Calling people who are clever with their money. HELP! I'm forking out like a fool every month, bleeding money in all directions. Help me make it stop.

[spidermama]

I'm a fool with money and always have been.
I need to get better at it as dh has had very little work recently and we're struggling.

So I'm looking for tips. Things like ...

How do I know I've got the best mobile tarriff. I try to read their bumf and my head swims with panic and confusion. Can anyone help with this?

How about my energy bills. Is there a way of finding out my cheapest supplier?

What about broadband supplier. I'm currently paying AOL about £20 a month. Could I do better?

Also, I'm still with BT. Is that very foolish.

I just get the feeling I'm leaking out money and I never seem to be able to catch up no matter how little I spend on a weekly basis.

Please give me your tips.

The best place to look for all these tips is a website called Moneysavingexpert.com It has info on EVERYTHING!!

I cannot tell you what is best for you, but with mobile/phones it would be wise to look at TalkTalk or someone who does free calls if you take broadband etc. AOL is expensive I would defineatly switch that. You could save loads by switching phone/mobile and internety to one place

Spidermama - as I'm sure lots of others will suggest, go to the moneysavingexpert.co.uk site - or better still buy the book, (which you can buy from the site at a reduced price). I know money is tight but I think this would save you money many times over. Work your way through the book and I'm sure you will be surprised how much you can save. Also sign up for the weekly e-mails - they are very good.

I cannot really suggest anything else as I think this site has it covered - just wish I was on commission!!!!

Best of luck - we are currently watching the bank balance all the time and it is no fun .

Let us know how you get on, (some people on the site seem to see it as a challenge and get really into it - you never know).

talktalk have an offer atm, called talk 3 international, £20.99 a month includes broadband, line rental and all landline calls both peak and off peak. if your area isn't covered, it goes up to £30.99 which is still a good deal for all that

for mobiles, i've always gone for pay as you go rather than a monthly tariff as i don't use it much.

moneysupermarket.com can help on cheapest energy providers in your area

there's also a deal with the talktalk thing on a mobile tie in too, can't remember exactly what it was though, hth

For making calls from your landline the best bet is 1899 for calls to other landlines (the website says they're 1p a min but they're free, there's just a 3p connection charge) or 18185 for calls to mobiles or overseas. AFAIK the all-in packages are only good value for calls to other landlines but not for 0845/0870/mobile (you have to wade through the small print to find out what is covered, what isn't and how much extra you'd be charged for them)

Is your mobile a contract or PAYG?

I pay a month charge for mine and dh's mobile and we get free talk minutes which we never use. Ridiculous. I don't use mine much. DH uses his a bit more, but still not much. So you reckon we should be on pay as you go?

We are on that TalkTalk package, although we don't get the broadband yet as we are in the wrong area. But it is good.

WRT mobiles, we both have phones through a website which is called something like Esave or Emobilesave, which is a branch of carphione wareghouse. We had deals with Orange where you get 11 months of line rental refunded, and it is only a 12 month contract. Also 1000 mins free calls.

It's called e2save.com.

HTH

I use pay as you go and can't remember the last time I stuck any money on it, in fact I should check to see if there is any there still. We have a broadband and phone package with Onetel which I can't remember how much it is but worked out much better than BT. We have free calls to land lines all times of the day and I save a fortune as I am forever on the phone.

Well it depends how much your contract costs. With O2 PAYG, if you put on £10 a month you get 100 free texts or minutes as well as the £10 credit. (Oh, I think they've improved on that now - see here - you pay £9.99 for a SIM and then £10 a month to get various alternative packages.)

I'm with Virgin PAYG, which has no special deals but I don't use it much and it generally costs c £5 a month. Also, if you register your bank details and pay monthly in arrears by DD, you get an itemised statement with it which is very useful - eg I was once charged for a lot of texts which I thought at the time hadn't been sent, so I was refunded. And it's just useful anyway to see where the charges have come from.

MN friends, I can't tell you how grateful I am for this. Thankyou so much. I had no idea about these things. I've had a lifetime of being shite with money and am having to change urgently.

I'm working my way through this stuff now. I have already changed my utilities and should save a fortune. Next will be my mobile. Later I may move onto my ISP though that's a bit harder because I'm told AOL gets in to every nook and cranny and is hard to change once it's on the computer.

