Beware the 40 day payday stretch! Hiya. Just a quick note. If like many, you're paid early in December because of Christmas, it's likely you won't be paid early in January. This means, at this, the most costly time of the year your cash must stretch for longer. Be aware and try to budget. Please tell everyone. Get ready, it's cheesy phrase time; why not give the free gift that keeps giving this year and tell friends, family and colleagues to go to MoneySavingExpert.com/tips and join this free e-mail's distribution list and save cash. PS. If you've never watched the video of the mutterings before (over on the right) it's a good week to listen. I don't know why, but I enjoyed it; probably because I got into a really involved rant about ING Direct and then bank charge reclaiming. Ranting can be very cathartic!
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Urgent! Free £25 Amazon Voucher Loophole. Legally smash and grab its credit card
A £25 voucher is offered if you sign up to Amazon's plastic before Xmas and then spend on it before 31 March. So buy something for £1, then pay it off in full, and you've bagged the voucher for nowt. Go quick, as it's usually only a £15 voucher, yet in the festive spirit Amazon's bumped it up to £25 for pre-Xmas applications. You can also get free European flights, CDs, DVDs and much more through other similar deals. For full details of this, including the impact on your credit score read the Updated Article: Credit Card Freebies (mini-mutterings) Related Articles: Best Lend For Spend, Best Cashback Cards, Best Balance Transfers
49p Energy Saving Lightbulbs. They usually cost £3. Save £9/year per bulb on energy bills
Gas & Elec switching price war! Grab the cheapest provider plus £20 cashback. Updated Article
You can compare all gas & elec providers in five minutes, often cutting your bills by up to 20% using special comparison sites plus MoneySavers' consumer power means a price war! To try and get your business, some comparison sites will also pay you cashback if they can switch you. And the amount has just gone up, the max per switch is now £20. So, cut your bills, and bag free cash back on top. Updated Article: Switch Gas & Elec & Get cashback (mini-mutterings) Related Articles: Cut The Cost Of Water Bills, Cheapest Home Phone Provider, Get The Cheapest Boiler Cover
Reminder. Multi-region DVD Players £18. More cheap but serviceable players around Totally New Gym Loophole to save £300. This time it's at LA Fitness
MoneySavers may remember the recent Holmes Place/Cannons promotion with Pruhealth's private medical insurance. Well, AXA is now in on the act, promising six month's free LA Fitness gym membership when you get its medical insurance before Dec 31. As the insurance costs as little as £11/month but the gym is £60, you can effectively get the gym for 80% less than usual; then cancel as soon as the offer closes. Full details in the New Article: Free LA Fitness Membership Loophole (mini-mutterings) Related Article: Private Medical Insurance Cost Cutting Cosmetic Freebies Samples! Estee Lauder, Clinique, Biotherm & more MoneySaver Juliepink26's kindly compiled all the freebie samples of cosmetics in one gorgeous place!
Ditch ING Direct. It only pays 4.75% on savings, you can get 5.64%!
ING Direct, once a stalwart 'consistent savings payer' hasn't increased its rates following the Bank of England's 0.25% rise last month. It now trails the best payers by nearly one percentage point giving customers a massive 16% less interest than the top players. Anyone with savings in it is missing out; it's time to ditch and switch. Updated Article: Earn 5.64% On Your Savings (mini-mutterings) Related Articles: Where To Start With Savings, Mini Cash ISAs STOP YOUR FRIENDS WASTING CASH! PLS SUGGEST THEY GET THIS EMAIL
Reclaim Bank Charges Update. New evidence charges are unlawful. Join the uprising
Bank charges are only lawful if they're in proportion with the costs banks incur. So a £35 fine for sending a letter saying that you're £1 over the overdraft limit doesn't add up. On Tue night, BBC2's The Money Programme joined the fray, calculating it only costs banks £2.50 and reported the Financial Ombudsman saying he'll no longer put up with banks partially settling claims. In the last month over 180,000 free template letters to force banks to repay penalty charges have been downloaded from this site. Join this consumer revolution. Full Article (and templates): Reclaim Bank Charges (mini-mutterings) Related Articles: Endowment Mis-selling Compensation
Reminder. Free Moneywise magazine worth £3.75 only 10,000 copies
Online Shopping Last Xmas Order Dates plus shopbots find you the cheapest prices
There's still time to buy online before Christmas, to help I've put together a full list of last order dates for the big online retailers. Plus, as always, remember before you buy from an individual retailer, use a shopbot to see if anyone else is selling it cheaper.
