Let’s hear if for the boy…

Thursday 18th June, 2009 - £5,121.12 in debt…

It’s amazing how long a human being can put something off for no reason, isn’t it? For instance, I paid off my Capital One card ages ago and I’ve only just got round to phoning the lovely people at Capital One and cancelling the damn thing.

If you remember correctly, cancelling your unused credit cards is a good idea if you want to keep your credit rating under control. Lenders get nervous about the amount of credit you have access to, and not necessarily the amount of cedit you actually use, so if you’re not using a card you should phone up and pay it off. Especially if you’ve been so disorganised with your standing orders that you actually find yourself in credit by £50, which is what I did a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, I phoned to cancel my card and got through to a lovely, reasonably camp young man who took about ten minutes trying to persuade me to keep the card before finally giving up. And by the end of it, I felt like I’d been wasting his time.

One of the many questions he asked me was whether I was happy with the Capital One customer service I’d received over the last couple of years. He sounded quite nervous to ask, which suggests that most people who cancel their cards are not happy in the slightest, but I had to say yes. I couldn’t think of a single thing Capital One has done to upset me.

The moral of the story: they’re not all like Barclaycard.

 This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

Thursday 18th June, 2009 - £5,352.86 in debt…

I suppose everyone has their own particular achilles heel when it comes to money - the one thing they can’t resist spending it on. For some people it’s restaurant meals, for some it’s clothes; for me, it’s the Ikea summer sale, which started yesterday.

You might think that this is an excellent money-saving opportunity, but it’s not. If I’m let loose inside an Ikea, you can guarantee that I’ll emerge hours later with a crazed look on my face and literally hundreds of pounds worth of useless junk. Well, not junk as such, but there are probably people who’d tell you I don’t really need a wall-lamp that looks like a ladybird.

For this reason I’ve been making a list of reasons I shouldn’t go to Ikea. For instance:

     1.   My nearest branch is in Bristol, which is about 120 miles away.

     2.   I’d probably have to hire a van to transport my haul back home, and that will cost money.

     3.   Something has gone wrong with the Ikea website and it’s listing all the Bristol branch’s sale items as £55. I know this is a glitch, but if I can convince myself everything is actually £55 then I can convince myself not to go.

Even if I can resist for a while, the real test will come in two weeks’ time when I’ll be at Wembley Stadium, watching Take That twirling around like idiots while dressed as scary clowns. There’s an Ikea branch in Wembley: will I be the only one in a crowd of 160,000 wishing I was down the road buying a three-tier serving stand?

 Bring it on Nadal!

Monday 15th June, 2009 - £5,352.86 in debt…

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s summer. Well, it’s been summer in Devon for the last couple of days and I imagine summer will creep slowly across the rest of the country at some point. And then everyone will start moaning that it’s too hot, and then it will start raining again and everyone will moan that it’s not hot enough. And then we’ll have Christmas to look forward to.

Anyway, The Guardian has just published a handy list of 50 free things to do over the summer. It’s pretty London-centric, but there are some decent suggestions for those of us who live outside our nation’s glorious capital. UK-wide things that seem like a good idea include:

     1.   Book-swapping using a couple of online resources (ReadItSwapIt and BookMooch).

     2.   Becoming the new Rafael Nadal courtesy of the Tennis for Free campaign. (I don’t know of anything that would turn you into the new Andy Murray, unless there’s a Be a Miserable Whinger for Free campaign).

     3.   Organising a street party with the help of The Big Lunch.

There are plenty of other suggestions on the Guardian list, which includes lots of useful information and links. The comments section underneath the article itself also houses a few good ideas and, if you’re in Bristol, the much-publicised Banksy exhibition is also free. Although you might have to queue for a while.

Nothing beats a nice cup of tea…

Sunday 14th June, 2009 - £5,352.86 in debt…

Fancy a cuppa? If you’re anything like me, a sizeable proportion of your monthly income will go on teabags, milk and sugar. It’s the British way, after all - I’m always quite wary of people who don’t enjoy a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

Even if you’re on the breadline, there is no excuse for resorting to Tesco Value tea (0.4p per bag) or similar budget efforts. Believe me - I’ve been a student, I’ve been there and it’s not worth it. So what’s the next cheapest way of enjoying a lovely cuppa?

