Save up to £547 per year on shopping

The average household could save up to £547 every year by switching the five financial basics to the best deals on the market, new research from MoneyExpert.com shows.

And financial comparison websites are the ideal way to shop around for the best deals on car insurance, home insurance, personal loans, credit cards and mortgages.

MoneyExpert.com commissioned researchers Canvasse Opinion to audit the finances of the UK and found 84 per cent of adults are overpaying for one or more of these finance basics.

Researchers surveyed a representative sample of people across the country and then ran the results through MoneyExpert.com’s price comparison software. Insurance quotes were analysed through Experian’s ISL division.

The £547 annual household saving comes from switching home insurance, motor insurance, mortgages, personal loans and credit cards to the best deal for each individual.

The biggest saving would come from moving a personal loan deal. On average borrowers could save £204 a year by moving to the best rate.

Drivers could cut their car insurance bill by around £158 a year while homeowners would be £76 a year better off.

Sean Gardner, Chief Executive of MoneyExpert.com, said: “With everyone coming under increasing financial pressure from rising bills it makes sense to find every possible way to cut costs.

“Our analysis shows potential savings of up to £547 are on offer from reviewing basic financial products and that would be a major boost for household budgets.

“Not everyone will save that much but four out of five of us are overpaying for at least one of the financial basics. Typically, UK consumers are paying out £150 per year more than they need to – I’d urge people to spend just a few minutes online to review their finances.”

MoneyExpert.com offers a unique service which enables people to find the financial products which best meet their specific needs, and which they are more likely to be successful in being accepted for. It includes exclusive research conducted by MORI, which reveals providers’ service levels. This information is married up with a financial database which lists the products suited to the customer. For the first time, people can review a product’s price, features and also the level of service offered by the provider to enable them to make a more informed choice.

MoneyExpert.com aims to demystify the complex world of personal finance, and to help inform customers of the choices available. » Continue reading

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Pep up your office without burning a hole in your pocket

It's a brand new year. So why not pep up the office (or the home office) for a brand new start. May be you could get some new office furniture, office supplies, a brand new Apple Macintosh or a nice comfortable ergonomic office chair for yourself! Ah, I know what you are thinking about. Don't you worry. You don't need to burn a hole in your pocket.

Just visit OfficeDeals.info to grab thousands of discount coupons, coupon codes and promotional offers from OfficeDepot.com, Staples.com, Office Max, Vistaprint, Apple Store, HP Store, Dell Computer, Best Buy, Stamps.com and hundreds of other stores selling office supplies, discount office furniture and computers.

OfficeDeals.info scours the Internet for new discount coupons, coupon codes and promotional offers and the website is updated on a daily basis.

I would only wish they added an RSS feed, so that I could get the latest discount coupons, coupon codes and promotional offers right in my feed reader, the moment they are published.

OfficeDeals.info might also be useful if your are looking for some useful tips on getting a small business credit card, setting up a home business, benefits of a home business and tips on working from home. » Continue reading

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Free shopping worth Rs.250 x the number of mobile phones in your household

Yes, it's true. You can do free shopping worth Rs.250 from a variety of online stores ...without any cheating. Here's how.

GiftMate, a new mobile payment service launched in India, is offering free trial vouchers worth Rs.250 if you fill up an online survey form.

Making payments through the mobile phone (not billed on your prepaid or postpaid mobile phone) is a relatively new concept in India and lot of people might be reluctant to try out something new. Hence they are offering a free trial voucher worth Rs.250 for the users to try out before they feel comfortable transacting with their mobile phone.

In the process they also collect your mobile number so that they may send you periodic offers and discounts from time to time. Hence a win-win situation for both, GiftMate and the user. Hope all your suspicion might have been cleared by now.

The benefit of making payment through your mobile phone is that you do not have to give your credit card details to the online merchants and hence feel safe. Also when mobile payments become common at brick-and-mortar stores, restaurants etc., you may not have to carry your credit card or wallet. Just make the payment using your mobile phone.

So here's how to go about claiming your free trial voucher. Believe me, it's really very simple.

1. Click here.
   
2. Fill up the form and click Get my free voucher.
   
3. You will receive an SMS on your mobile phone and an email on your email address containing a 4 digit PIN which will be used while redeeming your free voucher. Make a note of it.

You can now use this voucher at any of the 2500 online stores who have got a tie-up with GiftMate/Paymate. You can find a short list of these stores here. Remember to select Pay by mobile or Paymate / GiftMate while checking out and making the payment.

