Saving Money

The book I read to research this post was The Three Most Important Lessons by Martin Lewis which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. Martin is a journalist & broadcaster who specializes in saving money. He has his own tv programme on Channel 5 in the UK & is a frequent guest on other shows. He has a web site at http://moneysavingexpert.com that site is well worth a visit. The ghist of this book is there are 3 lessons which are:

A companies job is to make money from you.

Debt isn't necessarily bad. What matters is the type of debt & whether it's essential or not.

You shouldn't feel you need to be loyal to a particular company but instead should shop around for the best deal.

This book refers you to his website for a lot of the nitty gritty of saving money. Something it does say in the book though is you should haggle for the best deal even with existing debt, which may be difficult to reduce but it can be done. You should use comparison websites to get the best deals on anything you buy. Even with these you can often phone them and haggle for an even better price. You have nothing to lose.

You should never pay the minimum payment on a credit card as the company is then charging you compound interest. Compound interest makes them a very healthy profit. The best thing to do with credit cards is put enough in the bank to cover your debts & pay it off in its entirety every month. This takes discipline but you get the interest from the bank account & it has to be said a lot of credit card companies are wising up to this and charging for the credit card. This is a good example of good debt. Remember if you don't really need something don't buy it as it is just another form of bad debt, even if you get a good deal.