Recently in Making the £s go further Category
There are plenty of semi compulsory events during the year that mean you'll need to fork out for someone. Not that I'm a total miser or anything, but yearly events can come around when you haven't really thought about them and then just sting your wallet. Of course there's Christmas, friends and relatives birthdays, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day... all of these days will probably cost you something, whether it's a gift or travel expenses to get home.
I recently thought that if I was in a relationship then this month could end up just as expensive as Christmas. Relationship's are supposed to be worth their weight in gold, but I'm pretty happy about not having to consider the cost of Valentine's Day on my wallet. I recently read that people in a relationship spend about £750 a year on their partners, and February comes as one of the most costly months - along with December. People are prepared to fork out big sums for their Valentine's gifts, especially on traditional gifts like flowers, chocolate and lingerie, all of which see sales shoot up around this time of year.
How you afford the constant stream of gift giving is, however, something that not all of us give enough consideration to. A survey by Moneyexpert found that people could save as much as £547 a year if they changed their accounts to the five best financial products. Recently I've noticed one of the best ways to save is through getting one of Alliance and Leicester's current accounts. It's got an interest free overdraft for twelve months (which can be agreed to be up to £2500) - you can also get 8.5% AER for balances up to £2,500. Seeing as I don't have a whole lot of savings, I'd say this is pretty much incredible.
As of next year you can put a total of £7200 in an ISA, and up to £3600 of this allowance can be in cash, while the rest can be made up from stocks and share options. The two parts are separated and can be taken out with different providers if you want to. This is a pretty cool new feature of the new ISA rules that are coming in next year. It means that you can take out a high interest cash ISA with someone like Icesave, who offer 6.1 % (variable) AER, and then shop around for the best stocks and shares or index tracking ISAs out there. I had a look at ISAs from Alliance and Leicester and they’ve got plenty of different products to suit long term investors, with products that track many of the world’s share markets and indexes.
I think these are pretty good ways to save, and they’ve got definite advantages over savings accounts because you don’t pay tax. I also like the way that they can provide a sort of introduction into the stock market, which seems to baffle most people who don’t work in finance. In the long term, I particularly like the idea of stocks, because they normally outperform cash. Take a look at investments from Legal and General to see more about investment tracking funds. Otherwise, I recommend reading Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, or looking it up on Wikipedia.
