Sorting Your Finances For Spring

Spring is the perfect time to sort out every area of your life. It is a new season, and so can therefore be seen as a new start. Your home (many people look to move house at this time of the year), your garden, your wardrobe, and especially your finances can be looked at in detail, to see what you can sort, what you can change and what you can save. With the cost of living continuing to rise, household bills going up, and food inflation showing no real signs of ever stopping, sorting your money, your debt, and your savings becomes increasingly important.

Here are some ways to sort out your financial life this Spring.

Add Everything Up!

The first thing you need to do is look at all of your outgoings to see what you spend per month, and what is then left over. Your biggest spends are likely to be mortgage or rent – is this something you can do anything about? Interest rates have fallen recently, so if you are not locked into a fixed term offer, or if your fixed term is coming to an end, this may be the time to move to a new mortgage deal. This is also true for your energy bills. The energy price cap is rising again, so look at who offers the best deal for your family, and look at the ways to pay. I no longer pay by direct debit as I was overpaying, so now I just pay the bill as it comes. This might not suit everyone, so you clearly have to look at what suits your family. The same applies to mobile phone bills. Going Sim only can save you a fortune, so if you decide you can keep your current phone rather than trading it in for a newer model, you could make a good saving.

Credit, credit, credit

If you have lots of bills for credit cards, outstanding store card payments or catalogues and online credit, it may be easier to take out a loan to help you consolidate your debt. For many people, one payment is far easier to handle, and to keep track of, then having numerous bills throughout the month. It could also prove to be cheaper. Check out the current interest rates and speak to a financial adviser to get more help on this subject.

Say No to Klarna

if you are trying to cut down your spending, or are trying to save money for a holiday or something special, one clear thing you need to avoid is Klarna. To be clear, Klarna is great in that it helps you to break up your payments into more manageable chunks, but it can also cause you to buy things that you don’t really need, and wouldn’t necessarily buy if you actually went to a shop. In short, it allows you to overspend. If you are genuinely trying to cut down on your expenditure, Klarna will certainly not help you to do that.

Supermarket Loyalty Schemes

On the other hand, I totally make use of supermarket loyalty schemes, and am, frankly not really loyal to any of them. For instance, I have a Co op close to where I live, and I buy all my favourite mashed potato from there because I can use my loyalty card to reduce the price by 40p. I use the cash pots at Asda, get meal deals from Tesco (with a Costa coffee for the best monetary value) and use my mom’s Morrisons ‘match and more’ card when I last went there, which saved around £5 on my £25 shop. If they’re free, sign up to them, and for any extra vouchers or deals they may be offering by email. As a famous supermarket as said, ‘Every little helps.’

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