How to Cut Costs and Improve Your Lifestyle

Money-saving strategies for home and business

Product review and freebies

If you ever write for the purpose of persuasion you’ll know all about headlines.

 

If your headline isn’t strong and attention-grabbing your main text won’t get read. Simple as that.

 

You have to give people a reason to read through what you’ve written and that reason should appear in the headline or sub-headline.

 

The trouble is there’s very little you can read about the art of headline writing. I’ve seen books which are just a list of headlines other people have used. Some good, some bad, some ghastly. But there’s never any analysis or commentary of what makes them what they are.

 

Yet great headlines can make your sales soar!

 

They do it by setting up a chain of events. The headline gets you to read the sub-headline; the sub-headline gets you to read the first sentence; the first sentence gets you to read the second … and so on.

 

I’ve just published a book called ‘The Headline Hero’ which teaches you how to write winning headlines. Its 85+ pages discuss the psychology of persuasion and how to apply it to your own real-life headlines to drive them to over-produce.

 

It comes with free gifts which you can read about here.

 

If you want to improve your conversion of browsers into buyers, this could be just what you’re looking for.

 

 

Save money on home utility costs

Today’s announcement that inflation has yet again increased, due in large part to the massively increased energy prices, led me to resurrect a post from a couple of months ago.

 

There’s one supplier you will never see on price comparison sites and that’s the Utility Warehouse Discount Club.

 

I’ve been a customer for many years, getting my gas, electricity, phone and freephone from them. Because I take all these services I get free UK land-line and 0870 calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (not 0845 but that’s another story.)

 

Calls to mobiles are also cheaper than most other telecoms providers.

 

www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk

 

They send me a single bill for all these services once a month and their customer help desk is genuinely helpful, which makes a change. I’ll be switching my mobile to them when my current contract with Orange expires.

 

Their price promise is that you are guaranteed to save money or they will give you back double the difference. Sounds good to me!

 

To find out more – and join up – you can phone them free on 0800 1313000

or visit their website:

 

www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk

 

They have a ‘Share and Save’ plan which rewards you for introducing your friends and family as customers.

 

I won’t receive any payment if you do decide to sign up – this is just a free recommendation.

 

Get free groceries

The best way to save money has to be to get things free … they don’t come much cheaper than that.

 

Surprisingly, there are thousands of websites telling you about free stuff, so where do they get their profit from? Presumably they’re not charities – not all of them anyway.

 

Well, if you live in the USA there’s a company which sends you printable coupons for free groceries every week. By printable I mean you just print them off your computer, take them to your local grocery store and exchange them for real, free groceries.

 

Their eBook is a mine of information and comes with 8 valuable free (of course!) bonuses.

 

It’s only $7 and comes with a 56-day guarantee – so read it at your leisure and if you don’t think it was worth $7 just send it back for a no-quibble refund.

 

Try it out here with no obligation and instant access for just $7

 

Great news if you’ve got a mortgage

After the last meeting of the Bank of England’s interest rate setting committee, where they unanimously agreed to keep the rate on hold at 0.5%, there was talk that the next move (whenever it happens) could well be DOWN … to 0.25%.

 

In any event, the informed view is that it won’t go above its current 0.5% for at least two years.

 

Great news if you’ve got a mortgage; not so good if you rely on interest from savings to boost your income.

 

Incidentally, the global financial turmoil seems to be causing some amusing acronyms.

 

In the glory days when world economies were booming, we had the BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India and China.

 

Then we had the baddies: the PIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

 

Then the PIIGS – PIGS plus Italy.

 

Now that France seems to be going that way as well we may shortly have the F PIIGS

 

What next?

Free (or nearly free) entertainment

OK, you’ve got that special friend coming round for the evening and you want to impress them with your extensive record collection. Oops, that shows my age, let’s call it your music collection.

 

How about 15 million tracks? … and counting!

 

Now you can’t download tracks and store them free (obviously), but what you can do is stream through your Mac, PC, home audio system or mobile phone.

 

The website is www.spotify.com

 

Their text says:

“Create an account by choosing a user name and password. Download and install Spotify on either Windows or Mac. Then search and play – over 15 million songs are now yours.”

 

With the free service (Spotify Open), which really is free of all charges, you will hear the occasional brief advertisement interspersed amidst your sound tracks. You are also limited in the number of hours a week you can use it, though the time is still quite generous.

 

But to remove all advertisements and have unlimited time access you need Spotify Unlimited which is £4.99 a month.

 

For 15 million tracks that still sounds like a bargain to me.

 

Arbitrage – use this money-making principle to save money

An unusual word, originally French I believe, which is widely used by financial traders.

 

It means, essentially, buying something in a market where it is available at a low price then selling it in another market where it will command a higher price. The process exploits a price discrepancy between different markets and enables you to make money from the difference.

 

Here’s an example.

 

An upright piano used to be almost a standard feature in many houses, but 30 or 40 years ago, as new houses were built smaller and smaller,  it started to become an unwanted eyesore. Too large, too heavy, usually out of tune. If you knew where and how to look, you could pick one up for £5 or £10 provided you would take it away. Most people didn’t want them.

 

But if you wanted to buy a second-hand piano for your children to learn on, you would have great difficulty finding one. Just occasionally you might see one advertised for £80 – £100.

 

So, if you knew where to buy for a low price because the seller wanted to get rid, and where to sell for a higher price because your buyer didn’t know where to look, you could make a good profit.

 

That’s arbitrage. An item is worth very little in one market and significantly more in another market. So you exploit the discrepancy.

