot of money to be saved here. This is something we do every 24 months religiously as most contracts are 24 months however you can normally leave within the last 30 days without penalty. Again this can be done for mobile phone contracts and landline and broadband broadband expenses.  The switching service is very easy and painless and it really is money in your pocket for nothing because you really won't notice which energy company it is the supplying your electric if the same electric for all the different companies it's just a question of who sends you the bill.

The supermarket downshift challenge

Another fairly easy way of saving a substantial amount of money quickly is to try the supermarket downshift challenge. What this means if you normally buy branded items such as Heinz Ketchup try downshifting one level so maybe to a mid-range own brand ketchup and if you like that one try downshifting again. For example on the ketchup front we always by the Lidl own brand version of tomato ketchup. The kids like it just as much as Heinz tomato ketchup but it's about 30 per bottle instead of £1.20!  These small savings really add up. There are a few items that we particularly like the branded versions of but 99% of the time you can find perfectly reasonable alternatives at a much lower price than branded options.

Pay off any high interest debt.

If you do have any debt (obviously this exclude things like mortgages)  we're talking more things like credit cards then take a look through the interest rates on each card. It's ideal to try to pay off your smallest and most expensive debt first i.e. the one with the highest interest rate if you have a larger debt it's always worth looking to shift to a new credit card where you are likely to be able to get 0% for a certain amount of time, often two years, which won't wipe out your debt but it will reduce your expense in interest payments in the meantime which means everything you pay on to that card will go against the debt instead of just paying interest to the banks.

Switch current accounts

In a similar vein you can switch your banking current account and get money for absolutely nothing. There's quite a lot of deals out there right now which will give you £100 to £250 just by swapping your current account. Now we like banking with Nationwide and we found them to be excellent so we keep our main bank account with Nationwide however we each have a second bank account which we used for switching. This account we change from bank to bank to pick up the switching bonuses available at the time. There is a switching service in place and it can take just 7 days to to switch your bank account and  is an extremely painless and easy way to make a few pounds.

Have a declutter!

The final really easy way to make a few quid in January when let's face it, we're all a little bit broke, is to go through your house with a fine-tooth comb. I do this frequently as I prefer a home to be fairly minimalist unfortunately I married a hoarder!  So you go through your house room by room, cupboard by cupboard and pull out anything that you haven't use recently and are unlikely to need in the foreseeable future. You can then list it on the likes of eBay, Amazon or on the local Facebook selling pages which gives you a double benefit of a little extra spending money in a tight month but also so clearing some junk out of your house. Win - win!

I hope I've given you a few ideas, I will be doing a second blog probably tomorrow on ways to boost your income. This isn't anything major it's not going to be a monthly income for you but it's a nice little extra that can help towards the kid's birthday presents, the cost of Christmas and suchlike. I hope you found some of our hints and tips to be helpful or at least to give you a starting point to Google further on how you can implement these ideas.