Can You Cut Your Household Spending?

With the country still counting the cost of Christmas, now is the perfect time for many households to have a look at their finances. Sitting down with a cup of tea and your bank statements, and going through outgoings with a fine tooth comb, can often quickly throw up some ways to easily slash your spending, including:

Slash Your Shopping Bills

Grocery shopping is one area where it is often easy to cut down on costs. Shopping for food online is one way to save. When you shop online, it’s easily to shop from a list, meaning that you’re not tempted to fill the trolley with treats that you haven’t budgeted for. Those with children will also be glad that they don’t have to worry about pester power from insistent little shoppers.

It’s so easy to search for exactly what you want when you shop online, or browse the special offers for the ones that suit you. When you shop from ASDA’s range of food online you’re guaranteed to get the best price on your basket, with ASDA’s lowest price guarantee.

If your shopping isn’t at least ten per cent cheaper than it would be at Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Waitrose, ASDA will refund you the difference – so you simply can’t lose! It’s really easy to do online or on the smartphone app too.

Slash Your Utility Bills

The rise of the utility bill has been big news, with more and more families struggling to afford to heat their homes as they’d like through the winter months. The first step to slashing utilities is to head online to moneysupermarket to compare price plans. Ten per cent of customers save £300 on their energy bills (as reported Oct 2012 moneysupermarket.com) by comparing and switching at moneysupermarket, and it’s so easy to be one of them.

Moneysupermarket is also great for comparing everything from mortgages to home insurance. Go through all of your commitments and services and see if there are better deals out there.

Get Cashback

Cashback websites like Quidco.com are a fantastic way to boost the household coffers. Whether you’re switching service providers or making a purchase, check Quidco to see what cashback deals are available.

Topcashback.co.uk is another great cashback site to try. You can even compare its cashback rates easily on the website with Quidco, so you can see which cashback club is best for you.

Slash Spending

Sometimes it’s not the regular bills that cause a deficit in the family budget. Instead, it can often be those little daily expenses that we don’t always notice but that quickly add up. Keeping a spending diary for a few weeks is a good idea as it will allow you to see exactly where your money goes. Perhaps you have a daily coffee habit, love your weekly takeaways or regularly rent dvds? You may be surprised at the amount you spend on those small everyday purchases, and cutting down on these has the potential to save lots of lovely cash.

A few hours spent examining your outgoings can make a big difference to the household finances – so make this one of the first jobs on your list this new year!