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MONEY MORAL DILEMMA. Should Janet pay for John?
Janet and John are at the early stages of dating. She's earning a six figure city salary, he's works for a homeless charity. She loves fine dining, so books top restaurants which can cost £100 a time and insists on paying as she knows he can't afford it. He feels uncomfortable with this, but when he broached the subject of going elsewhere she replied, "nice restaurants are my hobby and I want to share it with you, I know you love the food." Where do they go from here? Enter the Money Moral Maze: Should Janet pay for John? Previous MMDs: Would you lend to a friend in need?, Give Santa the sack and Would you take the job?
Last week's giveaway of 'Website of the day' books - have you been lucky? Find out here
Great 'Christmas Posh Nosh For No Dosh' Hunt
Christmas can put a strain on the pocket before you even start thinking about food and drink costs. So I thought I'd tap MoneySavers knowledge on for ideas for entertaining and feeding the family on a limited budget Add your ideas/read others Past Great Hunts: Xmas Decorate Your House For Under £20, Christmas Booze and Family Games
Save a third on rail fares. Now easier, cheaper and no need for dodgy passport pics
National Rail's launched online railcard applications, so you can apply for a card without getting off your bum. Better still, upload your photo as a jpeg and save £3.50 in the photo booth. Read the Updated Article: Train Fare Cost Cutting Related Article: Pay Less For Going Out
Quick Chat Tips Warning! Bargains listed here tend to sell out quickly | | |
FLIGHTCHECKER SALES WATCH Verona, Barcelona, & Zaragoza c. £20 each way
Budget airline Ryanair currently has a range of destinations for 1p each way. When you add in its taxes and charges this becomes roughly £20 in total. For a full briefing read the How To Find a Cheap Flight article or go straight to the special free FlightChecker to find the seats in seconds
0800 R-E-V-E-R-S-E. Don't do it!
Contrary to the adverts sullying our screens, this is a number you don't need to know. If caught on the hop without a phone, it'll charge a punishing £3.46 for a 1 min call. Instead carry a BT charge card (register for free) strictly for emergencies and you'll pay only 12p/min to landlines or 28p/min to mobiles. This is charged back to your BT bill or credit/debit card, saving you a packet. Discuss
Board of the week: Green & Ethical MoneySaving
Sometimes cheap can mean environmentally unfriendly, so how do you save cash without hurting the planet? The Green & Ethical MoneySaving board's a mine of information where regulars help swap tips on cost cutting the green way. Discussions include Green showering, Home wind turbines and How to achieve a green office
The Great 'Order now from the US' Hunt Result
Last week I asked MoneySavers to let us know about the best things to buy from the US on the cheap. Suggestions included Cut custom's rates with mail forwarding, Customs info and US buying tips.
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On the box this week: This Friday 1pm Radio 2, is my usual Vine slot, this week it's Green MoneySaving; plus catch my regular slots on LK Today (Wed between 8.45am and 9.15am) and Classic Gold (Thurs 10.15am) Keep updated on appearances This week's Martin's Musings: TV stars have successfully reclaimed bank charges via this site!
'Why is it an LA fitness loophole not a LA fitness loophole?' and 'Is it tough to appear on programmes with 0870/1 or Premium Rate Numbers?' Read m'blogs (or RSS users access) Should loft law be left as is? Vote and Discuss Last week's vote result: Would you miss Christmas if you could? Surprisingly 61% of you said, given the chance, you would jet off somewhere else to miss all the Christmas stress. See poll results
That's it for this week, but before I go, there's a great site for keeping the kids amused on Christmas Eve, Norad in the US lets you track Santa while he does his present drop. Track Santa
I hope you save some money
Martin
*links: Any links with a * by them are affiliated. That means go via this link and a contribution may be made to MoneySavingExpert.com, which helps it stay ad-free and free to use. You shouldn't notice any difference, the links don't impact the product at all and the editorial line (the things I write) is NEVER impacted by it. If it isn't possible to get an affiliate link for the best product, nothing changes, it's still included in exactly the same way. As I believe transparency is important, I'm including the following 'un-affiliated' web-addresses for the same things: energyhelpline.com, uswitch.com, american-express.co.uk, morganstanley.com, alliance-leicester.co.uk, mbloan.co.uk, icicibank.co.uk, amazon.co.uk, icicibank.co.uk, barclaycard.co.uk. Read more about this site and how it's financed. |
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