It’s my last day today...

by Donna Ferguson on 01 December 2011  |  2 comments
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Donna Ferguson shares her favourite financial tips she's learned over the years working for lovemoney.com.

It’s my last day at lovemoney.com before I go on maternity leave, and I must say I feel quite emotional. I’ve been working here for more than four years and editing the site since April 2009, and I’ve learnt a hell of a lot about money during that time, not least from all of you readers.

So I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some of my favourite financial tips that I’ve learned while working here:

1) Always shop around for insurance

Renew your insurance policy without shopping around, and you’re just asking to be ripped off.  

2) Avoid continuous payment authorities like the plague

Never heard of a continuous payment authority? Also known as a recurring payment, it’s a method of paying for making regular payments with your debit or credit card. But unlike direct debits, you can’t cancel them. The retailer you’re buying from is completely in control. Never sign up for one. Find out more here.

3) Shop savvy when you’re shopping online

Shop for items online via a shopbot, so you always pay the lowest price. Then visit the site via a cashback website, and pay for your stuff using a cashback credit card (I’ve got an American Express Platinum Card, which pays 2.5% cashback for the first three months and 1.25% after that). If there’s a box where you can plug in a voucher code, do a search online to see if there’s a valid one floating around that you can grab. The overall discount can be huge. I saved 25% off my wedding dress, for example, just using this method!

4) Stay in touch with your money

The more aware you are of what you are spending vis-a-vis your income, the better you will be at managing your money. I’ve been using our free Money Track service for a number of years now and I find it very useful for helping me to see at a glance where my money has gone over a particular month, and where I should be able to save or cut back.

5) Get the right credit card and use it the right way

There are three basic rules to credit cards. 1) If you’re borrowing money for spending, make sure you’ve got a 0% on purchases card. 2) If your priority is paying off debt, use a 0% on balance transfers card. 3) If neither of those situations apply to you, and you pay off your bill in full each month, then get rewarded with either a cashback or rewards card. Simple!

6) Know your rights

It costs a bank £500 every time you take something up with the Financial Ombudsman. If your bank has done something wrong, don’t let it go or accept a pitiful ‘goodwill gesture’. I once forced Alliance & Leicester to pay me £75 compensation for charging me a few pence of interest it shouldn’t have done, just because I was annoyed by their arrogance (they'd penalised me wrongly for something, then refunded the fine as a 'goodwill gesture' but not the interest).

Similarly, don’t be afraid to look up consumer law online and use it to protect yourself and get compensation when dealing with retailers. For example, if an expensive electrical item breaks down out of warranty, you have six years’ protection under the Sale of Goods Act. I once used this Act to get Apple to replace my faulty iPod, out of warranty, 18 months after I’d bought it.

And when Curry’s damaged my brand new (literally 24-hours old) wooden floor delivering a fridge to my property, I looked up my rights and forced them to pay for the cost of replacing the entire floor (£3,000), because it couldn't be 100% repaired to its previous state. Be polite but persistent, and keep asking to speak to someone senior in complaints, and make sure you get a result on the right side of the law.

7) Periodically check the rate on your savings accounts

Savings providers are notorious for luring you in with an attractive rate and then quietly dropping it so that, one day, you suddenly realise you are earning almost nothing on your cash. Don’t let them get away with this - make a note to check the rate on all your savings accounts every six to 12 months, and switch if necessary.

8) Take a day to review all your utility tariffs

Take one day, once a year, to review all your utility tariffs - eg broadband, mobile phone, energy etc. Are you still on the best tariff? If not, switch. I look at it as a challenge: how much can I save in total over the couple of hours it takes me to research the best tariffs? It’s boring but very lucrative work and can easily add up to an hourly rate of hundreds of pounds an hour!

I could go on...

I could go on and on and on but my baby is kicking and it’s time for me to stop and leave the site in the extremely capable hands of John Fitzsimons, who is taking over as Editor today.

I wish all of you the best of luck with your money. Thanks for reading my articles all these years and contributing to the site while I’ve been Editor. It's been a wonderful time for me.