OUR YEAR’S HITS AND MISSES
From cashback to a better mortgage deal and saving on car insurance, our team tell how their finances fared in 2017 . . .just don’t buy a £1,500 turntable!
THE VICTORIES Jeff Prestridge: FILM ON THE CHEAP
I LOVE my theatre, live music and film. More TLF, less TLC. Such loves do not end in heartbreak but they can prove expensive, especially if you have a taste for such theatrical triumphs as Ink, The Ferryman and Girl From The North Country.
So my savviest financial decision this year was to invest in a Curzon Cult annual membership costing £350. For this, I can see films for free at any of its cinemas nationwide. Also, live theatre.
I estimate that throughout the year I have seen at least 150 films – everything from Hollywood blockbuster La La Land, the ridiculous Death Of Stalin through to the outrageously witty The Party and Kenny – a tender documentary about Kenny Dalglish, manager of Liverpool Football Club at the time of the Hillsborough disaster. A football ground that Kenny has never been able to return to following what he saw on that awful day in April 1989 when 96 innocent lives were lost.
At a tad over £2 a film, my Curzon Cult pass has proved a 2017 winner. Next up? Documentary Jane – all about Jane Goodall who has spent most of her life studying chimpanzees in Tanzania. Followed by Mountain, a documentary by Jennifer Peedom about the sustained beauty of the planet’s mountain ranges – despite man’s best efforts to destroy them.
Sally Hamilton: CASHBACK AND LOYALTY POINTS
SADLY, I failed to invest £100 in Bitcoin in January this year – a decision that would have turned my investment into £1,370.
Sublime as it would have been to be part of the Bitcoin bonanza, I am afraid my victories are a little more mundane. After repeated persuasion by colleague Laura Shannon, I finally signed up to the company’s cashback programme that allows employees to get money back from everyday purchases at numerous retailers.
I checked my balance last week and found I have earned a princely £28 with a minimum of effort, simply by buying something via my employer’s website. Bitcoin investors might laugh at my modest returns, but I am not complaining.
On a more glamorous note, I finally got round to spending some of a vast collection of Avios points I have collected over the last decade – in reality only worth a few hundred pounds.
I spent a few thousand points on upgrading my BA economy seat to New York to premium economy, which made a big difference – good leg room. Better still, on the return trip a kindly check-in clerk upgraded my seat to business class. Apparently the look on my face was the happiest my husband had seen for quite a long time. Laura Shannon: SMALL SAVINGS THIS year I started building t hree small savings pots. Though they will not make my f amily ri ch, we all get a bit extra money for little effort.
I opened a regular savings account with Santander Bank paying an inflation-busting and market-leading 5 per cent. Saving the maximum each month means £ 64 interest after one year. Not a lifechanging sum but a decent return for all of five minutes’ work.
Using Lloyds Bank’s ‘Save the Change’ tool has also helped me build a pot worth £85 during 2017. Spending from my debit card is rounded up to the nearest pound with the extra pence channelled into a digital jam-jar account linked to my current account. It is the digital equivalent of putting pennies in a piggy bank.
Most importantly, I opened a Junior Isa for my now ten-month-old daughter Orlagh. I started with a cash Isa paying 3 per cent as it has
no minimum monthly contributions required or annual charges.
It is an account for both her birthday and Christmas money to go into, but I may switch it into stocks and shares as the balance builds to make her money work harder.
Toby Walne: BLACK BOX MAGIC
INSTALLING a small black box into an old Peugeot 206 does not sound like much of a victory – but it is good enough for me.
This small device acts like a backseat driver by keeping a sharp eye on what you get up to behind the wheel.
Annual motor insurance is still an eye-watering £991 with Hastings Direct’s SmartMiles as I share the car with an 18-year-old daughter – but the insurance industry is a racket that is hard to beat. Without t he box, i t would cost me a lot more.
I despise being monitored – my speed, acceleration and what time of day the car is driven. Step out of line and a sharp rebuke is waiting for me when I check my motoring details on my smartphone – and if I keep driving badly, Hastings will stop insuring me.