     1.   Well, they’re unlikely to last long but there are a few free samples available. Go to www.twiningsandyou.co.uk and sign up for a free Twinings sample, or register at www.liptoninfusions.co.uk/competition for a sample of lemon and ginger tea. (Thanks to Hazel’s Bag a Bargain article for these tips).

     2.   Buying in bulk never fails. In Asda, a pack of 240 Tetley tea bags works out at 1.9p per bag, rather than 2.4p a bag if get 80. Let’s face it, you’re going to get through 240 cuppas pretty easily so you might as well go for it.

     3.   Use MySupermarket to compare the deals that are available in the shops near you right now. I’ve just done a quick search and, at Sainsbury’s, you can currently get two boxes of 160 PG Tips for £5!! That’s a mere 1.6p per bag! And what’s more, you’ll get two free football-shaped mugs, which are nigh-on impossible to drink out of.

     4.   If you work in an office, simply drink so much tea at work that you’re fed up of the stuff by the time you get home. Technically this isn’t stealing, but it has the same effect. Of course, if you have to pay towards a tea kitty at the office, you’re somewhat shooting yourself in the foot here.

 I like driving in my car!

Wednesday 10th June, 2009 - £5,352.86 in debt…

From May 18th this year, car owners in the UK have been eligible to take part in the government’s new car scrappage scheme. If you’re still not entirely sure what it is or whether you can benefit from it, don’t worry - you’re not the only one. I’ve finally got round to looking at the smallprint, and I present it to you thus.

In a nutshell:

     1)   If your car or small van is at least 10 years old, you can take it along to a dealer, buy a new (not used) car from them and leave your old car for scrapping.

     2)   When you do this, you’ll get £2,000 off the new car. £1,000 of this is from the government, but this grant is only given if the dealer matches it with another £1,000 off.

     3)   The scheme will end by March 1st next year, so if you currently have a nearly-ten-year old car you’d only get £300 for if you sold it, you might as well hang on until it’s old enough and then scrap it. That’s if you’ve got the cash for a new car.

     4)   The government money allocated to this scheme is £300 million, so only 300,000 car owners will be able to take advantage of it. If the money runs out before March 1st 2010, the scheme will end early.

     5)   The idea behind it is to boost the UK’s car industry and get rid of some environmentally-unfriendly old bangers.

Seeing as I’m a bit of a tree-hugging hippy, you might expect me to be wildly in favour of this plan to get more green cars on the road. And I am, in theory, but there are two things that bother me about it. The first is that my car isn’t going to qualify for the scheme because it’s not old enough until September 2010 (try telling Gordon Brown that it’s how old a car feels that counts, and he’ll laugh in your face).

But the other reason is somewhat more sentimental. Looking at other people’s cars as I potter happily around my home town, I often get the sense that I’m the only one in a bright orange Daewoo Matiz. This isn’t quite true - there are a few of us left, but we’re a dying breed. And if people are encouraged to scrap their cheap, tiny, unsafe old bangers instead of passing them on to the next generation, where will the character on our roads come from? All the cars with personality and history will end up on the scrapheap.

And I thought it was illegal to be ageist these days. Harumph.

 No chicken in here…

We love a bit of banter here at ConsumerChoices.co.uk - especially when it’s nearly lunch time and we’re talking food. There’s one particular topic that keeps cropping up however, and it’s proving an interesting debate:

Canned food.

Now, I’m all for canned goods - I think they’re great. I wouldn’t have survived my student days with out my 37p cans of Smart Price spaghetti bolognaise from ASDA. And when it comes to desserts, you can’t beat Ambrosia rice pudding.

In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the humble tin can, which will celebrate its 200th birthday next year, is one of the miracles of the modern day, surviving through and helping us win two world wars.

Research shows that more than 20 billion cans are produced in Britain each year, with the average person buying around 142 a year. And over 1.5 million cans of Heinz baked beans are eaten here every day.