If there's any other advice please keep it coming. Thanks again for sharing this stuff with me. I could hug you all.

spidermama, martin lewis (the money saving expert) is also on the jeremy vine show every friday. he is quite inspiring. His big thing is we could all save about a grand a year if we were a bit more savvy . i am completely like you though and never seem to know about these things. One revelation was that you can negotiate your mobile package. My friend phoned up for (and pretended to be me), said i was leaving for a better deal elsewhere, about 10 minutes later i was still with them paying £15 per month not £30 for the same ammount of minutes and 3 times the ammount of texts. I always went over ,y old text allowance and ended up witrh a bill of about £40 per month. Since getting the new package i am a flat £15.

Martin Lewis is the bees knees! I've had 3 free holidays thanks to him!
A couple of years ago his website introduced me to 'stoozing' and I made a large profit on it! Unfortunately, the card companies have all started charging handling fees on balance transfers now and have got wise to us stoozers, but it was fun while it lasted! We made about £3000 from thin air!

This is a whole new world for me.

I have Martin Lewis' book, The Money Diet. If you CAT me, I will send you it. It's a good read.

don't pay for a sim card - O2 are about to launch an offer with a free sim card loaded with 100 (i thnk) free texts not tie in, can bin it after that if you want to or put calls on it (don't know what the call rate will be).

CAT me and I'll tell you where to register for it. (I can't tell you publically as the offer hasn't been launched yet) You will be able to order up to four sim cards.

Really there is no catch (trust me I work for one of the companies about to do the marketing promotion)

I'm with 80'mum and Gillian - Martin Lewis can save you money on absolutely everything !! I have literally saved £100's by taking his advice - He is a bloody legend and he's not linked or sponsored by anyone and just looks out for the consumers best interest
Check out his website here
Its all on there - have just saved £100 on our breakdown cover - last year paid £140 for our AA cover just bought same cover for me & DH in ANY car for £32 a year !!

BTW if you sign up to his email weekly update you get loads of advice about freebies!! With easy links to the relevant sites - This month have received free dog food, aussie hair conditioner, bounty kitchen rolls, savlon plasters, nappies etc !!!
It takes seconds to do and you dont get loads of junk mail as most let you opt out of them when you apply!!

He's just a really nice chap isn't he?
Spidermama, how's your grocery shopping? Do you do it online? That really helps me stick to my budget as I can look at the total and cancel silly stuff and it's really easy to find free delivery codes on the net each week.
I also reckon getting a milkman saved me loads, stops you popping out for milk and spending £15 x3times a week on top of your normal shop.
Car insurance? Kwikfit and Diamond are good to play off against each other and Marks&Spencers have pretty much the best cover on pet insurance if that's relevant (according to Martin Lewis the other week in The Guardian ).

spidermama I could have started this thread myself. We have just been landed with a huge tax bill because the bloody inland revenue doubled the amount with the january balancing payment. dh stuck his head in the sand and ignored it so they surcharged us in april. I have now the biggest tax bill I have ever seen in my life I have had to take control which has been a nightmare because I've always been a PAYE. I had to do exactly what you did about a week ago. I sat down and wrote every single outgoing we had and pondered how we could half it.

I recommend the motley fool website. if you google it it will come up for you. they have all the best deals on mortgages, life assurance, loans, credit cards etc. they also have a forum for how to get yourself free of debt or reduce your outgoings etc.

I will be watching this thread with interest!

bosscat, our woes started when we had an Inland Revenue shock. DH filled in a form wrongly a couple of years ago and at the begining of this year we were heavily fined for his error. The two of our cars have blown up in very quick succession. He's freelance so his earnings are erratic at best.

Apart from all this misfortune though, he has lost us thousands of pounds through inefficiency and carelessness.

I'm really pissed off with him. ATM I'm probably more pissed off with him than I ever have been.

Thanks for the tip sujonez but I have a few months locked into an Orange contract so I'll have to delay sorting that one out.

Bucket I do online grocery shopping (especially since the car blew up) but I wouldn't know how to get codes for free delivery. How do I go about that?

Gillian76 thanks for the book offer. I may well take you up on that after I've done all I can on the web.

Is Martin Lewis married?

codes

I don't know if you go out to work Spidermama but I save a fortune taking my own lunch in rather than buying a sandwich etc when I am there. DH's top tip is to take a certain amount of money out per week for treats and once it's gone, that#s it. He also suggests cycling to work, but that's not everyone's cup of tea (certainly isn't mine!)

Some great tips here - thanks everyone