When I was my daughter’s age, insurance was a lot cheaper and friends and I would race around in our Ford Escorts and Capris. A few got written off – including my own after I rolled it into a ditch. It took some convincing but it is a victory knowing that insisting on a black box ensures a much safer drive – for me and my daughter.
Jo Thornhill: SECURE A GOOD MORTGAGE DEAL
I CONSIDER myself an unlucky person so I am quite pleased I managed to switch my mortgage deal to a great low rate just weeks before the Bank of England decided to raise interest rates in November.
My previous three-year fixed rate at 2.39 per cent with NatWest came to an end in late summer so I was free to move away without penalty. I switched to a two-year fix – this time with Scottish Widows Bank, part of Lloyds Banking Group, at 1.14 per cent. As a result, I will be saving just over £100 a month on repayments.
The new mortgage is flexible so I can offset my savings against the mortgage balance and make overpayments on my debt – should I ever have any spare cash.
. . . AND THE DEFEATS Jeff Prestridge: ONLY PAYING OFF A SLICE OF MORTGAGE ON THE FAMILY HOME
I DO not like debt. Indeed, I hate it more the older I get.
So it was with great relief that when the mortgage on the family home came up for renewal a month ago, I used the opportunity to pay off a slice of the debt. The money came from an Individual Savings Account that I had set up specifically for the purpose.
The result is that for the next two years I have relatively low monthly mortgage payments to make. They are fixed which means I do not have to worry about whether the Bank Rate jumps up again. But I still have a mortgage – a debt I would rather not have. I wish I could have paid it all off. My objective is that in two years’ time, the family home will be mortgage free. Memo to self: get saving ASAP.
Sally Hamilton: EXPENSIVE LENGTHS IN THE POOL
GYM membership is a luxury in the part of London where I work. But since my health and fitness is a priority, I signed up a year ago with Virgin Active. It all went swimmingly – so to speak, as I only wanted to use the pool – for the first few months. I went at least twice a week after work.
But as the months rolled by and more people seemed to be thronging the skinny lanes of the pool at my chosen times, I lost enthusiasm. By month nine my visits plummeted and in the last two months I did not attend at all. I cancelled my membership. This might be considered an easy money saving tactic as I am now more than £100 a month better off. But the defeat is a loss in my fitness and my pride.
Laura Shannon: OVERPAID ON RAIL FARES
CARELESSNESS and rushing saw me needlessly overpay for a rail season ticket I use for commuting to work. I chose one that allows me to travel any permitted route between the Midlands and London, rather than the cheaper, restricted route I actually travel on each week.
The blunder means I had to spend time filling out forms to get the ticket changed. I will not get back the difference in price for the months already spent using the overpriced pass. This comes at a personal cost of £166. I blame a confusing ticket-buying system – and too little time to spend working it all out.
Toby Walne: DECLUTTERING MISFIRES
AN attempt to clear out my old stereo equipment backfired spectacularly. Instead, it introduced me to an expensive new addiction to top quality hi-fi.
It started when an old Arcam compact disc player broke down and I sold it on auction website eBay for £200. This felt like money I just had to spend on a replacement – a secondhand Linn CD player. As soon as a disc was played I heard a higher quality of music never enjoyed before. A previously beloved Pro- Ject turntable was made redundant.
This is where the fever set in. I had to have a record player that could not only match but also exceed the sound quality of the CD player to prove – as we all know – that vinyl is still best.
The answer was found in a fantastic British-made Michell Gyro SE turntable. Although it costs three times the £500 that my old record player sold for, it allows me to hear Jacqueline du Pre play the cello as if she were right there in the room with me. Defeat never sounded so impressive. Jo Thornhill:
BROADBAND FAILURE
AS an unhappy customer of Virgin Media for more than seven years – I am convinced I am being overcharged for a substandard service – I have been planning an escape route for ages. But another year has rolled by and I still have not got around to it. I pay almost £ 70 a month for broadband, a landline phone and a basic television package with a TIVO recording box. Yet we do not get a particularly fast internet, we do not watch most of the additional TV channels for which we are charged and we barely use our landline any more. I am sure I could reduce the monthly costs with another provider. If I had found a better deal and switched in January, I estimate I could have saved upwards of £250 last year. Instead I continue to line Virgin Media’ s pockets.