Canned goods are quick, convenient and above all, cheap. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that during these hard-pressed times, cost is a key factor when it comes to deciding what to put in your supermarket trolley.

But where should we draw the line when it comes to eating foods from a can?

Some say canned fruit and veg is a big no-no. But my research has found that tinned grub is more nutritious than you may think. The processes used to preserve canned goods help keep nutrients and vitamins in, and keep impurities out, meaning they can even be healthier than buying fresh. For example canned carrots and canned tomatoes are higher in lycopene (which cuts the risk of cancer) than their fresh counterparts.

Others maybe feel tinned cheese is a step too far. I would have agreed, until I tasted some this weekend. Naturally, I’m up for trying anything once, and during the credit crunch, Tesco’s motto “every little helps” has never had more resonance, so when presented with a can of cheese I just had to try it. It tasted like Dairylea. Delicious!

Fellow blogger Hazel Cottrell insists that when it comes to meat, she won’t touch anything that’s come out of a tin. This includes luncheon meats like corned beef and war-time favourite Spam, Campbell’s meatballs and tinned burgers.

It also includes whole roast chicken.

Yes, I did say whole roast chicken. Until I saw this blog post I didn’t think it physically possible to fit a whole roast chicken in a can. But as you can see from the photos (which are enough to turn someone vegetarian in an instant), there is plenty of space.

I don’t know if I’d go as far as eating a whole roast chicken from a can, but as the recession bites and the price of fresh food continues to climb, who knows…

Now where’s that can opener?

 This calls for (a BIG) slice of cake…

Friday 5th June, 2009 - £5,352.86 in debt…

Yikes! It’s day 400! And what better way to celebrate than by doing something I’ve been meaning to do but somehow stuffing up for about six months: transferring my credit card balances to my Barclaycard! Hooray!

You might think this is a silly idea, since I’ve spent the last year trying to get rid of my Barclayard, but bear with me: it does make sense. See, Barclaycard have again offered me 0% interest on my balance transfers until May 2010. This means that I can transfer the remaining balances from my Capital One and Tesco credit cards over to my Barclaycard and not pay any interest on that debt whatsoever. And, by May 2010 (when the interest kicks in), I’ll have paid it all off.

I’ve tried to do this twice in the past, but my plans have been scuppered by security issues and stupidity. Now, finally, I’ve managed it.

I had to get Barclaycard to send me a new card so that I could answer their security questions before making the transfers, and I had to make sure my whole Barclaycard balance was paid off so that interest didn’t accrue on the amount left over while I was happily paying off the transfers. But I did it, in the end.

The smallprint is thus:

     1.   When I make my monthly payments now, they’ll cover the amount that isn’t collecting interest.

     2.   If I had any other balances on my card, those would be paid off later, after they’d built up some interest.

     3.   If I use my card at all, the money I spend on purchases will also sit there gathering interest until both my balance transfers have been cleared. I won’t be using the card.

     4.   I’ve had to pay a one-off balance transfer charge of 2.5%.

     5.   And if I default on my payments or go over my credit limit the 0% offer could be withdrawn and I’d have to pay it all back at about 24%. Holy extortion, Batman!

So this means that I now have ONE credit card left to pay off. It’s got a hefty balance on it (around £2,500) but the APR is 0%. I also have one massive overdraft to clear, which I’m being charged interest on so I’ll be working on that now. All this and a European election in one week - life is amazing!

 Nicola was tired of washing cars the old fashioned way…

Tesco, a personal favourite of mine when it comes to car insurance, has just given me even more reason to love them:

A free pressure washer!

Yes, join Tesco car insurance before 23 July and not only will you get a 15% discount off your insurance policy for signing up online and 1 Clubcard Point for every £2 you pay on your insurance premium, but you’ll also get a free Karcher pressure washer worth £100.

The free pressure washer is only available to new customers who are Clubcard holders though, so if you don’t already have a Tesco Clubcard, sign up for one here.