 

But what’s this got to do with cost cutting?

 

Well, my wife buys all her Christmas cards in January as well as gift wrapping, bows and so on. Retailers want to see the back of it, almost at any price, so they can display their new lines.

 

If we need new garden furniture we buy it in October, for the same reason.

 

In the ‘experience’ business there are companies like Red Letter Days, Buy a Gift and so on. Typically they offer things like driving a supercar on a racing circuit, having a day’s pampering at a health spa, and many more treats.

 

Buy these a week or two after Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day or Christmas and the price will have fallen through the floor.

 

That’s the beauty of arbitrage.

 

Tax refund if you own commercial property

Saving money by cutting costs isn’t just a hatchet job.

 

As well as spending less money in the future, you can also get back money that you’ve spent in the past – notably from HMRC. Previously known as the Inland Revenue, often referred to as the Tax Man, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is a giant state-controlled hoover that sucks up almost every penny your business earns – or so it sometimes seems.

 

But if you or your business own commercial property (shop, office, factory, hotel, care home, warehouse) and you paid £200,000 or more for it, there is a 96% chance that you are owed a large tax rebate. It doesn’t matter how long ago you bought it, you can normally still claim.

 

That percentage isn’t just a guess, by the way. HMRC agrees that around 96% of all commercial properties that are due this particular tax refund have not yet claimed.

 

As an example, if you bought a small hotel or bed and breakfast for £500,000 it is likely that you have overpaid as much as £60,000 in tax.

 

To find out more, without any obligation at all, just email

 

martin@getyourcostsdown.com

 

Oh, and there’s a guarantee.

 

The service provider has a 100% success rate with HMRC. If the advisers can’t produce for you at least £25,000 in previously unclaimed allowances, you will pay them nothing – though you can still pursue the claim yourself using their professional report.

 

No claim … no fee.

 

And by the way, if you mention this to your accountants and they say they’ve already claimed it for you, 96% of them are wrong. They may think they have, but they haven’t claimed everything.

 

Finding out will cost you nothing.

 

You are risking nothing and have nothing to lose.

 

martin@getyourcostsdown.com

How to cut your life insurance costs

Cutting costs doesn’t have to destroy your lifestyle: in fact you’ll probably be surprised when you discover how much you can save, not by cutting things out but simply by doing things in a different way.

 

Each change will take you a few minutes to achieve, but none will cost you a penny. I’m not talking about spending money to save money … this is pure unadulterated saving.

 

Let’s start with Life Insurance

 

Did you know that the cost of life insurance has come down significantly over the last few years, so if you have a policy that’s been in force for (say) five years or more, you can almost certainly replace it with a policy that’s just as good but a fair bit cheaper.

 

The most common type of policy is Level Term. When you ask whether one Level Term policy is better than another, the only answer possible is in terms of price. Level term means that if you die within a fixed period the policy pays out a fixed amount. A level term policy for £100,000 over 10 years will pay out £100,000 if you die before the end of the 10-year period. If you don’t, it won’t. All level term policies are the same in that respect. The only difference is the monthly premium you pay.

 

To find alternative quotes, just type cheapest life insurance into your search engine (Google, Yahoo etc.). Sainsbury’s Bank has offered competitive rates for quite a while and so has Tesco, but, in spite of the general principle of going direct wherever possible, you could well get the best life insurance deal by going through an intermediary.

 

Two online companies are consistently cheaper than any other way of arranging life insurance, they are:

 

http://moneyworld.com/Life-Insurance/index.htm

 

http://www.cavendishonline.co.uk/life/

 

A few points to bear in mind, however. These are ‘execution-only’ brokers and will therefore not offer you advice on the cover you need. If you want a straight level term, however, they are an ideal place to start your search.

 

The selling of life insurance is a regulated activity which means brokers have to meet certain standards set by the regulator, the Financial Services Authority, and you can complain if things go wrong.

 

We have no connection or financial arrangement with either of the companies named above and we are not specifically recommending them. We cite them as examples only.

 

Whoever you choose to deal with, you should be able to make significant savings on your life insurance premiums compared with prices charged a few years ago.

Why cutting costs is way better than a pay rise

When times are hard, the first thing you do is look for a second job. To increase your income so it covers your outgoings.

 

But this is quite probably the wrong thing to do. It may eventually be necessary, but it should be your last resort. This is why …

 

Some people I know faced a financial crisis quite recently. They sat down together and looked at every item of expenditure. After a lot of soul searching they decided they could spend less each month – £1,600 less!

 

That’s £19,200 a year saving … and no, they’re not bankers.

 

Ok, they had earned a lot between them, but like most people they were used to spending more than they earned.

 

You may not be able to save quite as much as that, perhaps, but you’d be amazed at how much money you waste … and therefore how much you could save. Little regular savings soon add up to surprisingly large amounts of money. And, surprisingly, you may not have to change your lifestyle very much – if at all.

 

But why is cutting costs so much better than earning more? Surely it’s all the same?

 

Wrong – and the reason is tax.

 

My friends are higher rate taxpayers. Every extra £ they earn is taxed at 40%. So the £19,200 a year that they saved by cutting costs was equivalent to a pay rise of £32,037 a year.

 

That’s more than the national average income, and to get that EXTRA as a pay rise is life-changing.

 

If they were basic rate taxpayers on 20% income tax, the £19,200 saving would still have had the same effect as a £24,000 pay rise.

 

Let me leave you with one final thought.

 

Whether in your private life or in your business … get your costs down.

 

It makes really good sense.