Futurebazaar.com is one of my favorites since it belongs to one of my favorite brick-and-mortar stores, BigBazaar. They have got a wide variety of goods on sale right from Rs.28 to Rs.2,25,900. They even have a 7 day delivery guarantee and a 15 day Unconditional No-Cost Return policy. Not only that, their user interface is very simple and user-friendly although I had experienced a slow down at times. Also I was automatically signed out and my shopping cart emptied automatically at the payment stage requiring me to repeat the whole process and reselect the items.

You can use Advanced Search on Futurebazaar.com to find items between a price range. Enter * in the Search input box to display all items.

Shopping for more than Rs.250

You can buy as many items as you may want within the Rs.250 limit in a single order. If you want to buy a single item worth more than Rs.250 or you want to buy several items worth more than Rs.250, you may have to top-up your GiftMate account using your credit card or net banking account. You can top-up your GiftMate account here. Just enter the same details for the Sender and the Recipient.

Alternatively, if you have more than one mobile number, you can register the other mobile numbers on GiftMate as above here. You can use the same email address for all the mobile numbers. Still you can only use one mobile number to pay for a single order. So you will need to transfer the balance from the other mobile numbers to one single mobile number which you can give while making the payment at the online stores. Here's how you can transfer the balance from one mobile number to another mobile number:

1. Click here.
   
2. In the Sender details enter the name, mobile number and email address of the mobile number account from which you want to transfer the balance.
   
3. In the Recipient details enter the name, mobile number and email address of the mobile number account to which you want to transfer the balance.
   
4. Select Voucher Value as Rs.250.
   
5. Select Payment Option as PayMate/GiftMate.
   
6. Check I Accept.
   
7. Click Accept.
   
8. You will now be asked to select Payment Mode and Mobile Number again. Select GiftMate as Payment Mode. In the Mobile Number box enter the mobile number from which you want to transfer the balance.
   
9. Click Submit.
   
10. You will now get an SMS on the Sender mobile phone asking you to confirm the payment. Reply to the SMS in the "Pay abc 1234" format. Once you send the SMS the browser screen will automatically show you that the payment has be completed successfully.

Now you can use the Recipient mobile number to shop for items worth Rs.500. You can repeat the above steps for as many mobile phones as you may have.

Also note that when you claim your trial voucher by filling up the survey form, you only get 7 days validity within which you have to use the voucher. But when you transfer the balance from one mobile number account to another mobile number account the validity of the transfered amount in the Recipient account would become 365 days.

You can check your GiftMate account balance and transaction details here. » Continue reading

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Romantic stories of the vikings

Having been brought up listening to stories of a tall, blonde and handsome prince rescuing a fair and beautiful princess, historical romance novels have taken up a major portion of my book shelf. Johanna Lindsey's The Fires of Winter, one of the oldest in my collection, is a favourite.

The novel portrays the strong character of Lady Brenna who is captured by viking Garrick Haardrad's father and given to Garrick as a slave. Her love for Garrick inspite of the sexual abuse is absolutely fascinating. What's more interesting is that Johanna Lindsey has portrayed Lady Brenna's character in a rather contemporary light as a smart, athletic and courageous woman with sword skills and a fighting spirit. The story takes a very emotional turn when Garrick who is in love with Brenna refuses to believe Brenna's story of her kidnap after she tries to escape from Garrick due to his abusive behaviour. She goes to live alone with a broken heart. Garrick's heart, however, softens when Brenna gives birth to their prematured baby and learns about the truth of Brenna's kidnap. At the end of the story they are happily married, ever after.

These days it has become difficult to find historical romance novels at book stores and new titles are rarely published in hardcover. Authors are switiching to the contemporary romance genre. However, if you are looking for historical Romance Novels, you could check out Mills & Boon website and order them online. » Continue reading

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Finding best deals on Printer Cartridges

When you are out to purchase a printer cartridge, do you check out every store in your locality for the best price? If not, you might be giving a lot more bucks than you should; and if yes, you know how tiring it is. Another option would be to check out the prices on different stores online. But that again would be time consuming to visit each store's website and comparing their prices. Wouldn't it be great if you could compare the prices of a particular model of a printer cartridge from across the brick & mortar stores in your locality along with those of online stores, with just a few clicks?

Cartridge Finder will let you do just that. It has an easy to use interface that makes it simple to first figure out which cartridges are required for more than 10,000 different models of printer, copier, and fax machines across 35 brands. Then it lets you find and compare prices for each cartridge along with the taxes applicable in your state and shipping costs. Currently they offer brick and mortar store prices from across the US. Hope they would add more countries soon. » Continue reading

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Cyber shopping? Don't foget CouponChief.com

The holiday season is just a few months away! First Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and before you know it, you will be stuffing stockings! Don't you worry, CouponChief.com is here for help.

