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New Year is always a great time for change and for making new resolutions to improve on last year. You can feel there is a new beginning and you are ready to start afresh. Christmas is behind you and you are prepared for change. It is a time when companies are offering their best deals and a good time to be aware of what your bills cost you and review your finances. Look at when your bills fall due to remind yourself to shop around for better quotes.
Note the renewal dates of your bills in your diary or where ever you remind yourself of things you need to do. When the date comes around check on-line to see what deals are available. Even if you don’t wish to move from the company you are with, most companies will match other rates charged by their competitors to keep your business. Check our bill savings page at www.homepayments.ie/BillSavings.aspx for companies offering savings to you. Why not subscribe to our newsletter on any page of our website and receive updated bill savings offers by email.
If you are paying your car insurance monthly, note when the renewal is due to see what deal you can get. Considerable savings can be made from reviewing car and house insurance. Is this the year you can switch to paying your car insurance bill annually and make great savings? Remember the more bills you can pay annually, the more money you can save. It also has the additional benefit of giving you more space to manoeuvre your finances a little if you have a bad month. If all your bills are paid monthly, have one bad month and you are in difficulty straight away, whereas if you pay as many bills annually or budget weekly or monthly to cover some or all of your bills, you have breathing space if you have a bad month.
This New Year try to convert a least 1 large bill to annual payment or better still, set up a basic budget yourself by totalling all your bills for the year and dividing the total by 12 (months) or 52 (weeks) depending on how frequently you are paid. Then set up a standing order for this weekly or monthly amount from the bank account you lodge your salary into, to another of your accounts and use this other account to pay your bills from. Starting this basic budgeting will reduce constant pressure on your finances each month and you can start to save money on your bills by converting them to annual payments and giving you more control in general on your finances.
As this is only basic budgeting by not taking into account the due dates of your bills, you should put an overdraft facility on this account so that if some of your larger bills are due to be paid in the early part of the year that you start budgeting, you can still pay the bill. Over the period of a year, this account will balance out, excluding any interest costs.
You can use our free financial planners at www.homepayments.ie to draft your budget plan. Alternatively you can let us do it all for you!
Happy New Year.
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