Bear in mind however, that no matter how much you want the free pressure washer, Tesco car insurance may not necessarily be the best deal for you. Compare insurance policies using our online calculator to see if you could get a cheaper deal elsewhere.

We’ll sift through hundreds of insurers, including Shelia’s Wheel’s, The AA, Admiral and that nodding dog we all love to hate, Churchill, to see if there’s a better insurance policy for you.

The offer from Tesco is tempting though, and with water fight season just around the corner, who could ask for a better freebie?

Sign up for Tesco car insurance today for your free pressure washer >>>

Note: ConsumerChoices.co.uk does not recommend hosing anyone down with the Karcher pressure washer, as this is highly dangerous and hurts a lot. According to a senior member of the ConsumerChoices.co.uk team who wished to remain anonymous and now walks with a limp…

 Round one, ding ding!

Thursday 4th June, 2009 - £5,352.86 in debt…

I love talking politics, and I look forward to election days. Yes, really, despite being a youngster (ahem). I can understand people’s frustrations when they can’t see the point in voting for “just another politician”, particularly when the expenses scandal has revealved each of our three mainstream parties to be as bad as the next. So I’d like to encourage you to look upon voting as a money-saving measure.

It all comes down to money in the end. Whoever you’re voting for, you’re choosing how you’d like your taxes to be spent. When you choose how they’re invested, you’re also choosing which public services you don’t mind paying for at the point of delivery. You’re also choosing how much tax you’d actually like to pay (or can afford to pay) to help run the country.

Of course, the European elections don’t have nearly as much influence over British politics as the next general election will have. But however you vote, you’re sending a clear message to our politicians and ultimately affecting the legislation passed in Brussels. This is, if you vote at all.

Voter apathy is again a major concern and, over the last few days, politicians UK-wide have been urging people to use their vote. But why should we listen to them? I can see why we’re expecting a record low turn-out in the UK - because our politicians are probably more concerned about where their next duckpond is coming from than the state of the economy. But there is one particular good reason to use your vote and use it wisely.

If we don’t use our votes today, there is a serious likelihood that fringe parties such as the BNP will gain seats at the European parliament. Their voters will not be staying home under any circumstances. If the BNP gains power they will receive public funding (the money that you’ve worked hard for) to spread their message throughout Europe.

I’m as angry as you are about the state of our politicians, but a second mortgage and a moat seem a lot less significant when you compare them to this.

What’s more, when large proportions of people don’t vote, that might send out a signal that we’re unhappy with the way the country is being run, but it could equally tell our politicians that we don’t care about Europe, or that we decided to stay in because it looked like it might rain - it can mean whatever they want it to mean. And ultimately, it doesn’t harm them. Casting a protest vote for an opposing party does.

Polling stations are open today from 7am to 10pm, and there’s a guide to voting here. Please, whether you’re voting to save the world, to save your own pennies, or to stop a maniac getting his hands on your cash, just vote.

 Once a debtor, always a debtor…

Wednesday 3rd June, 2009 - £5,352.86 in debt…

The following idea is stolen straight from Money Saving Expert’s forums, where hundreds of cash-strapped individuals have signed up for the Sealed Pot Challenge, which essentially means saving your spare cash in a sealed piggy-bank without getting tempted to break it open.

I’ve always put 1p and 2p coins aside, mainly because they get in the way if I don’t. But I usually spend them, lose them or forget to bank them and they hang around for ages collecting dust. But the idea of the Sealed Pot Challenge is to use it as a legitimate way of saving actual money, not just small change, and perhaps banking it in time for your holiday or Christmas shopping.

I always end up with loads of change after a night out, where it’s just easier to hand notes over and worry about the consequences later. So, after last weekend’s hen-based fun, I grabbed an old curry sauce jar, filled it with my change and sealed the top (with a hole in for depositing more money, of course).

My top tip: if it’s a glass jar, cover it with packing tape or something, so you can’t see all the shiny pennies inside and get tempted to raid it.

I don’t have any particular target to save for, so I shall empty it and bank the proceeds when it’s full. Anyway, more pub trips = more change, so I’m off for a pint.