CouponChief offers over 2300 coupons and discounts. Whether you are shopping online or making a trip to your local grocery store, visit this site first. You will find printable coupons, coupon codes and links to the hottest deals on the web.

Some of my favorites on CouponChief are

• BestBuy.com coupons - You can save a hell lot of money on shopping for gadgets and appliances.
  
• Smugmug coupons - Not only is it a photo sharing site, you can also order personalized gift items using your photos from the site.

The best part is that you can check out comments and read about others' experiences with the coupon or product before you spend the time and effort redeeming it through the extensive online forums provided by CouponChief which currently has over 3000 topics.

There is also another indirect way to save money shopping online - you save on gas. You can also avoid the hassle of going to a crowded mall during the peak shopping season.

If you have had some great bargains with CouponChief, do HashOut! » Continue reading

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Safe online shopping with Webcard

Buying stuff on the internet isn't popular because of the growing incidence of credit card fraud.

Enter the "webcard" -- already available in the UK from the Internet bank Cahoot. Each time you want to buy something, you log on to your Cahoot account and it issues you with a credit card number you can use for your purchase. Unlike a normal credit card, this number is different every time -- so it can't be used again if it falls into the wrong hands. You can even specify a spending limit to prevent a site from over charging you. More information and a demo at www.cahoot.co.uk » Continue reading

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20 Essential Firefox Add-ons for Web Shoppers

Online shopping can sometimes get really confusing especially during the Christmas season when you have a whole bunch of gifts to buy. It takes a lot of effort to first find the items you want and then to compare the price across various online merchants. Wouldn't you be glad if you could just highlight an item on a web page and your browser could list out the sites selling it along with their prices and user reviews?


Christina Laun has put together a wonderful list of 20 Essential Firefox Add-ons for Frugal Web Shoppers which does just that and much more! These Add-ons make online shopping experience a breeze.

Out of the twenty the ones which caught my fancy were:

1. Woot Watcher


2. Chartlet - Wouldn't that be helpful for recording and tracking stock prices too!


3. Send Tab URLs - Do you have to shift from working on one computer to another (Example: shuttling between work and home)? This Add-on can be useful to email the URLs you were working on before shifting so that you can open the same on the other computer without having to remember the long URLs or retyping them.

Do let me know what was your favorite. Do you know other cool Firefox Add-ons for web shoppers? » Continue reading

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Stealth Shopping on the Web

Protecting your privacy is harder when shopping online because you're asked to fork over sensitive data. Here's what Jay Foley at the Identity Theft Resource Centre suggests to minimize exposure:

Change your identity. Create a new email address exclusively for online stores that require one. This dummy address will wind up receiving future junk emails. Then each week, trash all the spam from your "shopping" address.

Look for the lock. Before filling out any on-screen form asking for credit card data, verify that you're at a secure Web page. The URL in the field at the top of your screen should begin with "https://" and look for a locked padlock icon in the lower-left corner of the screen.

Send spies packing. If you download free software, "spyware" may have been secretly attached by a third party to monitor your surfing habits. Spychecker.com offers free software that detects and removes spyware from your hard drive. » Continue reading

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Coping with too many high-tech choices

Remember when shopping for a camera was easy? Fiddle with a few models, pick one and go home happy. Today you practically need a degree in computer science and three months just to research the right one.

The same clutter exists in virtually every category of consumer electronics and technology. Faced with too many choices, people cannot compare all the options competently, says Barry Schwartz, an American professor of social theory and author of The Paradox of Choice. For example, one university study found that a supermakret customer offered 24 varieties of jam was less likely to by any jam, than a customer offered just six varieties.

So how can time-pressed electronics shoppers make a decision without feeling regret? Experts urge self-restraint:

Stick to a budget: It's easy to get snowed into adding features that inch up the price, says Brian Clark, founder of The Tech Enthusiast's Network, a consumer technology consulting service. Begin with an absolute price ceiling, he says, and you will automatically limit yourself to the best product you can afford.

Know your needs: Ask a friend or relative who is up on electronics to explain the options and then figure out which ones matter most to you.

Talk the talk: Before coming face to face with sales people who favour jargon, bone up on the lingo. Clark says knowing what key terms mean in advance can inoculate you against buying more that you need.

Ease the pressure: If you feel overwhelmed, leave the store, Clark says. Impulse purchases rarely wind up satisfying in the long run.

Train you brain: No product is perfect. And with electronics, there's always a new, more technically sophisticated version just around the corner. "We tend to focus on what's satisfying about your purchase," Barry Schwartz says. » Continue reading

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